RAF Bone Yard

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Hairog

Airman
78
41
Oct 21, 2009
Where did old WWII RAF planes end up? I know the US had huge areas out west for the old fighters and bombers but where did the RAF mothball and eventually destroy their aircraft?
 
It varied.
There were scrap metal merchants, who bought the redundant airframes, then ripped them apart, and sold the parts to smelters, etc.
One pilot told me how some were paid £100 to fly out over the sea, and take to their parachute, letting the aircraft go.
When aircraft carriers returned through the Mediterranean, aircraft were simply rolled off the round-down.
Many were sold (or donated) to the previously-occupied countries of Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, Greece, plus Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, India, Hongkong, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, (and the USSR never gave any back.)
There was no hanging about, with redundant airframes, for instance finished Typhoons were wheeled out of the factory, across the airfield, and scrapped.
Others were buried in Burma, or redundant Australian mine shafts.:twisted:
 
It varied.
There were scrap metal merchants, who bought the redundant airframes, then ripped them apart, and sold the parts to smelters, etc.
One pilot told me how some were paid £100 to fly out over the sea, and take to their parachute, letting the aircraft go.
When aircraft carriers returned through the Mediterranean, aircraft were simply rolled off the round-down.
Many were sold (or donated) to the previously-occupied countries of Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, Greece, plus Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, India, Hongkong, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, (and the USSR never gave any back.)
There was no hanging about, with redundant airframes, for instance finished Typhoons were wheeled out of the factory, across the airfield, and scrapped.
Others were buried in Burma, or redundant Australian mine shafts.:twisted:
What aircraft were donated to Canada ...thought it was the other way around as a matter of can't think of any .
 
Were where they stored right after the war? Where they mothballed? Scrapped right away? Didn't they keep them for a few years?
 
As a child in 1952/3 I used to play under the mothballed Vickers Wellingtons that were scattered and tethered all over the airfield and maintenance area in the open wherever there was space or in the old earth covered hangers at RAF Hullavington in Wiltshire. We left there in a few months after the coronation of QE II for Egypt so I don't know what happened to them but one would think they were eventually scrapped.
 

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