Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Classic Aircraft 07/2011

Following several weeks of preparation work inside the American Air Museum at Duxford, the Imperial War Museum's b-17g Mary Alice has been moved into Hangar 5 for the start of a programme of conservation work scheduled to take up to 16 months. Rather than take down the glass windows and supporting structure at the front of the AAM, museum staff calculated that it would be possible to dismantle the airframe such that it could be removed clinically via the fire doors. Thus, the engines were removed, the wings taken off to the wing roots, the tailplane and rudder removed and the ball turret extracted from the lower fuselage. To support the aircraft once the main undercarriage legs were no longer in place, a castoring wheeled 'undercarriage' was bolted to the main spar, while the tailwheel had a long steering arm attached. Thus stripped down, the remaining fuselage section weighed no more than three tonnes. More importantly, it was sufficiently narrow to be able to pass through the fire escape doors, although the clearances would still be very tight.

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