Wings Museum

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]

Wings Museum

Wings Museum entrance on Brantridge Lane
Location	Balcombe, West Sussex
Coordinates	51.0603°N 0.1684°W / 51.0603; -0.1684
Type	Aviation museum
Website	www.wingsmuseum.co.uk

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

• List of aerospace museums

References

1. "War hero’s memorabilia donated to Wings Museum in Balcombe". 26 April 2014
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. "More Details Emerge About Wartime Military Aircraft Crash". The Guilford Dragon.
4. "Wartime bomb discovered at Woodhatch pub to be displayed in museum". Surrey Mirror April 17, 2016
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. "VIDEO: Bomber Command veterans raise hundreds for Green Park memorial". Mid Sussex Times, 10 April 2013.
7. "Wings reunion for Bomber Boys". ITV News, 9 April 2013
8. "Nostalgia: Remembering Second World War fighter pilots killed in crash". Surrey Mirror, November 01, 2015.
9. John Grehan; Martin Mace (2012). Battleground Sussex. Casemate Publishers. pp. 198–. ISBN 978-1-84884-661-6.
10. "Tyre from a wartime bomber surfaces after 74 watery years". Mid Sussex Times, 8 March 2014
11. "The Wings Museum’s Bell P-63C Kingcobra Restoration", Warbirds News, November 1, 2013
12. Gordon Riley (19 October 2015). Hawker Hurricane Survivors. Grub Street Publishing. pp. 97–. ISBN 978-1-910690-79-6.
13. "BRISTOL BEAUFIGHTER NEWS". AirSoc, 31 Aug 2015

External links

Media related to Wings Museum (Sussex) at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website of the Wings Museum