Leisure
Aviation museum on Norfolk/Cambridgeshire border to close
It is rated by TripAdvisor as one of the top three (out of 41) things to do in Wisbech, but sadly no more.
Fenland and West Norfolk Aviation Museum will close for good on October 28.
“If you want to have a last look and meet the gang, please come and see us before we distribute all our exhibits to other aviation museums throughout the country,” says a post on the museum’s Facebook page.
The museum says it will release details later about where all the artefacts and exhibits will be going.
“But thankfully, they will all be preserved and displayed for future generations to see,” says the museum.
The museum has always been run entirely by volunteers.
It was set up in the 1970s and has prided itself on research and the recovery of historical aircraft.
The museum has been home to many items unearthed over the years and has served as a tribute to honour those who lost their lives.
It has been described as first and foremost a centre for aviation archaeology.
“The team running the Fenland and West Norfolk Aviation Museum have spent many years researching and recovering the remains of crashed aircraft,” says the author of an article on the Cambridgeshire Aviation Heritage Trail website.
“These remains are now proudly displayed, with their full historical context explained,” says the article.
“We also display photographs, uniforms, engines, guns and many other artefacts related to civil and military aviation over the last century.
“The remains of several aircraft – British and German – lost during World War Two are displayed within the museum. In many cases there were no survivors from the crash, the cause of which can only be assumed.”
Explaining the background to the museum, the article recalls that 30 years after the end of the Second World War, the authorities decided to allow groups of aviation archaeological enthusiasts to apply for licences that authorise digs to take place in known areas where aircraft have crashed.
“The aircrafts could be recovered providing that there were no human remains within the wreckage, as any crash site that contained human bodies were considered to be war graves.”
The exhibits range from the World War One era up to the modern day.
The article says that “perhaps the most remarkable is the twisted cockpit wreckage of a Russian MiG-29 ‘Fulcrum’ which collided in mid-air with another MiG-29 at the International Air Tattoo, RAF Fairford, on 24 July 1993.
“Both pilots ejected and survived.”
Fenland and West Norfolk Aviation Museum
Fenland & West Norfolk Aircraft Preservation Society
Old Lynn Road
West Walton
Cambridgeshire PE14 7DA
