Corsair FG-1 Gull Winged WW2 Fighter FAA. XAV-293
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David Gowans / Alamy Stock PhotoImage ID:
AEN8K8File size:
53.1 MB (1.8 MB Compressed download)Releases:
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5288 x 3512 px | 44.8 x 29.7 cm | 17.6 x 11.7 inches | 300dpiLocation:
Fleet Air Arm Museum Yeovilton Somerset. England. United Kingdom.More information:
The Fleet Air Arm Museum houses 94 aircraft in its collection. Mostly complete and in sound condition, many of these aircraft could, potentially, be engineered back into flying condition. To do so would be financially costly but, more significantly, would remove a great deal of historically valuable evidence from the aircraft. To fly them or even start the engines would require original material and components to be replaced or altered permanently. At a stroke the originality of the aircraft would be lost forever. Fittings, pipe-work, rivets, wire locking would all need updating to meet flying requirements. Even the paintwork and markings might have to be altered. Such an approach is regarded as unacceptable by Curators of fine art and historic objects but is common for machinery and industrial objects. At the FAAM we seek to preserve our unique collection for the future. We aim to keep as much of their original fabric and identity intact to form , in many cases, a vital source of reference for historians and engineers and to truly represent their story to our visitors. Since 1996 David Morris, Curator of Aircraft and his team, have been examining and researching many of the aircraft within the collection to determine how many are truly original and how many could be returned to near original with specialist treatment. The big questions in 1996 were: Can an aircraft that was re-painted many years ago be returned to its original paintwork: presuming it survives beneath the later layers? If the original paintwork can be revealed, is it a financially feasible exercise and what will it add to our understanding of the aircraft? In 2000 it was decided to use the Museum’s Corsair FG-1to pioneer this “whole aircraft” method of paintwork conservation. We believe this ground breaking project to be the first of its kind in the aviation Museum world. Using techniques familiar to archaeologists and forensic scientists this project has revealed, after three years of painstaking w