They start trickling in Thursday mornings. Former pilots, mechanical engineers and aerospace workers, carpenters, retired firefighters and air force members — even a former race-car driver — they’re all eager to get their hands dirty and put their collective minds to work.
The restoration hangar at the B.C. Aviation Museum is a buzz of activity as small groups gather around the pieces of a Second World War-era Avro Lancaster FM 104 bomber.
The air is alive with grinders, impact wrenches and conversation. Volunteers are punching in rivets, cutting new aluminum parts and fixing or cleaning old pieces. Others are making careful measurements.
It’s a jigsaw puzzle on a massive scale and these volunteers have been at it for nearly five years.
Clive Sparks, a retired heavy duty mechanic and firefighter, says his father-in-law helped to build Lancasters during the war years in Toronto, where 430 of the giant planes were built for the Royal Canadian Air Force— and it’s very likely his wife’s father had his hands on this one.
“There is that sentimental attachment,” said Sparks. “But also, once you get started, it’s something you just can’t leave alone. They are amazing airplanes.”
Gary Powe, a retired electrical engineer, works from a binder of tattered schematics that cover every “64th of an inch” of the Lancaster, listing each part, placement and function — not to mention all of those hundreds of thousands of rivets.
“There’s a lot of engineering going on at the time they built these … no calculators and no computers … just pencil, paper and slide rule,” said Powe.
The four-engine Lancaster, with serial number FM104, came off the production line in 1944 at Victory Aircraft’s Malton plant near Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. In early 1945, the aircraft was flown to England, but it never saw action, as the war in Europe ended that spring.
The bomber was flown back to Canada and stored in Claresholm, Alta., with several other Lancasters that made it through the war. In the early 1950s, after some modifications, FM104 was used in a search-and-rescue role on Canada’s east coast.
The plane was retired in 1964, and mounted on a steel plinth for public display a year later near the Canadian National Exhibition on Toronto’s waterfront.
The mounting caused damage to the Lancaster’s main frame and corrosion formed after years of being exposed to weather, bird droppings and vandalism. The Canadian Air & Space Museum moved it indoors and started restoration in 1999, but was unable to continue the work after losing its hangar space to redevelopment..
The B.C. Aviation Museum secured the rights to the vintage plane, which arrived at the museum in North Saanich in the fall of 2018 in five semi-trailer units.
The museum has decided the massive Lancaster will never fly again — its powerful engines are too damaged and the restoration process too expensive. But the crew of volunteers will put it back in its original state as a static display where people can go inside and see how the bomber’s crew operated the plane.
Though still far from complete, it is expected to be on display when the museum holds its annual open house on Aug. 19 and 20.
“You want to do it right, but you want a clearly established goal,” said Sparks. “We want to make it look like it did in the 50s and 60s.”
The plane’s four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, also heavily damaged by weather, are expected to be mounted nearby with at least one in running order “to make some noise and smoke,” said Sparks.
Lancaster immortalized in The Dam Busters
About 7,377 Lancasters were produced in the world, but only 17 complete planes remain, including eight in Canada. Only two are airworthy, according to the Royal Air Force, while two others are in taxiable condition with working engines.
“It was an incredible aircraft that did so much during the Second World War,” said Steve Nichol, president of the B.C. Aviation Museum.
The plane had seven crew — a pilot, flight engineer, navigator, radio operator and three gunners — one in the front who also aimed the bombs, one in the tail and another in the mid-upper part of the aircraft. The survival rate of the crew was only about 10% if the plane was hit and going down.
Powe noted the front gunner had the poorest chance, as the hatch at the front was so small, a parachute pack couldn’t fit.
Nichol said the Lancaster took part in the raids on German cities during the Second World War and was used to attack German submarine bases. It was the aircraft immortalized in the movie The Dam Busters, where British pilots attacked hydroelectric dams in 1943 using special spinning bombs that skipped across the water.
The last surviving member of the Dambusters, George “Johnny” Johnson, a bomb aimer in the 617 Squadron, died last December at age 101.
Lancasters also sank the German battleship Tirpitz in 1944 in a remote fjord in Norway using 12,000-pound Tallboy bombs.
The museum’s Lancaster is huge — it has a wing span of 102 feet, and the body is 69 feet and four inches long. Crews are working on it in sections, since it’s far too big to work on in one piece
“It came to us in pieces, unlabelled,” said Powe. “So it’s been a challenge.”
The centre section is almost done and the volunteers will now move to forward parts, including the nose and cockpit. “We’d like to get that all done so it’s a good display with the pilot seat, the navigator’s table, the radios and the controls, said Sparks.
The museum wants to build a platform between the centre and forward sections so visitors can look all the way back through the aircraft and go into the cockpit.
The museum’s Lancaster flew 7,000 hours, which shows they were built to last, said Powe. “Despite the pressures to produce, they didn’t take any short cuts and they weren’t made to be disposable after a few missions.”
Powe said at the height of the war, factories were making one Lancaster a day in Toronto, and 300 a day in the U.K.
While some argue that there’s no reason for the planes to exist if they aren’t flying, “when you’re down to the last few, they are worth preserving,” sad Powe. “Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”
And the planes keep coming
With 36 aircraft on display — and more on the way — the museum is currently negotiating with Victoria Airport Authority to expand its footprint on airport lands. It already has three hangars that are part of the museum — including one dedicated to restoration — but it needs the room to display some of its newest acquisitions.
The museum recently took possession of a Canadair CF-104 Starfighter, a nuclear-capable Cold War fighter-bomber that was a major Canadian contribution to NATO. It’s currently in negotiations with the Coulson Group of Companies in Port Alberni to acquire one of the two remaining Martin Mars firefighting planes. The sides are trying to determine the costs and logistics to get the bomber from Sproat Lake to the museum site.
The massive water tankers fought fires in British Columbia and other provinces for more than half a century. They were the largest fixed-wing water bombers in the world, with wing spans of 200 feet and bodies 120 feet long, and the ability to carry about 6,000 gallons of water.
“The airport authority is willing to work with us to expand, and we really need the space,” said museum executive Bob Saunders.
The aviation museum isn’t just home to vintage airplanes. It has an impressive collection of art, hundreds of models, propellers, engines, flight suits, radios and mock bombs, including a Japanese Fugo balloon bomb that was designed to float silently down from an airplane and explode on contact.
It has a library with more than 9,000 books, collections of flight logbooks, 700 videos, 30,000 digitized and catalogued photos and reams of historical data. The museum also has a Memorial Room for fallen airmen, a tribute to the Snowbirds and the B.C. Aviation Hall of Fame, honouring 22 individuals, three organizations and two aircraft — de Havilland’s Beaver and Twin Otter.
“There are so many stories and that’s what we want to capture here,” Saunders said. “The airplanes will bring the people in, but really what attracts them is the stories. They keep everybody really interested when our guides take them through.”
Gordon Campbell, a tour guide who spent four decades as a pilot for Air Canada, said some of the museum’s visitors have connections to aviation, while others are just interested in history.
“Every aircraft has a story behind it,” said Campbell. “You can touch these airplanes, walk up close, some you can even sit inside. Other museums have barricades. But this one is real because you’re right there.”
The museum is a non-profit group, reliant on donations and government grants to keep its doors open.
Financial support comes from several sources, including B.C. Heritage Trust grants and B.C. Gaming Commission casino revenue. The land is provided by Victoria Airport Authority on a nominal-cost lease, while the municipality of North Saanich waives property taxes.
Memberships, founding patron donations, donations, entrance fees and gift shop sales keep it going, but it’s the dozens of volunteers and supporters that really make a difference.
Nichol said the museum’s Eastman Sea Rover, a rare and strange bush plane developed in the early 1920s, is a prime example of the work of dedicated volunteers.
The single-pontoon aircraft was discovered in a Duncan garage in 1988, the same year the aviation museum opened.
“When we found it, we said ‘what the heck is this?’ ” said Nichol. “We went to the Smithsonian and said what do we have? They said: ‘Congratulations, you have the world’s only Eastman Sea Rover.’ ”
The rovers were chiefly used for mining surveys in British Columbia, with a pilot seated directly behind the motor and seats behind for passengers.
Of the five Eastman Sea Rovers that made it to British Columbia in the early part of the last century, all had crashed and were destroyed. But with the Duncan discovery and others located in the Yukon and Fort St. John, there were enough parts to build a new Sea Rover.
Bert Clark, who has since passed away, spent 18,000 hours to put it all together, rebuilding the wood frames and cladding them with metal. “Bert took this on as a project,” said Nichol. “It was his baby for four years and when we unveiled it [in 1995], he was like a proud new father.”
Every airplane in the museum has a story about how it was designed, built and used — or how it was lost or crashed and eventually restored.
“Sometimes, airplane restoration is all about dragging planes out of lakes and rivers, digging them out of old barns or saving them from just weathering away,” said Nichol. “And here, we’ve got lots of skilled people who know how to do that. There’s a lot of passion.”
B.C. Aviation Museum open house
When: Aug. 19 and 20
Where: B.C. Aviation Museum, 1910 Norseman Rd.
Admission: By donation
B.C. Aviation Museum hours and admission
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., seven days a week.
Admission: Adults $15; seniors $12; youth (13-18 yrs) $12; children (6-12 yrs) $6; children (5 and under free); military (active/veteran/cadet) $8.
Annual pass: Individual $40; family $60; senior/student $30; military $20; fire/police) $20
For a visual tour:
Call: 250-655-3300 to book a visit.
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