I stopped past North Weald today, a place i have been visiting since the 1970`s when it was only inhabited by the glider club winch launching and the various car clubs that held Sprints on weekends, my father competed regularly in these and i spent many a happy day in the sunshine watching the gliders and cars tearing round with the sound of the skylarks overhead. A drive round the peri track to the far side bought an unexpected and sad sight, the C-54 which has been resident for 17 years was in the process of being cut up with a petrol saw. The owner was on site and said he was sorry it had come to that but he had been trying to sell it for 17 years and could not carry on paying the fees. I know that the Skymaster to the air guys did a sterling job on her and had three of her radials running but the aim to make her airworthy was unobtainable due to the immense cost involved, speaking to the owner it seems that there was a disagreement over the what was agreed between himself and the chaps working on it, we will probably never know what the agreement was, sadly the plane is now gone as a complete aircraft. I asked if the cockpit was being saved, he told me the fuselage back to where the tail was chopped off is going to be a Glamping pod somewhere in the locality, the buyer will be transporting it to his premises in the near future, the wings and tail will be scrapped. Here are a few pictures i took today.
By: cometguymk1 - 14th January 2025 at 08:18
By: cometguymk1 - 14th January 2025 at 08:18
Some shady deals going on? Sad to see this happen as for a while the group seemed to be cracking on with getting her into good shape.
By: Jamie-Southend - 12th January 2025 at 10:19
By: Jamie-Southend - 12th January 2025 at 10:19
it has been an awful long time since I last logged onto this forum. I guess a lot of people these days use social media for communication.
I’ve had a lifelong passion for aviation since being an engineer in the 80s. I supported the Skymaster project by being a member of the society and paying a subscription and have absolutely no regrets there
just over a year ago there appears to be some sort of problems within the group and it was clear after a few months that the owner of the airframe and Mr Henry Hyde, had some sort of ownership disagreements with the society itself. The society of course was also a registered charity
there is absolutely no doubt that there was a team of individuals that were passionate about the project, and the thousands of hours and pounds which had been put into restoring that amazing aircraft to near running condition. You can say what you like on whether you think it was viable or not, but the fact of the matter is that there are three engines all running perfectly, with the majority the rest of the system operating
so without gaining a long heated argument about who owned what, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for all the people that are interested in this aviation historic community to ask the alleged owner Mr Henry Hyde just what happened?
maybe this can be done through the press or fly past magazine itself??
because at the end of the day we’ve lost a C 54, and how many of those are left in the UK intact? It’s a travesty it’s an insult to people who worked on her over the last few years. It’s not unreasonable to ask Mr. Hyde for at least some sort of detail comment on exactly where everything went wrong
but unless I think this will fall on deaf ears, he certainly hasn’t made any contact with anybody that I’m aware of in recent months and has just gone ahead and scrapped what was a very historic airframe as we know
so Mr Hyde if you read this perhaps you’d like to comment or comment on some of the social channels which are covering the story. Also maybe the editors of fly past magazine themselves might like to run some sort of editorial, because there’s a lot of people throughout the world that would like to know just exactly how this situation has happened
Jamie
By: Newforest - 12th January 2025 at 08:56
By: Newforest - 12th January 2025 at 08:56
Thanks for the sad update!
By: Prop Strike - 11th January 2025 at 22:06
By: Prop Strike - 11th January 2025 at 22:06
What a shame, and a waste.
Amazing and depressing to be scrapping very intact Second World War era airframes, 80 years on.
Sign In
January 11, 2025 at 8:32 pm