Lancaster KB882 Officially Joins National Air Force Museum of Canada Today

Lancaster KB882 Prepares for Her New Home…

The City of Edmundston, New Brunswick will officially hand over Avro Lancaster AR.10 KB882 to the National Air Force Museum of Canada in a special ceremony due to take place today. Following the event, a team will begin carefully dismantling the Lancaster, with help from the RCAF, for transport to her new home in Trenton, Ontario. The process will likely take three or four weeks.

The City of Edmundston saved the rare, combat veteran bomber in 1964, and placed her on outdoor display at nearby Manawaska Municipal Airport for the net five decades. She has been well loved, but despite the city’s best efforts, it is a nearly impossible task to preserve such an aircraft in the elements indefinitely. Lacking the resources to bring her inside, and worried about further deterioration, the City reluctantly decided to place the Lancaster up for tender back in 2015. The winning bidder, the Alberta Aviation Museum in Edmonton, Alberta, pulled out last year when they took full stock of what the project would involve. The National Air Force Museum happened to have made the second highest bid for the aircraft, and gladly accepted the responsibility of preserving KB882. They expect the restoration to take about seven years and hope to have her ready for display by 2024 to take part in the celebration of the RCAF’s centenary. The museum has a strong track record for completing major restorations, not least of which is Handley Page Halifax NA337, the world’s only complete example of the type, so they are more than up to the task of returning the Lancaster to her former glory. The only question remaining is whether KB882 stays in her post-war, Arctic Reconnaissance configuration. She is the last Lancaster in the world to retain this guise, and it is arguable that her twenty-year history protecting the Canadian homeland outweighs the handful of missions she flew against Germany in the dying days of WWII. It is a difficult decision for any museum to make, as the ‘sexier’, wartime role is a much easier one to sell… but it is surely better to provide a memorial to the largely unheralded aircrew who helped protect Canada during the darkest days of the Cold War. We already have other Lancasters telling the WWII story, but only one remains to tell the Cold War Warriors tale…

WarbirdsNews has produced several reports on this aircraft over the past couple of years. Please click HERE if you wish to see them.