The fate of Faith

Many letters have appeared in The Times urging Heritage Malta to authorise the transfer of the fuselage of Gloster Sea Gladiator Faith from the War Museum, in Valletta, to the Air Battle of Malta Memorial Hangar at the Malta Aviation Museum, Ta' Qali. Pierre Cassar, corporate communications officer at Heritage Malta, on March 20 wrote back and ruled out such a transfer.

Faith was one of the Gladiator aircraft, dubbed Faith, Hope and Charity, that formed Malta's only air defence when war broke out in 1940. The skeletal remains of its fuselage were presented to the people of Malta at the end of the war. The fuselage was restored by the RAF in 1974 and the aircraft, minus its wings, has since been displayed at the War Museum, in Fort St Elmo.

The Malta Aviation Museum Foundation would like to explain the process leading to its requests for the Gladiator to join the other Air Battle of Malta aircraft at Ta' Qali.

It all started in 1996, when the then Minister of Justice and the Arts, Michael Refalo, suggested that the Aviation Museum ought to build wings for the Gladiator. In a letter dated August 6, 1996, Dr Refalo accepted our request for funding for the project and said: "I have asked Permanent Secretary and Director, Museums Department, to give favourable consideration to this request".

Shortly after, I visited the Imperial War Museum at Duxford to seek copies of original drawings and original wing pieces to help us build these wings. A restorer with The Fighter Collection directed us to the RAF Museum reserve collection at Cardington.

The British High Commissioner of the time, Graham Archer, kindly submitted our requests to the RAF Museum and I was invited to visit RAF Cardington to single out the Gladiator pieces in their reserve collection that we wished to have. During a visit in 1997, I pointed out the wing pieces we required and also asked for a rudder, since the one on Faith is made out of wood and is of the wrong shape.

Early in 1998 we returned to Cardington for a meeting with the RAF Museum, the Fleet Air Arm Museum and the Gloucestershire Aviation Collection where we had to explain why the parts should be given to us and not to the other museums. Our bid was accepted after it was pointed out that Faith is the most important and famous of the existing Gladiators and that it therefore deserved to be fully restored. The wings were transported to Malta aboard an RAF C-130 transport aircraft and accepted on our behalf by Minister Louis Galea on September 26, 1998.

The Finnish Aviation Museum subsequently also gave the Malta Aviation Museum Gladiator wings in exchange for an Armstrong Withworth Cheetah aero engine. The wings were shipped to Malta in January 1999. As result we are now in possession of enough Gladiator wing parts to be able to restore Faith to the condition it was in when it defended Malta in 1940.

At that time, which was before Heritage Malta was set up, we had been dealing with the Museums Department. Although there were never any official talks about the subject, the situation sea-sawed from a position where the aviation artefacts in the War Museum were to be moved to the Aviation Museum to the position where the Gladiator would never be allowed to move out of the War Museum. The Aviation Museum for a time did not officially broach the subject because space was limited and we were still busily restoring a Hawker Hurricane that we had recovered from the seabed.

With the setting up of Heritage Malta the situation did not change until we started building the Air Battle of Malta Memorial Hangar, designed specifically to house WWII aircraft. In 2004, I had two meetings with Mario Tabone, chairman of Heritage Malta, regarding the prospect of the Malta Aviation Museum entering a partnership agreement with Heritage Malta. Dr Tabone explained that a partnership agreement would be beneficial to us among other things, in terms of funding from the EU and the prospect of sharing information from underwater surveys which Heritage Malta was planning for the future. The subject was tactfully changed every time I tried to bring up the issue of the Gladiator. We, however, agreed in principle about the partnership and Dr Tabone promised to send us a draft agreement.

Nothing else happened until a few months before the inauguration of the Air Battle of Malta Memorial Hangar when we were given the impression that the transfer of the Gladiator would be authorised and that we needed to write an official request to that effect. This we duly did and the letter was delivered by hand. We received no reply and Dr Tabone did not even attend the inauguration of the new hangar.

Former British High Commissioner Vincent Fean discussed the matter with Dr Tabone and was told that talks about the partnership were in hand and this would facilitate the transfer of the Gladiator to the Aviation Museum. I was again invited for a meeting with Dr Tabone where he expressed his admiration for the work carried out by the Aviation Museum. We were again told that as soon as a draft agreement on the partnership was ready, it would be mailed to us. Again, nothing happened.

A new British High Commissioner again brought up the subject with Dr Tabone on October 26, 2006 and he was given the same reply.

A few months ago, I attended the annual Forum on Cultural Heritage at the Mediterranean Conference Centre where Dr Tabone told me he had the draft agreement ready on his desk. We have still not received it.

Mr Cassar in his letter stated that there are no hidden agendas on the matter. I know Dr Tabone to be a true gentleman, and therefore I am quite sure there is something preventing him from keeping his word to the High Commissioners and also preventing him from meeting us around a table to discuss this matter in a truly constructive fashion. I would like to correct some inaccuracies in Mr Cassar's letter.

First: The George Cross exhibited in the War Museum is a replica; the real one is safely locked away elsewhere. Secondly: It was Sir Keith Park and not Lord Gort who presented the remains of the fuselage of Faith to the Maltese people on behalf of the RAF, and he made no conditions as to where the gift should be placed.

Finally, of course, Mr Cassar cannot be referring to us when he speaks of people who confuse the principles of conservation with those of restoration/replication because we know what a replica is - the George Cross in the War Museum - although we are a bit confused on what to call the rudder on Faith since it is made out of wood and totally in the wrong shape.

An example of conservation in our case is the Fiat G91 jet fighter of the 1950s that was simply retired from flying and presented to the museum in its original state. Our duty in this type of situation is to conserve it as it is and not allow it to deteriorate to a state where it requires restoration.

An example of restoration is the Hawker Hurricane that we recovered from the seabed in 1995. The choice was to either leave it as a mass of tangled metal or restore it to its original state. We chose the latter and, 11 years on, have almost finished rebuilding the aircraft using original drawings, patterns and parts while retaining as much as 65 per cent of the original structure.

The volunteers at the Aviation Museum under the guidance of the museum's fully qualified aeronautical engineer are prepared to put in as much effort as they have put on the Hawker Hurricane to ensure that the Gladiator is restored to its original glory, as is deserving of a national icon, and, indeed, one of the most historic aircraft in Europe.

By so doing we would also be thanking the four countries - England, Finland, Sweden and Norway - that have donated the wing sections necessary for its restoration.

Mr Polidano is director general of the Malta Aviation Museum Foundation.