Ken Ellis and photographer Darren Harbar visit Stafford to marvel at the Royal Air Force Museum’s hidden treasures
MUSEUMS
RAF MUSEUM
Every museum has a cache of items – some yet to go on display, others retired from the public gaze or awaiting use in exchanges. As might be expected, the RAF Museum has a vast storage facility which contains around 65,000 objects ranging in size from a Supermarine Seagull V amphibian to a marble fragment from Adolf Hitler’s desk.
The museum has occupied a portion of the site run by the Defence Electronics and Components Agency, to the east of Stafford, on a long lease for nearly 20 years. The multi-bay warehouse covers a floor area of 62,430sq ft (5,800sq m). The majority of this is divided by row upon row of 30ft (9.1m) high shelving stacks.
An idea of the scope of the holdings can be gleaned from the complex operation mounted from March 1999, when the museum moved in. The transition lasted five months and required 160 lorry loads to complete.
The first storage site was at RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire. This existed long before the RAF Museum opened at Hendon in November 1972. As the idea of a national exhibition for the RAF crystallised in the late 1950s, Henlow became the…
