IN February 1939, the McLellan Galleries in Glasgow hosted an RAF aircraft exhibition, reported at the time to be "probably the most complete ever arranged in Britain".
It was opened by Sir Kingsley Wood, Secretary of State for Air, who endured a bumpy flight from London to carry out the duty.
On display was "a wide range of component parts of the airframes of modern military aircraft and aero-engines", all aimed at local manufacturers, to see if they could make the parts required to put a Hawker Hurricane or Spitfire into battle.
Split into four rooms, the exhibition showed samples of components and materials, sectioned working models of the innards of Hurricanes and Spitfires, and aero-engines built by Rolls-Royce and Armstrong-Siddeley. One of the rooms was dedicated to the work of apprentices.
Elsewhere that day reports focused on bombings in Madrid, terrorism in Palestine and the advance of Japan on Hainan islands.
The contribution of local manufacturers was to be badly needed soon after.
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article