You are not starting from scratch and must instead work with what is already on display. So when we decided our ever-popular Flight gallery needed a bit of a revamp the team had to work carefully, cleverly and quickly to make it happen.
Flight contains 21 full-size aircraft and 74 aeroengines – the most significant array on public display anywhere in the world. The aircraft are no less important and include pioneers of the skies like the Roe I Triplane (1909) – the first powered aircraft to fly in the UK; the Vickers FB27 ‘Vimy’ (1919) in which John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown conducted the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight.
It also contains Amy Johnson’s De Havilland 60 Gypsy Moth ‘Jason’ (1930) in which she performed the first solo flight by a woman from England to Australia; R. J. Mitchell’s Supermarine S6B S1595 seaplane – which won the 1931 Schneider Trophy speed competition for Britain and influenced greatly Mitchell’s subsequent design of the Supermarine Spitfire – and the Gloster E28/39 (1941) – the first British jet aircraft to fly.
For over a century aircraft have been exhibited at the Science Museum. The first displays (as special exhibitions) were housed from 1912 in the old Southern Galleries of the 1862 International Exhibition buildings. They were then moved into the newly opened East Block of the present Museum building on its ground floor (where the current Energy gallery resides), with some small items shown also in the basement.
In 1950 the collection was moved back out into the Western Galleries of the 1862 buildings. And then in 1963 they were finally moved back into the main building and an aircraft hangar-like Aeronautics gallery on the third floor of the Museum’s new Centre Block. In 1993 Aeronautics gave way to Flight.
Visitors often ask how the aircraft were brought into the gallery. The gallery windows were removed, the partially disassembled planes, hoisted by crane from the road between the Museum and Imperial College, and then pulled into the gallery. They were reconstructed and suspended from the ceiling. The one exception is Alcock and Brown’s Vickers Vimy which sits on special floor supports.
If these aircraft could talk they could tell some tales! The Vimy, having weathered unseasonably extreme June weather over the Atlantic in 1919 – and at one point dropping terrifyingly close to the waves – eventually made a safe but rather undignified landing in an Irish marsh.
Parts were broken and other items disappeared into the crowds who had gathered to witness aviation history. But within a few months the aircraft had been brought over to England, repaired at the Vickers factory in Weybridge and then put on display in the museum.
Alcock and Brown were accompanied by two additional passengers during their epoch-making flight. John Alcock took a little toy cat called Lucky Jim. Arthur Brown’s mascot was named Twinkletoes. As part of the new display we have reunited Lucky Jim with his aircraft. He has to work for his inclusion though, and acts as a guide to the gallery’s younger visitors by popping up in facsimile around the displays.
Amongst original aircraft like the Vimy there is one important replica. In 1903 the Wright Brothers conducted in the United States the world’s first powered flight in an aeroplane – the Wright Flyer. But the eminent Smithsonian Institution had issues with the Brothers’ achievement and in 1928 a disgruntled Orville Wright (Wilbur had died in 1912) loaned the Flyer to the Science Museum where it was suspended from the ceiling, above where the present day Energy Café can be found.
During World War 2 the Smithsonian revised its stance and acknowledged the Brother’s pioneering flight of 1903. By this time London was under attack by the Luftwaffe and the Flyer was moved to the safety of an underground storage facility some miles from the capital.
Nevertheless, Orville was able to start planning the return of the aircraft to the US and as a thank you to the Science Museum made his and Wilbur’s design drawings available so the Museum could build a replica. This was duly carried out by apprentices of the De Havilland aircraft company and that replica continues to be displayed to this day.
The newly refurbished gallery offer stories of less well known aviators: Bessie Coleman, the first African American and Native American woman to hold an international pilot’s licence (see this birthday blog post by Interpretation Developer, Emma Ellis); Roberta Cowell, a World War II spitfire pilot and the first British transgender woman to undergo gender-affirming surgery, and Tim Ellison, the first wheelchair pilot in Europe to gain a CAA Commercial Pilot’s Licence and the first European wheelchair pilot to fly a light aircraft around the world.
The whole gallery space is now brighter with improved lighting and a fresher, more welcoming design. Audiences had told us it was challenging to identify the full-size aircraft hanging high above their heads. So the museum worked with a talented illustrator to produce beautiful and accurate illustrations of all the full-size aircraft in the gallery. These are included on the labels so visitors can tell which aircraft is which.
The world of aviation is now having to confront the challenge of climate change. In years to come a new gallery will have to reflect new technologies that will help us keep flying but without causing unnecessary damage to the environment. The museum already displays the record-breaking Spirit of Innovation electric aircraft on its ground floor.
Its makers were inspired by visits to the museum to see Mitchell’s own record-breaking Supermarine S6B S1595 seaplane of 1931. The museum believes firmly that in order to understand where we are going in the world of flight, and indeed the whole panoply of science and technology, we need also to understand where we’ve been and the renewed Flight gallery helps us do that.