The B.C. Aviation Museum is setting up part of its restored Lancaster bomber at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney today in conjunction with a showing of a documentary on the legendary Second World War aircraft.
The Avro Lancaster FM 104 bomber has been the centre of restoration work for volunteers at the museum for the past five years, and the project to restore the workhorse of the war in Europe continues.
The front section and cockpit will be set up and floodlit for the gala event, which includes the showing of the 2022 film Lancaster. More than 300 tickets were purchased for the sold-out showing at the Charlie White Theatre.
The proceeds will go toward materials needed for the Lancaster restoration and other projects, such as new hangars to display aircraft.
The public is invited to come and view the front portion of the bomber — which is 22 feet long, 12 feet high and eight feet wide — and see displays of artifacts associated with the aircraft, such as authentic uniforms and radios.
Conal Oldfield, executive director of the aviation museum, said the event will also be the launch of an international auction on eBay of a genuine framed piece of the Lancaster airframe, complete with manufacturer’s mark.
“We’re confident it will create interest around the world,” said Oldfield.
About 7,377 Lancasters were produced, but only 17 complete planes remain, including eight in Canada. Only two are airworthy, according to the Royal Air Force, while two others are in taxiable condition with working engines.
“It was an incredible aircraft that did so much during the Second World War,” said Steve Nichol, president of the B.C. Aviation Museum.
Nichol said the Lancaster took part in the raids on German cities during the Second World War and was used to attack German submarine bases. It was the aircraft immortalized in the movie The Dam Busters, where British pilots attacked hydroelectric dams in 1943 using special spinning bombs that skipped across the water.
Lancasters also sank the German battleship Tirpitz in 1944 in a remote fjord in Norway using 12,000-pound Tallboy bombs.
The museum’s Lancaster is huge — it has a wing span of 102 feet, and the body is 69 feet and four inches long.
The four-engine Lancaster, with serial number FM104, came off the production line in 1944 at Victory Aircraft’s Malton plant near Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. In early 1945, the aircraft was flown to England, but it never saw action, as the war in Europe ended that spring.
The plane was retired in 1964, and mounted on a steel plinth for public display a year later near the Canadian National Exhibition on Toronto’s waterfront.
The mounting caused damage to the Lancaster’s main frame, and corrosion formed after years of the plane being exposed to weather and vandalism. The Canadian Air & Space Museum moved it indoors and started restoration in 1999, but was unable to continue the work after losing its hangar space to redevelopment.
The B.C. Aviation Museum secured the rights to the vintage plane, which arrived at the museum in North Saanich in the fall of 2018 in five semi-trailer units. The museum said the plane won’t fly again and will be used as a static display, though one of its Rolls-Royce engines will be restored to working order.
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