The Centre only really has two planes on show, but what a two! The star is Just Jane, a 1945 Lancaster, the other is a Mosquito. The latter is really the forgotten hero of WW II planes, a night-fighter, light bomber, pathfinder, photo reconnaissance plane, etc.
There are plenty of buildings and displays to look round as well, although I’m not sure how many visitors actually went round them as the main event was due.
Just Jane isn’t a static exhibit, although it isn’t airworthy (yet) it is licensed for taxy rides. I’ll put the video up when edited but to get the full effect you’ll need a decent amplifier and a couple of large bass bins, all turned up to 11! When they run the engines up to full power it is very, very noisy.
Now you will notice a bit of a problem, Jane is missing the end of her wings for practicality with the taxy rides.
The drive home was no problem and unloading only took a few minutes given that I’d only been away a couple of days. Driving through Lincolnshire I was surprised how many place names I recognised as former RAF stations, it wasn’t called Bomber County for nothing. Of course as mentioned in a previous blog there’s a danger of glorifying war, the Chapel is an antidote, as is this Mike Harding song, the video l’ve found coincidentally includes Just Jane.
The complete cockpit of that Mossie was in the hall of the 27F Chingford Air Training Corps in the 1960's. They removed all the instruments then left it outside deteriorating then gave it to our scout group, the 40th Chingford. Our air scout troop collected it on a small car trailer (with the wheels bending at 45 degrees due to the weight of the armour plating behind the nose cone) and dragged it by hand to our grounds. We preserved it as best we could, then a man from an aircraft museum knocked on my parents door (we were our hall key holders) and asked if they could buy it. Our group scoutmaster gave it to them and it disappeared for about twenty years. I knew not where. Then a friend of mine who worked on the Battle of Britain memorial flight when in the RAF spotted it up for auction at the closing down Blackpool Aircraft Museum. Tony Agar purchased it to go towards his Mossie he tirelessly rebuilt. It's nice to see that the Mossie cockpit we had and tried to save is now fully restored and on display there
ReplyDeleteJust saw you posted Mike Hardings Bombers Moon. I have that excellent LP (yes I did say LP!!!) which contains Mikes serious and highly researched songs like "The Ackrington Pals" about the disastrous pals regiments of WW1 which were banned from being formed again. Re Bombers Moon, I saw Mike Harding live a couple of times in Ipswich. He said he wrote that song in memory of his father he never knew, as he was a navigator in a Lankaster Bomber who was killed when it was shot down on a mission. Mike said it was the hardest song he ever had to write and commented it took him 25 years and 10 minutes to write. I know exactly what he meant. Writing the eulogies for both my late parents was the same for me. So many thoughts, so many things to say swimming about in my head, but I couldn't seem to put it all together until the last minute, when it all seemed to fall in place.
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