Last surviving German Dornier bomber to go to Cosford
The remains of the last surviving German Dornier bomber from the Second World War are to be moved to a new home as the restoration continues.
The aircraft was hauled from the depths of the English Channel in June last year and is undergoing painstaking restoration at RAF Cosford.
Work is currently being carried out on the Dornier's forward fuselage, which has already been de-riveted and separated from the tail boom, which suffered major damage on the seabed.
Michelle Morgans, spokesman for the RAF Cosford Museum, said: "There should be two major milestones coming up in the next few months.
"Volunteers are currently working on the front fuselage section, which should be completed in a couple of months.
"We're then hoping to get the whole plane in to the conservation centre by the autumn."
Once the plane is back to its former glory, it will form a centrepiece at Cosford's sister museum at Hendon in London.
But those hoping to see it will need patience, for the wreckage will remain in the tunnels for several years while staff spray it with a citric acid-based solution to combat the damage caused by its decades on the seabed.
A team of apprentices at the museum also removed some of the sea growth from the metal using plastic scrapers.
Bosses still do not know how long the conservation work will take to complete.
The Dornier was shot down on 26th August 1940 and came to rest off the Kent coast.
It took a team of 50 specialists from marine recovery company SeaTech to finally lift the wreckage from the English Channel in one piece on June 10, 2013, before it was taken to RAF Museum Cosford.
It is now the world's only surviving Do-17.
Visitors to RAF Cosford can watch the conservation work taking place in two specially-constructed tunnels.
Volunteers from the museum's aerospace museum society work on Dornier components every Tuesday and Thursday, from 10.30am to 3pm, in the test flight hangar.
