Brooklands Museum Wellington
The Vickers Wellington on display at the Brooklands Museum is a Mk1A and N2980 is the only known surviving example built at Brooklands. It had its first flight on 16 November 1939 by Vickers’ Chief Test Pilot Captain Joseph ‘Mutt’ Summers. Afterwards, it was dispatched to 149 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall shortly before it took part in the Battle of Heligoland Bight. Wellington N2980 went on to serve with 37 Squadron at RAF Feltwell, Norfolk
and flew in many day and night raids. Then, a little more than year after it had entered service, it crashed during a flight with 20 Operational Training Unit over Loch Ness after taking off from RAF Lossiemouth on New Year’s Eve, 1940. The plane ditched in the loch and eight crew escaped. However, the rear gunner died when his parachute failed to deploy. The aircraft lay undisturbed until 1976 when a group of American Loch
Ness Monster hunters discovered it. N2980 was raised in September 1985 and delivered to Brooklands later that month by British Aerospace. It is the only surviving Wellington to have seen operational service as a bomber. Its restoration took 100,000 hours and it was decided the fuselage would be only partly covered in fabric to show the geodetic method of construction.
at a terrible cost. Firstly, daytime bombing raids were abandoned in favour of operating under cover of darkness, though major operations didn’t recommence until March 1940 with the threat of invasion from Germany into Britain. The second outcome was the Wellington quickly received upgrades that included self-sealing fuel tanks and the retractable
ventral turret was replaced by a gun on either side of the aircraft to defend itself from side-on attacks. With these modifications to the
Brooklands-built Wellington and the RAF’s change in tactics, the bomber went to
be a very reliable aircraft and the only one to serve throughout the entire war. It was retired from frontline duties in October 1943 but carried on working as a transporter, crew trainer and maritime patrol aircraft searching for submarines. It even went on to be used post-war as a development platform for turbojet engines.
Wings under construction. Although a medium bomber, the Wellington grew in size and weight from its original brief set out as early as 1932 to when the first prototype flew in 1936.
JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2020 | BROOKLANDS BULLETIN 25
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