Club outing to the Spitfire Visitor Centre at HANGAR 42 Blackpool Airport
On Saturday 11th November on a beautiful sunny day 7 bikes set off from the rendezvous point for a quick photo session at the Spitfire memorial at Fairhaven and then on to Blackpool airport.
On arrival it was just before 11am so the seven riders took a 2 minutes silence outside before entering. 3 other members had arrived in cars and were inside. Hangar 42 is the original hangar erected at Blackpool and was leased and restored by the volunteers of the spitfire memorial group to preserve the history of the Spitfires that were bought by the people of Lytham St Annes and Blackpool in the war effort. Lytham St Annes bought one and Blackpool managed to buy three so there is a large history around them. 3000 Wellington Bombers were made at Blackpool during the war and afterwards the wartime hangars were converted to house the Hawker Aircraft Company who built Hawker Hunters in them. These hangars are now industrial units.
The tour was was very interesting with all sorts of memorabilia from the north west area’s history of aviation and a reconstructed dispersal hut interior with the equipment inside, a briefing room where pilots would have been given the days brief and where a video was played outlining the history and of course a NAAFI for getting a brew.
The tour round the replica aircraft was led by some volunteers who gave descriptions of what we were looking at and even dog fighting tactics and why the machine guns were replaced with cannons and how Miss Shilling helped fix the carburation problems on the Spitfire. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the trip and the lovely weather for a nice autumn ride and club outing.