Foreign WWII aircraft in RAF Collection

IIRC there was a tornado at Farnborough which caused absolute devastation to the collection of WW2 German types. No doubt the remains were taken to a scrap yard.

Regards

Well, I hope the guy who left a live Sidewinder on the Tornado’s weapons pylons got a right royal boll*cking! 😀

IIRC there was a tornado at Farnborough which caused absolute devastation to the collection of WW2 German types. No doubt the remains were taken to a scrap yard.

Regards

Don’t forget from about these parts – “In November 1953 whilst operating as a sub-site to 93 MU, RAF Fulbeck housed the Air Historical Branch Collection of historical and captured aircraft. Many of these airframes are now displayed at site like the RAF Museum at Hendon, whilst some rare types were sadly scrapped.”

Phil Buttler’s War Prizes book lists the fate of many, No47 MU at Sealand got a lot of them, and Brize Norton got others (Fw189 for example).

I hadn’t heard about the Dornier! I suppose it’s foolish to ask if any pictures exist of it in storage?
I do seem to recall a grainy shot of a Hampden and Boston in outside storage in the ’50s, which both eventually went the same way.

The survival of many is fortuitous, as although planned there were a lot of airframes stored for historical/museum purposes that were scrapped when space was needed in the late 40s/early50s.[/QUOTE]
The Do17Z that crash landed at RAF Rochford on 26th August 1940 being a prime example!. This was crated and put into storage until 1950 when it was scrapped. What a terrible shame. One aircraft that i thought would have been saved for museum purposes in 1940 was the Bf109E of Oblt. Franz Von Werra, after all it was an “aces” fighter which even for propaganda purposes alone would have been worth putting on display in a museum.

The MOD Air Historical Branch had a remit for preserving certain airframes and used storage at several bases eg Biggin Hill. When the RAF museum was founded the ownership of these were transferred to the museum. I have a list of airframes in an RAF museum publication from the seventies which also notes that the aircraft of the BOB memorial flight whilst still on MOD charge were also part of the RAF museum reserve collection.

Many of them were only loaned to RAFM and remained in MOD ownership until donated to the RAFM the late 90s (The individual histories on the RAF Museum website gives details – e.g. Bf109E, Bf110G ).

The survival of many is fortuitous, as although planned there were a lot of airframes stored for historical/museum purposes that were scrapped when space was needed in the late 40s/early50s.

The MOD Air Historical Branch had a remit for preserving certain airframes and used storage at several bases eg Biggin Hill. When the RAF museum was founded the ownership of these were transferred to the museum. I have a list of airframes in an RAF museum publication from the seventies which also notes that the aircraft of the BOB memorial flight whilst still on MOD charge were also part of the RAF museum reserve collection.

Back in 1959 the Royal Aeronautical Society Historical Group produced a paper and listing of significant aircraft in the UK.

I have an early generation copy on ‘x2 foolscap’ that has almost faded to oblivion. I will try and recover and enhance it…and post it later today.

Mark