42

Pensioners Club outing to the Spitfire Visitor Centre at Blackpool Airport today. It is housed in Hangar 42, which is an original WW2 hangar, dating back to 1939. Back then, the airport was known as RAF Squires Gate and was home to a squadron of night fighters tasked with intercepting German bombers heading for the docks at Liverpool, Preston or Barrow. It was also a training base for a lot of Polish aircrew and was blessed with a tarmac runway thanks to the presence of a Vickers factory building Wellington bombers. Unfortunately, that is long since gone and a Morrisons supermarket now stands on the site.
Their planes are all replicas, in various degrees of realism. This Mark IX Spitfire looked most like the real thing, having a pretty complete cockpit. There were a lot of other - smaller - exhibits though which were from WW2. Most interesting was the small room dedicated to the work of local aeronautical archaeologists, which contained some fascinating items that had been unearthed locally.
Due to the size of our party (60+) we had the place to ourselves and were split into smaller groups for the tour. All the staff are volunteers, but were very knowledgable and informative about the exhibits. It was a little bit rushed as there were so many people, but we were free to wander around at our leisure after lunch - which was also provided.
Unfortunately, the weather was atrocious so we couldn’t see any of the outside exhibits. And, because we were in an 85 year old hangar, it wasn’t exactly warm! Definitely a place to come back to on a warmer day for a proper look round.