Lucky ladies: unlikely survivors

As suggested in my thread on lost “preserved” airframes…how about the flip side…historics that are still with us against the odds? I’ll nominate a few to start:

D.H.98 Mosquito W4050, famously ordered burnt, but saved by DH’s Bill Baird who defied the order and essentially “hid” the first Mossie until she could go into a museum.

Avro Lancaster FM213/C-GVRA, which was on jacks in the south bay of CWH Hangar #3 when the north bay burned to the ground in the early hours of 15 February 1993; had a cinderblock partition not been put down the centre of the hangar decades earlier to make a paint shop, the Lanc would have been lost. (A Fleet Finch project also in the south bay was equally lucky.)

Fairey Firefly AS.6 WH632/C-GBDG. This is an odd one: she’s lucky because she incurred heavy damage in an accident right after restoration! Scheduled to be flown to CWH from British Columbia in 1992, BDG swung off runway and struck a backhoe at Victoria; what amounted to a second rebuild ensued and kept BDG from returning home until 1996. Had the backhoe incident not occurred, the Firefly would have been undergoing post-season maintenance in the winter of 92-93…in the north bay of Hgr#3. She, too, would have been lost in the fire.

Nakajima Ki84-II Hayate, once of The Air Museum (now in Japan). Rescued by visionary collector Ed Maloney from the infamous NASM “cull” in the 50s, and actually restored to fly for a time with its original Homare engine. It is the only surviving Ki84 and is now in a museum in Japan.

More? (This’ll be less depressing!)

S.