The Flight Shed exhibition tells the stories of the pilots and navigators who flew the aircraft.
Listen to their personal stories as they recall what it was like to fly during the war and what the atmosphere was like at Brooklands.
The centrepiece of the Flight Shed is the Museum’s Hawker Hurricane which was built in 1940. Other complete aircraft on display include the Hawker Fury, Hawk, Hunter and Harrier and Sopwith Camel.
Get up close and sit in the pilot’s seats of the Hawker Hunter and Harrier, have a go at deciphering Morse Code and step inside the Vickers Wellington walkthrough. With level access onto the Finishing Straight, these live aircraft will sometimes be moved out of the Flight Shed for engine runs and taxying displays.
Plan your visit
Factory Square, Entry via Brooklands Aircraft
Factory upper deck Museum Map >
Step free access from Finishing Straight and lift in Brooklands Aircraft Factory
Accessibility at the Museum >
DISCOVER THE STORIES
Tales from Brooklands:
Hilda Hewlett
If you take a walk down Vardens Road in Battersea, when you get to number 4 you will see a Blue Plaque in honour of “Hilda Hewlett (1864–1943) Pilot and Aircraft Maker”. Hilda was born in Vauxhall, went to school in South Kensington
and lived much of her married life in St John’s Wood. At the National Art Training School, she specialized in woodwork, metalwork and needlework. Aged 19 she travelled to Egypt with her parents, and two years later trained as a nurse for a year in Berlin.
The plaque is in Battersea because that is where she and her business partner Gustave Blondeau had their aeroplane building business from 1912 to 1914.
DISCOVER THE STORIES
Tales from Brooklands:
Sir Thomas Sopwith
Without any training, Thomas Sopwith made his first attempt at flying on 22nd October 1910 in a Howard Wright biplane. He managed a distance of approximately 300 yards before crashing and writing off the machine.
A month later bought a Howard Wright Monoplane. On his first day with this machine, he started with a few ground runs, then a few short straight hops at low level. After lunch, he managed some circuits of Brooklands and, later that same day, achieved a Royal Aero Club Certificate (number 31) and so became a qualified pilot. That evening he took up his first passenger.
DISCOVER THE STORIES
Tales from Brooklands:
Arthus Whitten Brown
It is June 15th, the Imperial War Museum in London, and once again, a man stands alone, leaning heavily on his walking cane, looking up at the Vickers Vimy – the first aircraft to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. He has been here on this day every year for some time. Nobody recognises him. Even if they knew him as Mr Brown, they would probably be none the wiser. If they knew him to be the Brown in Alcock and Brown, very many would know him to be one of the most important aviation pioneers of the twentieth century.
DISCOVER THE STORIES
Tales from Brooklands:
Sir Edwin Alliot Verdon-Roe
Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe was born in 1877 in Eccles, Lancashire, he was the son of Edwin Roe, a doctor, and Annie Verdon and had a younger brother Humphrey Verdon Roe. Throughout his life he was generally called Alliott Roe or A.V. Roe. His given surname was Roe, rather than Verdon-Roe. In 1933, at the age of 56 he formally changed his surname by deed-poll to Verdon-Roe in honour of his mother who had died in 1921.
