RAF Museum London

[Admiral Beez]

The "Jack the Ripper" walking tour is excellent if you're interested in crime history.. Also recommend the Science Museum if only to see the Supermarine S.6 and the Schneider Trophy. That said, Allcock and Brown's Vickers Vimy and Amy Johnson's Gypsy Moth are always worth a look, as is the last fabric-winged Hurricane in the world. That said, the lighting in there isn't great for photography and some of the aircraft are tricky to see properly.

Thanks. I will check out the Science Museum to see those, thanks.

The Charles Dickens museum this morning was very interesting. It was good to see what these town houses looked like before they were subdivided into flats.

 

[nuuumannn]

Natural History Museum
British Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum

So, your wife dragged you through the V&A and the Natural History Museum and you didn't go look at the pwetty aeroplanes at the Science Museum next door?

DSC_0258

Snap! Just read the post above. do go to the Science Museum. The V&A, whilst nice is no match for a Spitfire, Hurricane and an Me 163 (not to mention all the other good stuff).

 

[nuuumannn]

It was there. If you look at the photo of the Hawker Hart you can just see the P-47's nose beneath the overhead aircraft's wing.

Ah thanks, the next question is, did you see the Tempest elsewhere in the museum that sat where the P-47 is now?

RAFM 177

 

[Admiral Beez]

Ah thanks, the next question is, did you see the Tempest elsewhere in the museum that sat where the P-47 is now?

View attachment 663378RAFM 177

Not that Tempest. They had an earlier Sabre-powered Tempest on display.

 

[Admiral Beez]

So, your wife dragged you through the V&A and the Natural History Museum and you didn't go look at the pwetty aeroplanes at the Science Museum next door?

View attachment 663377DSC_0258

Snap! Just read the post above. do go to the Science Museum. The V&A, whilst nice is no match for a Spitfire, Hurricane and an Me 163 (not to mention all the other good stuff).

The V&A has the Tippo Sultan's mechanical tiger. Any fan of Cornwell's Sharpe series will be impressed. That was the main purpose of my visit.

Tippoo's Tiger · V&A

This life-sized, semi-automaton of a tiger mauling a man is one of the V&A’s most famous and fascinating objects

www.vam.ac.uk

It is interesting that London doesn't really have a museum celebrating the British Empire. Certainly one can cobble together ones own museum to the Empire by visiting several of the museums here, but overall the largest Empire the world has ever known is either forgotten or treated as a national embarrassment or shame.

 

[SaparotRob]

Ah thanks, the next question is, did you see the Tempest elsewhere in the museum that sat where the P-47 is now?

View attachment 663378RAFM 177

The gondola of the R-33 is really cool. That is how one should navigate the ether. From the bridge of one's airship.

 

[Admiral Beez]

buffnut453 thanks for the reco to the Science Museum. What a great day out. The lighting makes for bad photos on my old phone, but some great things to see. I didn't know, for example that the tubes along the Supermarine racer were for cooling the oil. And god knows how the pilot squeezed in there.

Afterward I walked up to Little Venice for coffee and a river tart (not that sort) on a canal boat.

 

[Gnomey]

Good shots guys!

 

[nuuumannn]

Not that Tempest. They had an earlier Sabre-powered Tempest on display.

This one.

RAFM 105

They must have moved the other one to Cosford or in store at Stafford during the reshuffle late last year.

The V&A has the Tippo Sultan's mechanical tiger.

Ah, yes. I used to have a contact at the V&A through a girlfriend. The V&A and the Science Museum are inextricably linked, as the latter came about from the former's scientific instrument collection becoming too big to be contained within the V&A alone, so a new building was built especially for the sciencey stuff in the V&A collection.

It is interesting that London doesn't really have a museum celebrating the British Empire.

It does, really. The British Museum has/had a lot of Empire items pilfered from various colonies. It was originally a private collection of stuff collected by a wealthy traveller, but became a national museum because of its collection's importance. Many former colonies have requested that the British Museum return stolen artifacts, including New Zealand Maori, who have specifically requested the return of shrunken heads (mementoes of battlefield kills). The Egyptians in particular have been going around European museums, including the British Museum's extensive Egyptian collection demanding the return of native antiquities.

The "British Empire" is not something that is revered in Britain today and there are elements of the populations of Britain and the former colonies who don't look too kindly on the way in which their countries were colonised by the British, so there's no surprise that there is no "British Empire Museum". In some circles its a touchy subject. (Not with me, I find it all fascinating...)

 

[MiTasol]

There is one at Rockcliffe, Ontario as part of the National Aviation Museum, but it's been undergoing restoration for some years. TF.X RD867 is a former RAF Museum aircraft that was presented to the Canadians.

View attachment 663151RAFM 152

Not presented. Supplied in exchange for the FLYING Lysander the Canadians had. And the Beaufighter was missing many parts. The CNAC staff were far from impressed.

 

[nuuumannn]

Not presented. Supplied in exchange for the FLYING Lysander the Canadians had. And the Beaufighter was missing many parts. The CNAC staff were far from impressed.

I'm not sure of the veracity of that to be honest. The Beaufighter was held by the RAF for the future RAFM collection as the museum at that time had not ben found a permanent home. I'm not 100% certain but it was probably a part of the AHB collection, but has been listed as an RAFM airframe. As for the Lysander trade, the RAFM's Lysander is not a Canadian one. It was built in Britain and served with the RAF during the war. I'm not sure which Lysander the Beaufighter was traded for, it certainly wasn't the RAFM's one. The Shuttleworth one came from Strathallan, which was an ex-RCAF flyer and was imported privately. It's possible its the Imperial War Museum's.

 

[special ed]

During my 1972 visit to Rockcliffe, after I had run out of film I wandered out of the exhibit hangars into the storage hangar. Since it was lunch time no one was around and the door was open enough to go in. It was a marvel of aviation treasure. Wooden cases from floor to ceiling. Some stenciled Jumo 004 another BMW 003. The nose/cockpit of a comet cut off in the way of the British. I had just photoed the Lysander in the display hangar and here were a series of crates marked Lysander. It appeared to be enough to build another. This became important later when the Canadians traded their Lysander, "the last in the world," to the British for a B-24 brought back from India. I thought it was a slick move since the Canadians had two. One other memorable thing was when I climbed on packing boxes to see over a wall in the storage hangar to discover a Bf 109E nearly restored. A very rare sight for me. No photo ops in there due to digital cameras being in the distant future.

 

[nuuumannn]

This became important later when the Canadians traded their Lysander, "the last in the world," to the British for a B-24 brought back from India.

Interesting info. Was the Liberator taken to Britain from India and then to Canada?

There was a Liberator flown to Britain from India, for the RAF Museum, but there was no exchange between Canada for a Lysander for it. The RAFM Lib is an ex-RAF one, as was all the Indian Liberators and it was gifted to the RAFM by the Indian government in 1970 - again the RAFM hadn't found a permanent home at that time. The B-24s were operated by the RAF in India during the war and were dumped with the end of the Lend Lease agreements, but the Indians got hold of them and pressed them into service.

RAFM 192

 

[special ed]

It was my recollection from various Av mags at the time that India sold 24 B-24s that had been used as mechanic training aircraft. I think Kermit Week's B-24 is one of these but he did not directly get it from India. If I can ever get a reliable desktop computer going and finally set up my slide scanner, I can add pics to the thread I started.

 

[nuuumannn]

Aha! Just found out the Canadian Liberator was indeed traded for a Lysander, the Lysander is now at the Indian Air Force Museum at Palam. Nowt to do with the RAF Museum's one, but from the same source...

It was my recollection from various Av mags at the time that India sold 24 B-24s that had been used as mechanic training aircraft.

Yes indeed, Kermit's is one of those Ex-IAF aircraft, as is the Canadian one.

 

[nuuumannn]

I can add pics to the thread I started.

Please do, I enjoy seeing your photos.

 

[Crimea_River]

The Beaufighter at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum was a straight trade with the RAF for a Canadian Bollingbroke. Bristol Beaufighter T.F.X | Canada Aviation and Space Museum

The Tempest above was a ceiling hangar at Hendon in 2015 when I was there.

 

[MiTasol]

It was my recollection from various Av mags at the time that India sold 24 B-24s that had been used as mechanic training aircraft. I think Kermit Week's B-24 is one of these but he did not directly get it from India. If I can ever get a reliable desktop computer going and finally set up my slide scanner, I can add pics to the thread I started.

There were a number of ex Indian Air Force B-24s sold/traded to museums all over the place in 71/72 and probably later. The first one to the US was obtained by Rhodes Arnold for the Pima County museum. I think it was Dave Tallichet's one (Yesterdays Air Force) that flew through Tel Aviv the first day of the Yom Kippur war en-route to the UK where it wintered before flying to California. Pretty tense even though the tail was carrying the largest US flag they could paint on each side. That naturally was pure coincidence that they had done that.

 

[nuuumannn]

The Beaufighter at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum was a straight trade with the RAF for a Canadian Bollingbroke.

Aha! Good info. Having read up on the museum's Boli, the page you posted is correct to a point but it wasn't a Boli from the Canadian national collection. The RAF bought its Boli directly from a C. A. Yuill for $200, an extremely low sum, in 1966 and RCAF personnel dismantled it and packed it for shipping at Portage La Prairie. It sat around the docks in Canada for two years before arriving in the UK. The Beaufighter was payment of sorts and was presented as-is-where-is kinda thing, by the looks of it a couple of years later in 1969.

At the time, the RAFM (basically a bunch of guys who had day jobs in the RAF doing museum stuff on the side, as Hendon was not yet a reality) had Beaufighter TF.X RD253, which it had acquired from Portugal and the soon-to-be Canadian one, but it was the lesser complete of the two and bits from it were scavenged from it to assist RD253's completion. This was all done a couple of years before the Canadian deal, so it was not in a good state at the time it was given to the Canadians. (It helps if I read through my notes!)

The Tempest above was a ceiling hangar at Hendon in 2015 when I was there.

Yup, its first display duty was suspension from the Milestones ceiling. Originally, when it was hung, the propeller tips were painted red for some reason, but were repainted after the aircraft curator was bombarded with complaints about it! I have a photo of it with its red tips somewhere.

 

[Gnomey]

Nice shots!