Wings_Museum

Wings Museum

Wings Museum

Aviation museum in Balcombe, West Sussex

The Wings Museum is an aviation museum located in Sussex, United Kingdom. It is housed in a 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) hangar-like former farm building in Brantridge Lane, between Handcross and Balcombe. The museum displays mainly World War II-related flying memorabilia and equipment which have been donated,[1][2] or which have been recovered and restored by volunteers.[3]

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History

The museum was originally located at Redhill Aerodrome.[4] By 2011 it had relocated to Brantridge Lane.[5]

In 2013, the museum hosted a fundraiser for the upkeep of the Bomber Command Memorial in nearby Green Park.[6][7]

In 2015, volunteers restored a Bristol Beaufighter Mk1f which had crashed 75 years earlier.[8]

Aircraft collection

Visitors to the museum can walk inside a complete fuselage from a Douglas C-47 Dakota which was used on D-Day[9] and later during the filming of the television series Band of Brothers.[10]

There are some very rare aircraft from World War II and some of them are the only ones of their type in the UK.

Turbine engine aircraft

  • Hawker Siddeley Kestrel XS694 (under restoration and parts in storage)

Piston engine aircraft

  • North American B-25J-25-NC 44-30861 (under restoration)
  • Bell P-63 King cobra - 43-11137 (under restoration);[11] the museum has five more in storage
  • Douglas A-20 Boston (displayed as found)
  • Nakajima B5N2 Kate (very large fuselage and wing section)
  • Douglas C-47 Dakota (fuselage from Band of Brothers)
  • Hawker Hurricane (wreck)[12]
  • Handley Page Hampden TB.1 P1273 (wreck)

Aircraft cockpits

  • Douglas A-26 Invader 43-22649
  • Bristol Beaufighter 1f[13]
  • Curtis Helldiver SB2C-5 (in storage)
  • Jet Provost XM486 (in storage)
  • English Electric Canberra (in storage)
  • De Havilland Chipmunk WD377
  • North American B-25 Mitchell

Simulators

  • Link trainer

Piston engines

  • Rolls-Royce Merlin ×5 (one running as a living memorial)
  • Junkers Jumo 211
  • Daimler Benz 610

See also

References

  1. [1]
    "War hero’s memorabilia donated to Wings Museum in Balcombe". 26 April 2014
  2. [2]
    Chris Ransted (19 September 2013). Disarming Hitlerês V Weapons: Bomb Disposal, the V1 and V2 rockets. Pen and Sword. pp. 62–. ISBN 978-1-4738-2967-1.
  3. [3]
    "More Details Emerge About Wartime Military Aircraft Crash". The Guilford Dragon.
  4. [4]
    "Wartime bomb discovered at Woodhatch pub to be displayed in museum". Surrey Mirror April 17, 2016
  5. [5]
    Alexis Catsambis; Ben Ford; Donny L. Hamilton (8 September 2011). The Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archaeology. OUP USA. pp. 1002–. ISBN 978-0-19-537517-6.
  6. [6]
    "VIDEO: Bomber Command veterans raise hundreds for Green Park memorial". Mid Sussex Times, 10 April 2013.
  7. [7]
    "Wings reunion for Bomber Boys". ITV News, 9 April 2013
  8. [8]
    "Nostalgia: Remembering Second World War fighter pilots killed in crash". Surrey Mirror, November 01, 2015.
  9. [9]
    John Grehan; Martin Mace (2012). Battleground Sussex. Casemate Publishers. pp. 198–. ISBN 978-1-84884-661-6.
  10. [10]
    "Tyre from a wartime bomber surfaces after 74 watery years". Mid Sussex Times, 8 March 2014
  11. [11]
    "The Wings Museum’s Bell P-63C Kingcobra Restoration", Warbirds News, November 1, 2013
  12. [12]
    Gordon Riley (19 October 2015). Hawker Hurricane Survivors. Grub Street Publishing. pp. 97–. ISBN 978-1-910690-79-6.
  13. [13]
    "BRISTOL BEAUFIGHTER NEWS". AirSoc, 31 Aug 2015

Media related to Wings Museum (Sussex) at Wikimedia Commons
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