Hamilton Warplane Museum

HAMILTON WARPLANE MUSEUM

Father inlaw with son Erik under F-104

The Hamilton museum's claim to fame is The Hamilton Air Museum is a great little museum to visit and an excellent showcase of Canadian warplanes. I took my father inlaw and son there this past summer to kill an afternoon one day and even though their centrepiece Lancaster wasn't there (one of two flying in the world, it was off attending an airshow somewhere) we had an enjoyable visit. Mounted outside of the building on a steel post is a Starfighter jet; my first flying instructor flew one of these during his glory days and I recall him carrying a certificate not unlike a driver's licence in his wallet which certified that he had flown at Mach 1 in one of these, which in his words was essentially a rocket with some incidental wings. Lots of cool planes such as a Voodoo fighter, Vampire , Spitfire, and more. The Hamilton museum's claim to fame of course is that it maintains one of only two airworthy, flying Lancasters in the world. Actually, a decent number of aircraft here are maintained in flightworthy condition. My favourite aviation museum however, will remain the Wright Patterson Museum in Dayton, Ohio which comes arguably as close as any museum will ever come to having one of every North American warplane ever built-check it out at this link. http://www.cdsg.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=381

Dad, check out the cool pylons...

A nice Lysander STOL plane, many of which were built at nearby Malton airport during the Second World war. Oblivious son nearby.

F-100 "The Clunk"

Lysander STOL

Side view of the same, six months later. The original headlights in the landing wheel pants i'm told were almost too much draw for the electrical system to power until a resourceful engineer discovered that a set of 24 volt pick-up truck headlights fit in there just fine.

Helicopters don't fly-they pound the air into submission

I'm not sure why yellow has been such a common aircraft colour for Canadian military aircraft over the years; maybe some better paint schemes in general would have generated better sales/government interest! I don't know what kind of helicopter this is, but I don't think you could pay me enough to be a passenger in the attached evacuation pod...

Son agrees and runs away.

Pilot in command

Son enjoying the pilot's seat in a Harvard trainer. I still have a propellor hub from one of these that crashed in a field by my former home, during a training flight in WW11 -I use it as a doorstop but if you're a Harvard owner looking for one, let me know.

Same cockpit- Erik at 6 (almost 7)

Uncle Jan climbs aboard

So after recounting his memories to the staff at the HAM of seeing the Lancs fly over his home in Holland during the war, the resident curators couldn't resist giving uncle Jan an up close inspection of one of the few remaining during a visit last year..it made his day.

The Lancs used to fly so low over their house that my father said they could almost touch them-60 years later, his brother Jan demonstrates...

Not a big fan of the new paint scheme- it looked better without the P-40 touch.

Winter maintenance

As one of only two flying Lancasters in the world (I think about 500 were built in Malton alone) the Mynarski bomber spends a fair bit of time being maintained in the winter so it can fly airshows in the summer. The jury is still out for me if this is a great idea when there are so few examples of this plane left to even look at. Even so, I attended the inaugural flight when the rebuild was first completed and enjoyed it thoroughly.

F-101 Voodoo

Not many people realize it but the PBY Calypso was also built in Canada by Candian Vickers in Montreal and by Boeing Aircraft of Canada in Vancouver. The museum's PBY (called a Canso by the RCAF) was built in Montreal and is kept in flightworth status. A remarkable aircraft which would play a pivotal role in the Allied victory in WW2.

Canso floatplane

Hamilton revisited

It's the day after Christmas 2010 and my wife is running a road race in Hamilton so Erik and I have returned to the Hamilton Warplane museum to kill some time and add some warranted photos to my Hamilton page. I thought we'd start with a reprise of him in his favourite trainer.

Multi endorsement

Having quickly met his dad's expectations in the Harvard, I decided Erik was ready for his multi engine endorsement. Here, Erik executes a successful pull-up from his first bombing run with dad in copilot's chair.