It was our 6th wedding anniversary recently and for a day out (weather has been awful here with floods etc.) we took a trip to the RAF Museum at RAF Cosford. Always a great day out and recently there have been a few new additions to the museum. We had some lunch when we arrived as the traffic was diabolical on the way (and even worse on the way back) and then we took a slow wander around the museum.
Now as museums go Cosford has some nice and rare exhibits. Take the JU-88 for example, it is one of only 2 complete examples in the whole world. It is things like this that make it worth visiting in my opinion. The museum is actually free to visit, but you do pay for parking even if you have a Blue Badge and well the parking is pretty expensive. We paid £7.50 to park and it is steep – food costs were pretty high as well, but we did enjoy the meal. It is here how they make their money to actually keep the museum going and for me personally, it IS worth it but only if you visit say once a year…
Seen above is the JU-88 I mentioned, and this plane was actually flown into Scotland in the Second World War and the details are still pretty much under wraps! This is a night fighter variant and you can see the radar antenna on the front of the aircraft above. It was tested and it brought quite a few improvements to the Allied countermeasures in the latter stages of the war.
Seen above is the Daimler Benz DB 610 which is a massive 71 ltr piston engines comprising 2 x DB 605 inverted V12 engines geared together. Whilst the impressive power output of around 2750 hp was pretty good, the engines were heavy and unreliable. I couldn’t find this engine on our last visit so was glad to see it this time, though it was tucked away in a corner. A lot of the exhibits seem to have been cleaned up and presented better this time around but we did learn that the refurb of one of the hangers mean less space and some exhibits being moved outside…
So to sum up – great day out, could be cheaper to park but overall well worth a visit. I have not even mentioned the Cold War hanger and exhibits at all this time around but it is very well displayed in there. If you get the chance to pop over to Cosford then give it a go!
