Crowds swarm to Aviation Museum on open weekend

The Aviation Museum, in Ta' Qali, held an open weekend giving aviation enthusiasts with an eye for history a peep into its workshop and a chance to hear the engine of a Tiger Moth biplane undergoing restoration.

A Spitfire and the fuselage of the Tiger Moth were rolled out of the recently-inaugurated hangar for the occasion.

Re-enactors mingled with visitors, practising drills around a saluting gun and a Bofors anti-aircraft gun. The Military Vehicles Collectors' Club displayed several of its wartime vehicles painted in camouflage colours. Many of them also took part in the open day at AFM barracks, also held yesterday.

Ray Polidano, the museum's director, explained that the Moth, a trainer built in 1942, is being restored to flying condition, the focus presently being on its wings.

Visitors could better appreciate the work being done on the restoration of a wartime Hurricane fighter - work on one of the wings has not been completed yet and they could see the complicated structure which gave it its strength.

Inquisitive visitors could also notice the skeleton of Gladiator wings, stored at the back of the hangar waiting to be married to a fuselage. They were recovered from fjords in Norway and Finland and the museum is still trying to persuade the government to transfer to Ta' Qali the fuselage of the Gladiator on display at the War Museum, in Valletta, so that a complete aircraft can be built - recalling the Gladiators of Faith Hope and Charity fame that were Malta's first aerial defenders in World War II. There is no space for a complete aircraft at the war museum.

Among items in the workshop were many pieces of what one day will become a restored Swordfish naval torpedo bomber, although it is currently nothing more than a complicated jigsaw puzzle.

On Saturday a 1940s night was held, with re-enactors and other guests wearing period uniforms and dress for a dance in the hangar.

Among the visitors were Clive and Linda Denney who last year masterminded the flight to Malta of a Spitfire and Hurricane which performed flypasts over Grand Harbour, the War Memorial and Ta' Qali to mark the inauguration of the museum's hangar.