Submarine-Tracker Avro Shackleton Arrives at Yorkshire Air Museum

Formerly based at Coventry Airport, the aircraft is intended to be restored to display with running engines.

Emma Quedzuweit
Emma Quedzuweit
The Shackleton being loaded onto the transport bound for the Yorkshire Air Museum. Photo by Keiran Wilkinson.
AirCorps Restorations

PRESS RELEASE

Work to relocate a 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 Elvington. 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.

Avro Shackleton MR.2 WG557 T L 220 Sqn BLA 06.09.55
An Avro Shackleton MR.2 of No. 220 Squadron RAF in September 1955. Photo via Wikimedia

The plan was to break it into sections and is being transport it by road to the Museum near York, 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 work took place over the weekend of January 5th and 6th, despite appalling weather conditions across the country, including snow and ice.

Lorries shuttled back and forth between York and Coventry and the various parts of the Shackleton, nicknamed Ermintrude, are now on the ground 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.

YAM Shackleton loading 002a scaled
Photo by Keiran Wilkinson

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 both 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.” For more information, contact Jerry Ibbotson, YAM Marketing and Communications Manager [email protected]

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Emma Quedzuweit is a historial researcher and graduate school student originally from California, but travels extensively for work and study. She is the former Assitant Editor at AOPA Pilot magazine and currently freelance writes along with personal projects invovled in the search for missing in action aviators from World War I and II. She is a Private Pilot with Single Engine Land and Sea ratings and tailwheel endorsement and is part-owner of a 1946 Piper J-3 Cub. Her favorite aviation experience was earning a checkout in a Fairchild PT-19.
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