Royal Air Force Museum In London Undertaking The Effort

The Royal Air Force Museum in London is set to begin a salvage operation that could bring a Dornier Do-17 bomber up from the bottom of the English Channel for eventual display at the museum.

Writing in a blog for the museum, Director General Peter Dye says that the facility is poised to begin the recovery effort of the only known remaining example of the Dornier Do-17. Many of those that were shot down during the war were salvaged, smelted, and turned into British fighters that went on to help defeat Germany, he said.

"First the aircraft must be carefully raised from the destructive tides of the English Channel," Dye writes in describing the planned salvage operation. "Then it must be packed in a specialist chemical gel and plastic sheeting to protect it from the air before it begins its long journey by road to the Museum’s Cosford site."

Once there, it will be carefully positioned in specially constructed hydration tunnels where the aircraft will be on display to the public as the accretion of chemicals and salts created by 70 years underwater will be gently washed away over the next two to three years. "Only then can our technicians at the Sir Michael Beetham Conservation Center start the process of stabilising the corrosion within the airframe."

Dye says that the cost of the project is significant, "but its value lies not only in preserving an unique artifact of national and international importance but also in what it has taught us and what we have yet to learn. Each step in the project has been part of a learning process that has pushed forward scientific knowledge while developing advanced engineering and conservation techniques. We have already shared this information with other museums and restoration centers."

No specific date was given for the onset of the recovery operation.

(Dornier Do-17 pictured in file photo)

FMI: www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/blog/countdown-to-raising-the-Dornier-commences/