What happens to preserved aircraft?

Thanks again for that information: 1968 was when it was all made official at the Newark (Nottinghamshire & Lincolnshire) Air Museum; registered as a Limited Company and as a Charity.

By my records 8th July 1967 saw the first aircraft land at Winthorpe in the shape of Percival Prentice G-APIY.

I’ve now looked at the pdf copy of the third (1968) edition of W&R. It runs to 48 pages (including prefaces, photographs and appendices). There is an entry for the NAM under Newark, listing eleven airframes, including the Wallace, but giving no precise location for them.

Thanks for that information aa I’d forgotten the ‘local store!’

By the 7th edition that location was noted has having been given up by the museum, with Auster J/5F G-AMUJ having moved out.

However the location of the ‘local store’ was still showing a Seafire!!

For the museum entry itself at Winthorpe it was showing 4 new additions since edition 6 – F100; T33, Mystere and a Sioux.

Down the road at Hucknall 8 Belfasts were noted.

There is no entry for Newark (or Winthorpe) in either the first or second editions of W&R. I have a pdf copy of the third edition, but I haven’t yet had the chance to check that. In the fourth edition (1974) there is an entry for the NAM under Winthorpe listing eleven aircraft on site plus another four – including the Wallace – decribed as ‘stored locally’.

A little food for thought.

Using my own two previous example editions I had a quick look at Newark Air Museum’s (NAM) entries:

7th edition (1980) 18 items listed of which 2 have moved on (Proctor & Sycamore) and to my knowledge at least the Sycamore is still in preservation.

23rd edition (2012) 90 items listed.

I guess the first NAM W & R entry would have been with the Westland Wallace in 1963 /5.

Here is a simple way of getting a roung idea. Obtain W&R current edition and one 5 years old or older. Turn to the index and select a few aircraft types eg Meteor, then count how many pages are mentioned in the index for Meteor. Do this in both editions for the types of aircraft in the era you are interested in and summarise the results. I realise it may include cockpits and in some caes replicas but why not try in out.

The oldest copy I have in my library is the 7th edition dated 1980, which has 150 pages

…………whereas the first edition (1961), typed and duplicated, ran to 13 A4 pages and the second edition (1963) ran to 20 typewritten A5 pages (although I cannot speak for the originals as I have only the 1974 reprint of the first edition and the 1979 reprint of the second edition). And these page counts include the prefaces and the photos! But what one has to remember is that, regrettably, these never even pretended to be a comprehensive review of the non-flying airframes extant in the British Isles at the respective dates of publication and depended almost entirely upon correspondents (presumably, in the main, members of the Merseyside Aviation Society, which at that time published W&R) contributing information from which to compile the lists. Thus one has to acknowledge the possibility that as W&R evolved, from issue to issue, the increasing number of entries, and thus the number of pages, might have had as much to do with an improvement in the reporting of extant non-flying airframes as with the number of such airframes increasing.

What has changed over 45 years is that ” sole owners ” have appeared, happy to buy something but without the understand of what ownership costs.

The groups which were in at the start, like the Northern Aircraft Preservation Society, Lincolnshire Aircraft Preservation Society, Newark etc started with members who were in their early 20’s when they first got involved. Some have fallen by the wayside but other have brought their experience with them – to built successful collections. The aircraft owned by HAPS when they were at Biggin have mostly survived, because their long term future was planned from the start, but the Tony Osborne collection, which also started at Biggin but moved to Southend have mostly been scrapped.

In other postings it was asked why BAPC did nothing to preserve the Catalina at Weston – despite not being a preservation organization, but the other side of that coin is where were the under 25’s willing to start a movement to try to preserve the aircraft. Most ” preservationists ” are now neared 60+ than 25.

A little food for thought and perhaps a bit of a guide!

The current edition (23rd) runs to 334 pages.

The oldest copy I have in my library is the 7th edition dated 1980, which has 150 pages.

The current edition is properly typeset, as opposed to the typed format in 1980 and I would suggest at a rough guess the coverage indicates well over a doubling of the number of preserved airframes.

Big subject, online sites such as Demobbed (http://www.demobbed.org.uk/aircraft.php)……

It is certainly a handy site.

You could always purchase Wrecks & Relics! 🙂

Fair point, but the problem is I would need a series of editions to build up the ongoing picture. I tend to restrict myself to one “recent” edition. Still it could be done. I will think about it.

You could always purchase Wrecks & Relics! 🙂

Big subject, online sites such as Demobbed (http://www.demobbed.org.uk/aircraft.php) and to a lesser extent,Thunder & Lightnings are certainly good starting points for preserved military types.