Avro Shackleton: Giant RAF submarine-hunting aircraft finds new home in Yorkshire
It was an aircraft to be admired in the Cold War years when keeping an eye on Soviet shipping was a vital part of winning the peace.
Now the Avro Shackleton, named after the famous explorer Sir Ernest, has a new home in Yorkshire.
Work to relocate the giant RAF submarine-hunting aircraft to the Yorkshire Air Museum has passed a major milestone, with all the sections of the aircraft now on site at the base at Elvington, near York.
The Avro Shackleton – a cousin of the iconic Lancaster bomber – was used to track Soviet submarines in UK waters, and to aid in search and rescue operations, from the 1950s to the early 1990s.
Shackleton WR963 had been based at Coventry Airport and was kept in “live running” condition by a team of volunteers, meaning it could run its four Griffon engines although it can no longer fly.
It lost its home when the airport closed, and its future was uncertain until a deal was struck to move it to the Yorkshire Air Museum.
The plan was to break it into sections and is being transport it by road to the museum, with three of the four engines arriving back in October.
Now the remaining sections have arrived, including the fuselage, cockpit, wings and the remaining engine.
The transport work took place over last weekend, despite appalling weather conditions across the country. Lorries shuttled back and forth between York and Coventry and the various parts of the Shackleton, nicknamed Ermintrude, are now at the Yorkshire Air Museum.
The next stage of the project will see work begin to reassemble the aircraft, with the ultimate aim of rebuilding it to ‘live’ condition, where the four Griffon engines will run, although the aircraft will never fly again. That work is likely to take at least two years.
Yorkshire Air Museum Director Jonathan Brewer said: “It’s great to see all the sections of the Shackleton finally arrive. It’s taken a huge effort by the teams at Coventry and here at Elvington to get to this point, particularly given the atrocious weather we had last week.
“They worked through freezing cold and soaking wet conditions to get huge chunks of the aircraft loaded, transported and unloaded. Now the work can start on restoring this magnificent machine to its former glory, with members of the Coventry crew coming onboard at YAM to help reassemble it.”
The Shackleton was developed during the late 1940s as part of Britain's military response to the rapid expansion of the Soviet Navy, in particular its submarine force.
During the 1970s, the Shackleton was replaced in the maritime patrol role by the jet-powered Hawker Siddeley Nimrod. During its later life, a small number of the RAF's existing Shackletons received modifications in order to adapt them to perform the airborne early warning (AEW) role.