The United Kingdom has Government-funded museums of science and industry, seafaring, media, and railways. Yet, there is no National Aviation (or Aerospace) Museum, despite several attempts to create one and Britain’s impressive record of aeronautical achievement. Sir Peter Masefield campaigned for such a museum in the 1950s. This blog post explores the background to this proposal and the reasons for its failure. These include an assumption that there was little demand for such a museum and the belief that the provision in two existing museums was adequate. A particularly important factor was government departments’ reluctance to fund a new museum.
For the first half of the 20th century, the Science Museum had collected aircraft and associated material as an emerging technology, whilst the Imperial War Museum regarded aircraft as a weapon. Individuals such as Richard Nash and Richard Shuttleworth had assembled their own collections of aircraft from the early days of British aviation. The Royal Air Force felt in the 1930s that the IWM’s remit – the First World War – was limiting its exposure to the public and tried, via the Air Ministry, to set up an Air Services museum, but first the Depression and then Britain’s rearmament programme meant that no funds were available.
The early 1950s brought concerns that elements of Britain’s aeronautical heritage might be lost, and that existing displays were inadequate. In 1953 an editorial in The Aeroplane called for improvements in the Science Museum’s aeronautics display. A further impetus came in January 1954, when the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) announced that it had purchased the Nash Collection. Fears had been expressed that the collection might vanish overseas: in November 1953 Nash had received an offer ‘from America’. Nash had presumably approached the Shuttleworth Trust, since Air Commodore Allen Wheeler (a trustee) had written an article discussing the need for a national museum. This article brought a response from Nash, who explained that in addition to the 14 aircraft in his collection, built between 1908 and 1920, he might have been able to add another 16, had the necessary finance and storage space been available, but the 16 had been destroyed during the war.
The RAeS called a meeting in October 1954 to consider the creation of a National Aeronautical Collection of historical aircraft. Seventeen organisations attended included government departments, national museums, and various aviation groups. The meeting was chaired by Peter Masefield, whose long aviation career included acting as an adviser to the government on civil air transport, and board appointments at Bristol Aircraft and British European Airways. He was President of the RAeS from 1959-60. Masefield had already written to senior RAF officers, seeking their support for ‘the foundation of a National Aeronautical Collection on similar lines to the National Maritime Museum and Trust.’ The meeting agreed that some form of National Collection was desirable, and Masefield suggested that it could be located at Croydon airport or RAF Hendon. A working party was formed to carry the project forward.
A report in November 1955 that an American museum was seeking to acquire British, German and French aircraft of the First World War brought a further call for a national aviation museum. It seems likely that the collector James H ‘Cole’ Palen was involved; it may have been Palen who tried to purchase the Nash Collection in 1953.
There was, however, little enthusiasm in the Ministry of Works for another museum. Officials were sceptical about the appeal of an aviation museum, since aviation had a relatively brief history. They were also concerned that the creation of ‘an air museum’ would encourage the Army to demand similar treatment, and feared that their funding would suffer. It was acknowledged, however, that Britain was ‘playing a leading part in aeronautics and it may be that eventually there ought to be some sort of museum of this kind.’ The Treasury was similarly unimpressed: one official wrote that the museum was unlikely to receive gifts ‘unless one regards as benefaction gifts by aeroplane manufacturers of old aeroplanes which they have been rather too shamefaced to scrap hitherto.’ He concluded ‘this project should be played long and killed – with kindness if possible.’ The National Air Museum project was eventually shelved when the Financial Secretary to the Treasury made it clear that the necessary financial backing would not be forthcoming, citing ‘pressure to spend considerably more on existing national institutions’ and that aviation was already represented in the IWM and Science Museum’s collections. The Air Ministry was content for the RAeS to draft lists of aircraft and engines that could form the national collection. The aircraft lists were eventually published in 1959; plaques would be presented to the owners of aircraft ‘considered to be of historic importance.’ During 1959 the Science Museum began planning its new aeronautical gallery; perhaps the seed planted by Masefield’s lobbying had taken root.
The RAeS list identified 185 specific aircraft – both British and foreign - worthy of preservation. Some were already in museums, but most were not. Nearly all of them have survived; a few were later sold overseas and others were scrapped, but some are still flying. The British Aviation Preservation Council (now Aviation Heritage UK), a group formed in 1967 to represent, coordinate and assist aviation museums, compiled its own register in the 1980s. It currently stands at over 2000 aircraft in the many museums that have sprung up since Masefield’s time. However, Masefield’s pioneering listing exercise, and his attempts to set up a national air museum have largely been forgotten.
Sketch of the plaque that would be presented to the owners of listed aircraft (Royal Aeronautical Society)
Amy Johnson’s de Havilland Moth Jason hangs in the Science Museum in London (Peter Elliott)
Peter Masefield, President of the Royal Aeronautical Society, 1959-1960 (Royal Aeronautical Society)
Further reading
Files in the National Archives
AIR 2/14352 Historic aircraft collection: minutes of meeting
TNA AIR 20/11199 Proposed national aeronautical museum
AIR 20/12053 Proposals for National Aeronautical Museum
T 218/57 National Aeronautical Museum
WORK 17/336 Proposed aeronautical museum
Articles
Allen H Wheeler, ‘A national museum of aircraft?’, Flight, 6 November 1953, p.625
Thurstan James, ‘Wanted – a new home’, The Aeroplane, Volume LXXXV (11 December 1953) p. 779.
‘National Aviation Museum’ – an urgent need’, Flight, 25 November 1955, p.801
‘Historical Group’, Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, 63 (584), August 1959, pp 479-482