It’s Monday but instead of the normal update, thought I’d share this with you in case you have not seen it before. I know I hadn’t 🙂

This arrived on or FB page this morning via Stephen Gallenberger – If its the wrong credit let me know, just relying on info I have

Nonetheless a great photo of the Beauforts in the air along the UK coast.

Cheers

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Thanks to Ashley Briggs for the photos here – some more detail shots of the sternframe post blasting. Next stage is working on the parts that are missing.

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Ash reported that he took the forward lower skin off today, it was all distorted as well as the rib underneath it. It’s not original and has lots of surface corrosion. So lots of work ahead, but we are up for the task.

Cheers for now

Remember my earlier post of the bulkhead having been test blasted?

Here it is today, all primed up and ready for painting. Looks awesome !

Remember to keep on pledging and sharing the project with as many people as you can. Just 13 days to go.You have made a tremendous impact on us all at the Museum, and in a day and age where the corporate dollar is so much harder to get a hold of, this process fills a huge gap and allows many people to be a part of the project

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moorabbinairmuseum/raaf-beaufort-a9-13-restoration?ref=email

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Cheers

It’s thanks to generous and willing supporters like people here on Key that we have reached the target with 14 days to spare – a big thank you and we are deeply humbled by such support!

You can still keep pledging to the project anyway and I encourage anyone who hasn’t to consider doing so, even $5AUD base pledge which is around 2.78GBP (!!!) – any excess from this target will be used at once to commence works on a turret and if there is enough left over even the centre.

While I am here, I spent an entertaining morning in one of the four shipping containers full of Beaufort parts. There is a centre fuse, three firewalls, at least four prop blades, and five seriously big military boxes up the back which contain lots of little bits ! As luck had it I managed to get my way up to the rear of the container only to have the phone go dead on me – oh well, here is a slightly blurry shot from inside the container – I have to count and audit all of this too !

Cheers and thank you again for all your support

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Thanks so much for the support – in the first two days we have raised 20% of our target 🙂 Remember to spread the word and let anyone know who may be interested in supporting our project !

Now as promised some pictures from the early stages

The sternframe has been removed and sent to United Aerostructures for preparation. This involves a whole lot of processes such as measurement, identification of parts (including missing ones) and assessment of parts that require replacement.

Once in Brad had to get in to do some de rivetting – and as you can see he is well pleased at the tight fit
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Prior to Brad doing this, the rear undercarriage leg was removed :
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Upon inspection of the leg, a crack was discovered in the casting (can’t really see it here) And it also needs a big clean !
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Other parts have scrubbed up pretty well – heres one with one half before, the other half after
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Removal of internal parts continues to assess and clean. In the meantime, the Museum is lucky enough that it has the remains of no less than FIVE other Beauforts. In this pic this is the spare sternframe from A9-574. So some parts are going to be utilised from this either as patterns or replacements, it depends on each parts’ situation within the project.
Thats it for now – more to come hopefully soon (if we get to our target – hint hint ! ) 🙂

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Sorry …to clarify I was referring to the quote above …Alegedly

Regarding relics
I fully agree that there are MVR relics out there and there are also enough spurious parts to build his aircraft 3 times over

Oh yes, sorry, now thats a whole other can of worms with who shot it down 🙂

There is a lot of dubious Dr.1 material out there, nearly as much as generic AirMin stuff sold on e-Bay as ‘Spitfire’. However, I posted in the Aerodrome thread, off the top of my head items I’m aware of in major public collections, most of which is authenticated to a reasonable degree (these collections have every reason not to overstate the provenance they can prove for these items, rather than the other way around).

There is no argument that the Dr.1 was heavily ‘souvenired’ by Diggers of the Australian Army, nor that much of that material ended up in Australia (and elsewhere) after the way. The problem is, in most cases that there’s no reliable evidence (provenance) to back up the claim that the items come from a particular aircraft.

From my memory, and please feel free to add to, they are;
IWM (Engine. & more?)
AWM (control stick & yoke, cockpit parts, MvR boot. Other items?)
RAAF museum (Small pieces inc fabric patches, metal parts, gun flash suppressor, others?)
Omaka Heritage Centre, NZ, a good deal of items including a complete (wing?) cross.
Royal Canadian Military Institute (seat – only?)

As far as I know, the two last complete Dr.1 triplanes were destroyed by allied bombing. Other Fokkers (E.I, D.VIII) are rare, with one and one fuse. only surviving alone, respectively, so I’m wondering how many Dr.1 bits of any aircraft survives; i.e. even if this proves to be Dr.1 but without a tie to MvR’s machine, it’s still rare and of historical & research import.

What would be interesting is if any collection had a tank with provenance to that Dr.1, thus eliminating the possibility. Finding a document tying this object to that aircraft would be ‘very nice’ and massively unlikely though.

Regards,

Great stuff James, this has already caused me serious lack of sleep over the last two days, thinking thinking and trying to match all points up.

I agree with what you have said, and a casual search on the web indicates your info is correct. I have also had email correspondence with a WW1 aero expert who left the “scene” a couple of years back and he has been extremely helpful and for that myself and the museum are very grateful. The fact that it has ended up here in Australia is a mystery alone as there were no DR-1 aircraft here and although there have been allusions to one, possibly two DVIII in Australia decades ago, there is no concrete evidence of this, photos have been alleged to be around but yet to see them, and no records in the Archives.

At the end of it all, we have something unique, and something that we will look after as a Museum, with a new Board of Management, and hopefully be able to solve an interesting challenge along the way 🙂