RAAF Museum to preserve historic B707 fuselage

.
The preservation of the cockpit and forward fuselage of A20-627 is a major coup for the RAAF museum, not only preserving a major section of the RAAF’s first in-flight refueler, but also preservation of an important piece of Australia’s civil aviation history as A20-627 previously flew with Qantas as VH-EAG “City of Hobart” and flew the last commercial B707 flight for Qantas on 25th of March 1979 as QF44 from Auckland to Sydney, it also flew the first flights as a RAAF B707, so it is a very historic airframe.

It was the “707th” B707 built by Boeing and was retired from RAAF service in 2001 when it became a spares source for the remaining fleet.

While I would have loved to have seen a complete RAAF 707 preserved, we already have a Qantas -138 preserved at Longreach and to expect the RAAF to preserve and place under cover a complete 707 (which is still effectively a civil airliner) as a priority was perhaps too ambitious, when the RAAF Museum is still yet to get funding for its Pegasus project up to place the Freighter, Hercules, HS748 and other stored large aircraft under cover on display, — the 707 would not excite many ex-RAAF pilots in the upper command.

Photos from Ron Cuskelly’s VH-JET webpages

I understand this airframe has sat cannibalised for years at Richmond, and was originally rejected as being too far stripped to be worthy of preservation in any form, its refurbishment and preservation as a forward fuselage is a far better outcome than scrapping, and certainly far better than no RAAF example being preserved in Australia at all.

Photos from ADF-serials.com and Defence Media websites

Australia’s moveable cultural heritage laws encourage the preservation of at least two examples of significant heritage objects, in this case perhaps 1.5 is better than “1” (and far better than “nil”, the past result for many earlier important Australian aircraft types on their retirement – Beauforts/P-40’s/Sandringham etc), and therefore to have a Qantas B707-138 and a Qantas/RAAF B707-338 fuselage preserved in Australia for future generations is an excellent result.

Well done to those at the RAAFM who fought to get it!

http://www.defence.gov.au/media/download/2009/nov/20091130/index.htm

Regards

Mark Pilkington