Wing donation to Bomber Command Museum of Canada
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT – Direct from the UK – DEC. 14, 2023 Major Donation from the RAF Museum to the Bomber Command Museum of Canada ”Halifax Project”
As your Curator and Halifax Project Manager we are searching worldwide to recover and restore a Halifax heavy bomber for our national memorial museum, BCMC, in Nanton, Alberta.
It is my pleasure to now announce a great donation by the Royal Air Force Museum – a right-hand Hastings outer wing panel – which is the same design as the Halifax outer wing panels except for the aileron attachment points.
After weeks and months of negotiations between BCMC and the RAF Museum – handled in the main by Harry Raffal – Head of Collections and myself as Halifax Project Manager, this ”new” wing section is a great donation to our project and a BIG leap forward in our progress.
Time constraints were tight just before Christmas but thanks to Harry and his team today we were able to bring this wing out of long-term storage at Cosford and transport it to Thirsk, Yorkshire – all thanks to our crane team and our sponsoring transport company ”POTTER PLANT HIRE” and president Giles.
How do you extract a 25 foot wing weighing 1,900 pounds from a big RAF storage hangar, —- with expert help and very carefully. Well done lads.
Today was that exciting day as we lifted – loaded – transported this SECOND 25 foot wing for our Halifax Project from RAF Museum Midlands in Cosford to the storage facility of Patrick Smart at Maddison 4X4 in Thirsk, UK.
At Patrick’s shop we will build the steel shipping cradle needed to hold this RIGHT wing, as the LEFT wing is already prepared in its cradle.
WHY the steel cradles for BOTH of these wings — over 50 feet of outer wing for our Halifax — because the RCAF will be airlifting these 2 wing panels direct from the UK to RCAF TRENTON, Ontario in the weeks ahead.
From there the wings will be going to our Halifax rebuildshop in Arnprior, Ontario – see the Facebook page called ”REBUILDSHOP” to see all of our Halifax rebuild magic performed by KNOX TECH — https://www.facebook.com/rebuildshopKT
See the photos and video of working on this little darling addition today, coming to Canada soon.
Our sincere thanks again to the RAF Museum and their great team for donating this treasure to us for the Halifax.
This is a great example of museums helping museums while sharing and saving our aviation history together.
regards, Karl – Curator
Tags: 2023, December, News, RAF Museum