Halifax bomber: How volunteers rebuilt 'the plane they couldn't kill'
A legendary bomber of the Second World War was once brought back to life and rebuilt from scratch to share a history of its global adventures.
Now three decades on, at the Yorkshire Air Museum, an exhibition looks at the work which was done in the war – and under a shroud of military secrecy - to build some thousands of these incredible aircraft.
Operation Halifax also tells the story of the most famous Halifax of them all, Friday the 13th, dubbed ‘the plane they couldn’t kill’.
Jerry Ibbotson, from the museum, said this paid tribute to the aircrafts’ form but also the volunteers whose determination was to bring it back to life.
“Rebuilding the Halifax was a staggering project 30 years ago, and it’s easy to forget just how much effort was involved,” he said.
“Operation Halifax will shed light on what was achieved, as well as showing how Halifaxes were built during the war – often using bus and coach factories that were requisitioned for the task.
“We have some stunning photos from this time, showing how many of the workers were young women who stepped up to fill roles taken by men who had gone off to fight.”
The museum, on the site of RAF Elvington, was once home to three squadrons of RAF Bomber Command during the war.
Crews here were to fly perilous missions over Germany and occupied Europe, and almost half of the aircrew they used did not survive.
Then, after the war, every surviving Halifax bomber was scrapped.
Many of the volunteers at the Yorkshire Air Museum are RAF veterans, and they and other enthusiasts were determined that it should house its own such craft, recognising its history.
Without it, they said, the museum would never be complete.
Amd so, the museum's opening in the 1980s, they hatched a plan to rebuild one.
They used parts from crashed aircraft, bits donated from similar planes, and rebuilt sections from scratch.
For one area, they even used a length of fuselage from an aircraft that had crashed on the Isle of Lewis and had since been used as a hen house.
After a decade of tireless work, a Handley Page Halifax bomber – the very type that flew from the site at Elvington in the Second World War – was unveiled to the public once more.
Now the new exhibition, honouring this project, is housed under the nose of the Halifax itself with displays, videos and an animation.
Each piece of the legendary aircraft is explored, detailing where it came from or how it came to be rebuilt.
Operation Halifax will run for at least a year in the museum's main hangar, and is included in the Yorkshire Air Museum and Allied Air Forces Memorial admission price.