National Museum of Flight

Coordinates: 55°59′42″N 2°43′23″W / 55.995°N 2.723°W / 55.995; -2.723
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

National Museum of Flight
The entrance to the Concorde exhibition.
National Museum of Flight is located in Scotland
National Museum of Flight
Location within Scotland
EstablishedJuly 1975 (1975-07)
LocationEast Fortune, Scotland, UK
Coordinates55°59′42″N 2°43′23″W / 55.995°N 2.723°W / 55.995; -2.723
TypeAviation museum
Visitors74,696 (2019)[1]
Websitewww.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-flight

The National Museum of Flight is Scotland's national

listed buildings by Historic Scotland
, but this designation was removed in 2013 as they were already covered by the stricter scheduling.

Museum history

RAF-era buildings at the museum airfield

The collections date back to 1909 when the

R34 airship was mounted, followed by Fighters of the RFC and RAF, 1914 to 1940 the following year. The 1981 temporary exhibition was The Flight of Rudolf Hess 1941.[4]

Boeing 707 cockpit

The museum expanded significantly in 1981 as a result of the sale by auction of much of the Strathallan Collection of aircraft. The museum purchased five aircraft (

BAC 1-11, Vickers Viscount, Boeing 707 forward fuselage and Hawker Siddeley Trident
cockpit. Visitors are able to walk through the 1-11 and 707 and look into the flight deck of the Trident. This is in addition to walking through the de Havilland Comet and Jetstream 31 fuselage which were already in the museum collections.

A £3.6 million project, completed in 2016, installed heating and insulation for the first time to two hangars that were built in 1940.[5]

Collections

The museum collections have expanded into one of the most important in the UK, covering all aspects of aviation including military, civil and recreational. The museum is significant in that it is the only UK national museum still collecting the history of commercial aviation. [

stewardess
uniform.

Avro Vulcan B.2A (XM597)
A rocket-powered Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet

A list of the aircraft in the collection is given on the museum website.[6] The aircraft on display are:

In addition the museum has a large collection of hang-gliders, microlights and sailplanes, but most of these are not currently on display.

The rest of the collections, only some of which are on display, include:

Displays

Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde

Hangar 1: Conservation

This hangar is not always open to visitors, however tours are offered by the museum regularly and contains many aircraft either in storage or receiving conservation work. Aircraft currently in storage include a

Percival Provost T.1. Other notable items in storage include an Avro Blue Steel Standoff Nuclear Missile (previously positioned outside next to the Avro Vulcan), a Blue Streak Missile, and the Nose Wheel from a Bristol Brabazon
.

Hangar 2: Military Aviation

Aircraft on display include the

Meteor, Tornado and Jaguar, as well as the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet flown by Captain Eric Brown. Other objects on display include one of the Daimler-Benz DB 601 engines from the Messerschmitt Bf 110 flown to Scotland by Rudolf Hess, a Bristol Pegasus engine displayed alongside a Harrier jump jet, a Rolls-Royce Avon turbojet displayed next to a Lightning. There is a display of air-to-air weapons, including an M1918 Savage-Lewis machine gun, a Browning 0.303 inch machine gun, a Hispano-Suiza 20mm cannon, an AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile, and air-to-ground weapons including a flechette, a Target indicator and a Fritz X
guided bomb.

Hangar 3: Civil Aviation

Aircraft on display include many with Scottish connections, such as the

Beech 18 in the colours of Loganair and a Druine Turbulent built in a house in Airdrie
.

Other aircraft on display include a de Havilland Tiger Moth, a de Havilland Dragon, an Avro Anson, a de Havilland Dove and a General Aircraft Cygnet, notable for having been flown by Guy Gibson, the commander of No. 617 Squadron of the RAF and the leader of the Dambusters Raid in 1943.

Hangar 4: Concorde

This is the main display hangar and contains "The Concorde Experience"[7] and "The Jet Age" exhibitions. "The Concorde Experience" includes a walk-through and around the aircraft (with an accompanying audio guide available), an audio-visual presentation about the history of G-BOAA, and an exhibition about the history of Concorde with prototype and production Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines, aircraft seats and numerous small objects. "The Jet Age" includes a stack of engines, showing the development of the jet engine and how this drove the growth of commercial aviation. The engines displayed here are a de Havilland Ghost turbojet, a Rolls-Royce Avon turbojet, a Rolls-Royce Conway turbofan, a Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan, a Rolls-Royce RB211 turbofan and a General Electric CF6 turbofan.

In 2018, A

Scottish Parliament building
on 1 July 1999 to commemorate the opening of the Parliament for the first time.

Other exhibitions

Additional permanent exhibitions were opened in recent years in other wartime buildings on the site, with a hands-on interactive gallery about flight called "Fantastic Flight" and another dealing with the history of the site called "Fortunes of War". There is also a restored parachute packing building, called "The Parachute Store". Other buildings house various exhibits including a

RAF in Malta
.

Events

The museum holds an annual air show every July, usually on the third Saturday of the month. The airshow on 25 July 2015 was the eighteenth to be held.[8][9] Other events are run throughout the year. These include Wartime Experience held in May and Wheels and Wings, a transport event held in September.

See also

  • List of aerospace museums

References

  1. ^ "ALVA - Association of Leading Visitor Attractions". www.alva.org.uk. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  2. ^ Storer, JD (1983). "The Founding of the Museum of Flight", in Bunyan, IT, Storer, JD and Thompson, CL (1983). East Fortune: Museum of Flight and History of the Airfield, Royal Scottish Museum.
  3. ^ Benzies, AR (1975). Scotland Scanned 75, Central Scotland Aviation Group.
  4. ^ a b Storer, (1983).
  5. ^ "National Museum of Flight given £1.3m to transform WWII hangars". STV News. 16 October 2014. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. Retrieved 15 November 2015.
  6. ^ "Our aircraft". National Museums Scotland. Archived from the original on 23 August 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
  7. ^ "Things to see and do". National Museums Scotland. Archived from the original on 4 September 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
  8. ^ "High flying museum marks 40th birthday". Berwickshire News. 29 June 2015. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. Retrieved 15 November 2015.
  9. ^ "What's on: Scotland's National Airshow 2015". National Museums Scotland. Archived from the original on 22 October 2015. Retrieved 15 November 2015.

External links

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National Museum of Flight.
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