How the collection came to be
Canadian Warplane Heritage began, as these things usually do, with a few friends and one aeroplane. Dennis Bradley and Alan Ness went looking for a Spitfire and came back with a Fairey Firefly from Australia, bought in October 1971 according to the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame. They brought in Peter Matthews and John Weir as partners. Mindful of the liabilities of flying a warbird privately, the four set up a non-profit body named Canadian Warplane Heritage. The Firefly was test-flown on 4 June 1972, and that year the group moved into part of a hangar at Hamilton Airport. A Chipmunk followed, then a Seafire, Corsair, Harvard and Tiger Moth. Hangar 4, and later Hangar 3 for restoration, gave the collection and its volunteers a permanent home.
In 1975 the B-25J Mitchell arrived. The museum had found it abandoned at Wilmington, Delaware, and its arrival reputedly involved a mock strafing of the airfield with watermelons. The Lysander and Cessna Crane came the same year. In 1977 two things happened. The museum acquired Lancaster FM213, which had stood for years on a concrete pedestal outside Royal Canadian Legion Branch 109 at Goderich, and Alan Ness was killed when the Firefly he was flying at the Canadian International Air Show crashed into Lake Ontario. The Lancaster was lifted to Hamilton by a Canadian Forces Chinook of 450 Squadron, which treated the job as a heavy-lift training exercise. It reached the museum in 1979 and, after eleven years of volunteer work, flew again on 24 September 1988 in front of 20,000 people.
Fire struck on 15 February 1993. Most of Hangar 3 burned, and with it the administrative offices, the engineering records, all the ground equipment and five aircraft: the Hurricane, Avenger, Auster, Stinson 105 and Spitfire. The Lancaster was standing on jacks only feet from the flames. It was hours before anyone could fit its wheels and tow it clear. The Fleet Finch and Bolingbroke restoration projects were also saved. With money from all three levels of government, the museum then built the present 108,000 sq ft delta-wing building, which its patron, the Prince of Wales, opened on 26 April 1996.
The collection has since grown back past forty aircraft, including replacements for some of the 1993 losses. The Avenger is now TBM-3E 53858, a former Californian fire-bomber and New Brunswick budworm sprayer acquired in 2009, and a Spitfire arrived in 1997 when TE214 came on loan from the national collection. Ownership of TE214 passed to the museum in October 2022. Dakota FZ692, a 437 Squadron veteran of Normandy and the Rhine crossing, was donated in May 2014. Later that summer FM213 flew the Atlantic to RAF Coningsby and spent about six weeks touring the United Kingdom alongside the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight's PA474. It returned to Hamilton on 29 September 2014.
The museum is still run largely by volunteers, with a paid staff since 1978, and funded mainly by members and donors. Its aircraft carry the names of particular men. FM213 is dedicated to P/O Andrew Mynarski VC of 419 Squadron, Canso 11084 to F/L David Hornell VC of 162 Squadron, and Spitfire TE214 to S/L Thomas DeCourcy DFC of 443 Squadron. Bolingbroke 10117, rebuilt from the remains of eight aircraft salvaged in Manitoba, will wear the markings of No. 119 'City of Hamilton' Squadron. Restoration continues alongside the flying: the Tracker and a Tiger Moth are being returned to flying condition, and the Spitfire is due to follow.
