At the Controls

Book excerpt: This is perhaps the finest collection of cockpit photographs in existence. The Museum (NASM) holds the world's premier collection of historic aircraft, but visitors to the museum must maintain a respectful distance. In At the Controls, NASM photographers Eric Long and Mark Avino use creative lighting techniques and an extremely wide-angle lens mounted on a short-bodied, large-format architectural camera to duplicate the sensation of actually being at the controls inside the cockpit of 45 legendary aircraft. The reader experiences a pilot's-eye view of the cockpit. Among the 45 featured aircraft are these history-making planes: Wright Brothers 1903 Flyer Blériot Type XI Fokker D.VII Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis Supermarine Spitfire Mk.VII Focke-Wulf Fw 190F-8 Ilyushin IL-2 Shturmovik Messerschmitt Me 262 Boeing B-29 Enola Gay Sikorsky UH-34D Seahorse Project Apollo Lunar Module Space Shuttle Columbia