Plane collection no longer wanted by RAF Cosford heading for new home

Members of Wolverhampton's Boulton Paul Association were left devastated when the RAF Museum at Cosford said it could no longer accommodate the replica and original pieces.

The news came a year after it had taken delivery of the exhibits and promised to show them off.

Now a large number of the exhibits are to be moved from RAF Cosford to the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum in Flixton in a fleet of transporters on Tuesday next week.

Terry Herrington, from the association, said: "We are very happy with the way things have turned out and will be donating these pieces to their museum where they will be put on show."

He added: "What makes it even better is that the hangar in which they will be exhibited was built by Boulton and Paul and so it would have been difficult to find a more appropriate final resting place for them."

Among the exhibits are a P6 bi-plane, the replica of a research aircraft built by Boulton and Paul in 1917, a Hawker Hunter nose and cockpit, a replica Overstrand nose along with the world's first totally enclosed aircraft gun turret that it housed.

The replica of the Defiant bomber-destroyer, which took eight years and 50,000 man hours to construct, will be going to the Kent Battle of Britain Museum at Hawkinge, where a Defiant squadron was based in 1940.

The Boulton Paul Heritage Museum was forced to disband when GE, the owner of the site of the original Boulton Paul Aircraft factory in Wobaston Road, Pendeford, decided to prepare the site for sale.

Boulton Paul moved to Wolverhampton in 1935 and built planes until the 1960s. The firm later became part of the Moog group.