![]() Those people include a crew of more than 20 regular volunteers - people with day jobs as well as retirees - who are at the museum several days a week in some cases, maintaining and troubleshooting. This is a passion for me and a lot of people here." The problem with the Lancaster is that with only two flying planes, it's not like we can network with a lot of other people for expertise and parts, the way they can with 737s and 767s. This is my life, absolutely, and there are days when I'm exhausted from working on the plane, but then I just can't wait to get back here again, I really can't. "I don't golf, I don't play sports, I haven't had holidays since 2007. He calls it a hobby that turned into a second career. I walked in here with no expectations and somehow here I am 10 years later." "After CASCAR, I swore I'd never get involved with anything ever again that took all my spare time and Saturdays and weekends away. About a decade ago, he got out of auto racing and got involved with the Lancaster flight team as a hobby. (Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum)īrookhouse, for example, runs his own automotive business in Ancaster, Ont. ![]() The plane flies about 50 hours per year, but requires between 5,000 and 10,000 hours of work from the maintenance crew. Most of the maintenance work on the Lancaster bomber is done by volunteers at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton. Less than one per cent of the museum's budget comes from the government - the rest is a combination of private memberships, corporate donations and money raised through everything from airplane rides to renting out the museum for weddings. The public's support for the aircraft is what has kept the plane in the air. "The Lancaster is the heart of the museum, and our volunteers do what it takes to keep it going." "Some people thought the Lancaster would never fly again, and when we made it happen, it changed our whole organization," Mickeloff adds. "On the day of that first flight, we thought we'd get a couple of hundred people at the airfield to watch," says Al Mickeloff, spokesman for the museum. A team of volunteers led by Norm Etheridge spent 11 years restoring the bomber, and it returned to the air on Sept. The museum bought it in 1977 for about $10,000. The gunner survived the crash, but Mynarski died from the burns. Instead of bailing out, Mynarski – his clothes burning – tried to free the trapped rear gunner. In the early morning hours of June 13, 1944, the Winnipeg native's Lancaster was shot down. The Hamilton museum's Lancaster is dedicated to the memory of Pilot Officer Andrew Charles Mynarski of 419 (Moose) Squadron, 6 (RCAF ) Group, who won the Victoria Cross for his bravery. Used to train air crews and later for coastal patrols and search-and-rescue work, it was retired in 1963. Hamilton's Mynarski Memorial Avro Lancaster Mk X bomber was built at Victory Aircraft in Malton, Ont., in 1945. "It's the plane itself, but it's also thinking of the people who flew Lancasters during the war and what they went through." But nothing I've done in the past 20 years of my aviation career compares to flying the Lancaster," he says. "My first solo flight, my first helicopter flight, my first jet flight, they were all things I'll never forget. John McClenayhan, a commercial pilot who is one of the handful of people trained to take the controls of the Lancaster, feels much the same way.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |