Ping Roger, how much AW history has MAM managed to preserve? Apologies as I know your present sit with them 😮
Well, there’s a question – good job I’m suffering from a bit of imsomnia at the moment :p
Of all the “big players” of British aircraft companies Sir W.G.Armstrong Whitworth & Co is the one most poorly represented with preserved airframes. A handful of Argosy 650/660 freighters are all that survive as complete aircraft.
MAM has the 2nd Argosy built G-APRL (the 1st is preserved at Yankee Air Museum in Michigan, USA) and a collection of post-war AWA-built jet fighters.
Meteor NF.14 and Seahawk (which were both sold as AWA aircraft), Javelin and Hunter were all built at Baginton. AWA built components for other firms including the Vulcan (fin and rudder I think) which also underwent mods/servicing with AWA at Bitteswell. A piece of Bristol 188 (elevon?) is displayed as built by AWA. The Siskin wing already mentioned is accomanied by an Atlas undercarraige leg and an unidentified ‘wingtip’ – it may be from a Siskin lower wing. The tail section (rear fuselage plus various horizontal and vertical tailplanes – but no rear turrret) of Whitley N1498(?) although on display is now difficult to see. It used to be accompanied by a large chunk of the same aircraft’s wing but I think that was returned to the RAFM. Many years ago (before the Whitley Project started) I wanted MAM to act as a repository for all and any Whitley bits salvaged off mountainsides but the idea never found favour. Nearby is a fin from a Lincoln (many Lincolns were built by AWA).
There is a display case with various AWA sporting trophies in and there is on display a quantity of post-war wind tunnel and promotional models. The promotional models include a large scale model (1/24th ??) of an Argosy sitting on an airport apron with switches to operate/open both front and rear doors and turn the four propellors. The company’s own ‘history display’ – a complete set of same-scale models of every aircraft type that AWA built is on display and there must be a good collection of small bits and pieces acquired over the years.
Photographically – there ought to be a good collection of photos but I have absolutely no idea of what it might contain (the library system has long been a mystery to me). Although I did ‘engineer’ a loan of a photo album aeons ago the story of which illustrates the loss of company documents thrown out when Bitteswell closed. Someone I knew had been working at Bitteswell during the close-down and told of ‘skip-fulls’ of paper material. The item he rescued and, later, loaned to MAM (I dont know if the Museum still has it) was a photo-album with a large quantity of company photographs showing stages of construction of the AW.52G research glider – including the laminar-flow wing Hurricane.
What survived of company paperwork has been variously reported as being transferred to Gloster (Hucclecote?) and/or Avro (Chadderton??).
That’s about the extent of my off-the-cuff knowledge.
Roger Smith.
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