buffnut453
Captain
After 2 years of COVID preventing me from visiting the UK, I'm squeezing in one last trip before I head back to the States later this month. Part of my trip involved catching up with my best mate (brother by another mother) of over 33 years' standing. He took me to the Wings Museum which lies between Handcross and Balcombe in Sussex (Wings Aviation Museum – The Wings Aviation Museum, Balcombe, East Sussex). It's a small, entirely volunteer-operated museum but it's a truly amazing place. It all started many moons ago when the founder picked up a WW2 fighter gunsight in a field nearby. That chance find has now grown to over 10,000 items, mostly obtained by volunteers conducting aviation archaeology digs.
The Museum prides itself on telling the personal stories behind all the artifacts. Here are some of the pics I took. It's just a smattering...you could spend days wandering around reading all the captions.
Walking into the Museum, one is confronted by the nose of an Aussie Beaufort that the team is starting to restore:
Nearby was a Frazer-Nash rear gun turret from a Whitley bomber:
This original fuselage fabric from a Hurricane shot down in the Western Desert interested me:
They also have substantial parts of a Hampden - note the fin flash colours still showing, albeit very faded and rather blurry:
One of the larger exhibits is this largely intact A-20 obtained from Russia (one of several Russian artifacts that have been recovered and/or traded over the years). Note the bullet holes still visible in the airframe:
Another ex-Russian airframe is this P-63:
Another P-63 wing lies up against a wall:
Sticking with the Groundhog theme, here's a door from an ex-Russian P-39. I'm guessing it's one of the airframes the RAF "donated" since it appears to be wearing Dark Earth and Dark Green camouflage:
Some of the artifacts are incredibly personal, like this fragment of overalls and a map display sourced from a Me109 crash site. Details of the pilot and his demise are provided. The museum volunteers are at pains to observe that they do not want to get into politics or nationalistic jingoism so they treat all stories with the same respect, recognizing that the participants were human beings who were aviators, and it's the love of aviation that bonds the collection together:
Another Russian recovery, but not a Russian airframe, is this Nakajima B5N2 - I didn't know such a beast existed in the UK:
They also have a B-25 cockpit section with the story of how they identified the specific airframe and hence the crew:
One of the stand-out exhibits for me were these components from a Lockheed F5B with original Haze Blue paint scheme:
I'm running out of my image count for a single post so I'll put the rest of the images in a second post.
The Museum prides itself on telling the personal stories behind all the artifacts. Here are some of the pics I took. It's just a smattering...you could spend days wandering around reading all the captions.
Walking into the Museum, one is confronted by the nose of an Aussie Beaufort that the team is starting to restore:
Nearby was a Frazer-Nash rear gun turret from a Whitley bomber:
This original fuselage fabric from a Hurricane shot down in the Western Desert interested me:
They also have substantial parts of a Hampden - note the fin flash colours still showing, albeit very faded and rather blurry:
One of the larger exhibits is this largely intact A-20 obtained from Russia (one of several Russian artifacts that have been recovered and/or traded over the years). Note the bullet holes still visible in the airframe:
Another ex-Russian airframe is this P-63:
Another P-63 wing lies up against a wall:
Sticking with the Groundhog theme, here's a door from an ex-Russian P-39. I'm guessing it's one of the airframes the RAF "donated" since it appears to be wearing Dark Earth and Dark Green camouflage:
Some of the artifacts are incredibly personal, like this fragment of overalls and a map display sourced from a Me109 crash site. Details of the pilot and his demise are provided. The museum volunteers are at pains to observe that they do not want to get into politics or nationalistic jingoism so they treat all stories with the same respect, recognizing that the participants were human beings who were aviators, and it's the love of aviation that bonds the collection together:
Another Russian recovery, but not a Russian airframe, is this Nakajima B5N2 - I didn't know such a beast existed in the UK:
They also have a B-25 cockpit section with the story of how they identified the specific airframe and hence the crew:
One of the stand-out exhibits for me were these components from a Lockheed F5B with original Haze Blue paint scheme:
I'm running out of my image count for a single post so I'll put the rest of the images in a second post.
