School Kids get experience of the "Blitz"

We recently retrieved our World War Two Morrison Shelter from Godstone Village School having been on loan at the school for the past term. As part of their school project the Children were each given a turn to experience what it was like to shelter in the Morrison "Table" Shelter while their teacher played sound effects of the Blitz, it was the quietest they had been all day!! The children were then asked to write about their feelings and what it would have been like to be a child in wartime Britain.

Our Morrison was recently recovered from a local garden were it had spent the past 60 years outside, the shelter was lovingly restored to its former glory. The gentleman who owned the shelter actually used it as a boy himself when he lived in London during the Blitz. The shelter has certainly been put to good use and provides a valuable teaching aid helping the younger generation understand what wartime Britain was like all those years ago.


About the "Morrison" shelter

The Morrison shelter, officially termed Table (Morrison) Indoor Shelter, had a cage-like construction beneath it. It was designed by John Baker and named after Herbert Morrison, the Minister of Home Security at the time. It was the result of the realization that due to the lack of house cellars it was necessary to develop an effective type of indoor shelter. The shelters came in assembly kits, to be bolted together inside the home. They were approximately 6 ft 6 in (2 m) long, 4 ft (1.2 m) wide and 2 ft 6 in (0.75 m) high, had a solid 1/8 in (3 mm) steel plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”- type floor. Altogether it had 359 parts and had 3 tools supplied with the pack.

One of the first structures to be designed using Baker's theory of plastic structural analysis, it was designed to absorb the impact of debris falling on the top of the shelter. The sides could be removed to permit its being used as a table. 500,000 Morrisons had been distributed by the end of 1941, with a further 100,000 being added in 1943 to prepare the population for the expected German V-1 flying bomb (doodlebug) attacks.

In one examination of 44 severely damaged houses where three people had been killed, 13 seriously injured, and 16 slightly injured out of a total of 136 people who had occupied Morrison shelters, it was found that the fatalities had occurred in a house which had suffered a direct hit. Some of the severely injured were in shelters sited incorrectly within the houses.

The Morrison "Table" Shelter served many functions, for example sometimes it was utilised as a table tennis table and also as a dinning room table which was the most popular use. Because of the bulky and heavy construction very few of these survived the war and many were simply scrapped, we must be thankful that one of these shelters has survived for prosperity and will be on display at the Wings Museum.

From small acorns...

Ok, those that have followed the Wings Museum will know that we have the remains of 6 x Bell P-63 King Cobras which were recovered from Russia. The aircraft were part of an abandoned squadron having been left were they stood for over 60 years. The aircraft suffered over the years from not only the extreme weather conditions but also at the hands of the local militia. At some point during the cold war the Russians broke many of the aircraft up so that US Spy Satellites did not mistake them for modern air worthy aircraft. Surviving all of this the aircraft were eventually recovered to the UK, the main P-63 King Cobra will be on public display as part of the Wings Museum's "Ghosts of the Tundra" display which will open next March.

This week, work commenced on the restoration of one of the "dog house" sections, this is basically the cockpit cabin which is a separate production assembly. It is hoped this will be put on public display at some point in the future and who knows maybe the rest of the aircraft will follow!

Having obtained a full set of drawings from the US, we have started with the steel tubing which makes up the cockpit canopy. We are using as much of the original as possible and also a lot of material is providing us with a working pattern. This week I completed a template for the tube which goes over the Pilots door. Much of the actual fabrication is being carried out by a friend of the museum, my job is sourcing the parts, patterns and drawings etc. I have received a lot of help from the folks at the Confederate Air Force Museum in America who have a P-63 in their restoration facility. They are able to take measurements from their airframe to assist us with the restoration of our cabin section.

Andy, meanwhile has now completed overhauling the front nose gear with many new nuts, bolts and clevis pins being obtained from the states. The nose gear drive still turns freely after more than 60 years!

This project is on long term restoration but from small acorns the mighty oak grows as they say!

Thanks for reading

The beginnings of the Wings Museum

The Museum finds its Wings

Ok, so let's kick start the museum blog off by saying a little bit about how the Wings Museum came to be what it is today.

As a child growing up during the 1970's I shared an interest in World War Two aircraft with my older brother (Kevin), Kevin became interested after completing a school project on World War Two. I used to follow my brother around everywhere much to his annoyance!. Every Easter we would visit relatives in Norfolk, our cousins at the time were into flying model aircraft and used the old perimeter tracks of the long since abandoned American 8th Air Force airfields to fly their model aeroplanes. Many a Sunday afternoon was spent walking the old airfields and as a boy of about 5 or 6 years old, something must have lodged firmly in my brain at such a young age. While we walked down the old runways my imagination would run wild imaging those mighty B-17's and B-24's rumbling down the runway of on another mission. As I walked along together with my family, I could hear the song of a Skylark high above the airfield, the sound of a Skylark still to this day reminds of those days. It was while walking along the old perimeter track at Flixton one day that we found something that was unknowingly to us going to be the start of it all. Laying on the edge of a ploughed field our dad spotted a gun site from a .50 cal Browning Machine Gun! My brother and I were naturally excited and it was this single find that inspired us to search around for other relics from the war. As you can imagine during the late 1970's quite a lot of material was still to be found laying around on the surface. It wasn't long before my brother emerged from the undergrowth with an armful of bits and pieces such as shell cases, aircraft access panels, personal effects etc. Having shown me what he had found he soon disappeared again, off to find more, leaving me behind to wonder what he would return with next. I was too young to crawl through the thick hawthorns so I eagerly awaited his return.

Searching of the airfields of the Eighth around East Anglia and Suffolk continued on and off right up until 1993. Believe it or not we still have that gun site today and it can be seen on display in the museum together with a few of the finds from what I call our "airfield days".

No one could have envisaged what that discovery would lead on to in later life, since those early days we have attended and organised various 'aircraft digs' in the UK and Europe, we have traveled to the Battle fields of France, we have traced missing aircraft in Belgium on behalf of the families of the aircrew involved, we have also unveiled 3 memorials in Belgium together with the help of our good friends Luc and Marcel, (a fourth memorial is currently being planned for the near future). We have also rescued numerous airframes from certain scrap and have also been heavily involved in the restoration of these airframes. We have traveled to Russia many times on the hunt for warbirds, and have recovered a total of 22 airframes in various conditions from the former USSR including what is believed to be the World's only surviving Japanese B5N2 Kate air frame, we have been to Norway, Holland and the USA. Our passion for aircraft takes us all around the world and the people and friends we meet along the way are unforgettable. We have held history in our hands as it emerges from the ground after years of laying undiscovered. The buzz one gets from recovering something buried in the ground is as addictive now as it was back then.

Today, I cannot walk along a field or track without having my eyes firmly fixed on the ground! this provides great amusement to my wife who thinks I am totally mad! In fact when I proposed, I even hid the ring in some bushes, then while walking along the river after a romantic meal on Valentines Day, I stopped to poke about in a bush only to come out with the ring catching her completely off guard! I went down on one knee and popped the question, of course she said yes! who wouldn't want a human magpie as a husband!

During our adventures we have always dreamed of opening up a museum to share our 'finds' with the general public. In the early days we would stage one day exhibitions whre ever we could, we often displayed in the Reigate Caves which were an underground ARP Control Centre during World War Two and were also used as public air raid shelters. These proved popular but conditions were not suitable for a permanent display, every time the displays would have to be pulled down at the end of the day and packed away in boxes, this was heart wrenching to say the least. Needless to say we were always on the look out for something more suitable.

The dream finally came true in 2003 with a small aviation museum being established in a run down building at Redhill Aerodrome, which was formally known as 'The old Gas Decontamination Block' Redhill Aerodrome as it is known today was known as 'RAF Redhill" 60 years ago and many squadrons were based there flying Spitfire's, Hurricanes, Mustangs and even Beaufighters. More about this on a later blog.

Since then we have not looked back, like most things it has had it's ups and downs but no one said starting up a museum was going to be easy! Ultimately it has been very rewarding, not in a financial sense for there is no money in running a museum, but our reward is hearing the positive feedback and seeing people take an interest in the past and our discoveries. The Wings Museum is a 'raw' museum that tells the stories of real people and remembers all those that gave so much during those dark troubled times. The museum is run by a group of dedicated volunteers and a special thank you must be said to all those who have assisted and supported the museum over the years.

You can learn more about the Wings Museum here>



Thanks for reading.

Daniel Hunt - Curator Wings Museum UK

A Wings Welcome

Welcome to the Wings Museum blog spot!

My name is Daniel Hunt and I am one of the curators of the Wings Museum. The Wings Museum website is generally updated regularly, but hopefully this blog will allow us to keep you informed on a more regular basis. Please watch this space for further updates on the Wings Museum and its activities.

Thank you for viewing.

Dan