About
The Wings Museum occupies a 12,000 square foot hangar-like former farm building on Brantridge Lane, in the wooded country between the West Sussex villages of Balcombe and Handcross, and is among the most quietly affecting Second World War collections in the south of England. It began at Redhill Aerodrome and moved to its present home by 2011, growing from a private accumulation of aviation relics into a registered charity staffed entirely by volunteers, many of whom carried out the recoveries and restorations themselves. That origin shapes the whole museum: almost everything on display was either donated by veterans and their families or dug from a crash site, and the labelling consistently names the individual airmen involved rather than treating the aircraft as anonymous machinery.
The centrepiece is the fuselage and cockpit of a Douglas C-47 Dakota that flew on D-Day and was later used in the filming of the HBO series Band of Brothers. Visitors can walk through its interior, which anchors the museum's D-Day and Beyond display and conveys the cramped reality of a paratrooper's final minutes before jumping more directly than any caption could. Around it the collection ranges widely across the air war, with sections on the Home Front, the Blitz, the Home Guard, bomb disposal, air raid shelters, RAF Fighter and Bomber Commands, the US Eighth Air Force, the Luftwaffe and the Eastern Front.
A distinctive strength is the treatment of recovered wreckage. Rather than cleaning fragments into tidy museum objects, the volunteers present many Eastern Front recoveries within dioramas reconstructing the crash sites as they were found, retaining the mud, the deformation and the sense of a violent ending. Rare survivors include substantial fuselage sections from a Nakajima B5N2 Kate, a type barely represented in Britain, alongside wrecked Hawker Hurricanes and Handley Page Hampdens under long-term restoration. Five Rolls-Royce Merlin engines are held, one deliberately maintained in running order as a living memorial, and German Junkers Jumo 211 and Daimler-Benz powerplants sit alongside them for comparison. A Bristol Beaufighter Mk1f recovered seventy-five years after its crash was restored by the museum's volunteers in 2015.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Check the opening pattern before travelling. The museum runs Tuesday to Sunday for most of the year but drops to Saturdays and Sundays only from just after Remembrance until the spring.
- Last admission is 16:15, and the collection genuinely needs two hours or more, so arriving after about three in the afternoon will leave you rushing.
- Talk to the volunteers. Many of them personally carried out the recoveries and restorations on display, and the museum is far more rewarding if you ask about specific exhibits rather than reading the labels alone.
- The building is a converted agricultural shed in open countryside and is not heated to domestic standards. Wear warm layers outside the summer months.
- Brantridge Lane is narrow with few passing places. Drive slowly, use the on-site parking in the farm yard, and do not attempt to park on the lane itself.
- Arriving by train is possible but awkward: Balcombe station is a little over three kilometres away along country lanes with no pavement for much of the route, so a taxi is sensible.
- There is no café on site. Bring a drink, or plan to eat in Handcross or Balcombe before or after your visit.
- Families should allow time for the Home Front galleries as well as the aircraft, as the reconstructed shelters and domestic interiors often hold children's attention better than the airframes.
Highlights
The D-Day Dakota Fuselage
The fuselage and cockpit of a Douglas C-47 Dakota form the heart of the museum's D-Day and Beyond display, and visitors can walk the length of the interior rather than peering at it from behind a rope. This particular airframe flew operationally on D-Day and was later used during the filming of the HBO series Band of Brothers, giving it an unusual double claim on public memory.
Standing inside the narrow, ribbed tube, with the bucket seats along each side and the jump door at the rear, conveys the physical reality of a parachute drop far more directly than any display panel, and it is consistently what visitors remember afterwards.
Eastern Front Crash Site Dioramas
The museum's most distinctive curatorial decision is to present aircraft recovered from Eastern Front battlefields inside dioramas that reconstruct the crash sites as the recovery teams actually found them.
Rather than stripping, cleaning and remounting the wreckage as tidy artefacts, the volunteers retain the deformation, the soil and the broken geometry of impact, setting the fragments into ground that reproduces the terrain. The effect is markedly different from a conventional aviation gallery: these are presented as the scenes of deaths rather than as engineering specimens, and the accompanying research usually names the crew and establishes what happened to each of them.
The Nakajima B5N2 Kate
Substantial fuselage sections from a Nakajima B5N2, the Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo bomber known to the Allies as Kate, are among the rarest objects in the building and have few if any counterparts in British collections. The type carried out the torpedo attacks at Pearl Harbor and served throughout the Pacific war, yet very little of it survives anywhere, since most examples were destroyed in combat or scrapped after 1945.
Seeing the structure at close range, and at the scale of real aircraft skin and framing rather than a model, gives an unexpectedly concrete sense of a machine usually encountered only in photographs.
Five Rolls-Royce Merlins and a Living Memorial
The museum holds five Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, the powerplant that drove the Spitfire, the Hurricane, the Lancaster and the Mosquito, and one of them is deliberately maintained in running condition as what the volunteers describe as a living memorial.
Keeping an engine of this age serviceable is a continuous undertaking rather than a one-off restoration, and the commitment says a good deal about the museum's character. Displayed alongside them are German powerplants, including a Junkers Jumo 211 and a Daimler-Benz unit, which allows a direct comparison of British and German engineering approaches to the same problem.
Collections
The collection covers Second World War aviation and the British Home Front, built almost entirely from material donated by veterans and their families or recovered from crash sites by the museum's own volunteers. Aircraft holdings range from a walk-through D-Day Douglas C-47 Dakota and rare Nakajima B5N2 fuselage sections to Hawker Hurricanes and Handley Page Hampdens under restoration, supported by five Rolls-Royce Merlin engines and captured German powerplants.
Alongside the airframes sit extensive displays on the Blitz, the Home Guard, bomb disposal, civil defence and rationing.
A strong research tradition links individual objects to named aircrew, and Eastern Front recoveries are shown in dioramas reproducing the crash sites as they were found.
D-Day and Beyond
Built around the walk-through fuselage and cockpit of a C-47 Dakota that flew on D-Day, covering the airborne landings and the campaign in north-west Europe.
The Home Front
Civilian wartime life, the Blitz, air raid shelters, the Home Guard, rationing and bomb disposal.
Recovered from the Eastern Front
Aircraft wreckage recovered from Eastern Front battlefields, presented in dioramas reconstructing the crash sites as found.
Engines of the Air War
Five Rolls-Royce Merlins, one kept in running order, displayed with German Junkers Jumo 211 and Daimler-Benz powerplants.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.