Following an epic restoration the nose section of English Electric Canberra WK124 has gone on display at the Stoneykirk Aviation Museum.

The Canberra made its debut at the museum on August 25, 2024. It had arrived four days earlier from East Yorkshire, where it had undergone a thorough restoration and transformation at the hands of father and son team Joe and Lyndon Blackburne over seven years. The transformation saw the TT.18 target-tug turned into a B.6(Mod) variant, complete with an enlarged radome.

The Canberra is on long term loan from the Blackburnes to Steve Austin at the Stoneykirk Aviation Museum in Scotland. On the day the aircraft arrived at the museum, Steve posted on his Facebook site, “Today we turned the Museum Awesomeness right up to 10 with the arrival of a Canberra TT18 (WK124). Other exhibits were re-arranged to accommodate this very impressive aircraft.”

The museum, located about 10 miles from Stranraer and not far from the airfield at West Freugh, has a small collection of artifacts, with an emphasis on military technology during the Cold War. Among its larger items are the restored cockpit sections of Avro Vulcan B.1 XA903; Blackburn Buccaneer S.1 XK533 and S.2B XN983; de Havilland Vampire T.11 XE921 and Sea Vixen FAW.2 XP925; Hawker Sea Hawk FGA.6 WV903 and Hunting Jet Provost T.4 XP558; while the nose of Canberra T.4 WE191 provides a contrast to the newly arrived B.6(Mod).

When the Blackburnes acquired the nose of WK124 it was in very poor condition. The Canberra had spent its years since its last flight with the RAF on March 26, 1991, as a crash rescue airframe at RAF Manston, Kent. By early 2017 it had been salvaged, with the nose briefly going to South Clifton in Nottinghamshire before heading to East Yorkshire. Other parts from the airframe ended up at Newquay, Cornwall – the former RAF St Mawgan – where they were used by the Joint Aircraft Recovery and Transport Squadron.

The nose arrived in East Yorkshire in October 2017. After stripping the interior and restoring the shell of the nose, the pair began the daunting task of returning the cockpit back to display condition, after making the decision to complete it as a B.6(Mod). While some items had to be fabricated – notably the radome – others were acquired to equip the cockpit to a high standard.

Seven years later, visitors to CockpitFest held at the Newark Air Museum at Winthorpe, Nottinghamshire, over the weekend of June 22-23, 2024, were able to see the result of the restoration for themselves. The pair’s hard work was rewarded by securing the ‘Spirit of CockpitFest’ at the event for the Canberra. They always intended that it would move on once completed, so they could “move onto the next project”, with its delivery to Stoneykirk a good fit with the museum’s Cold War technology theme.