Ulster Aviation Society

The Ulster Aviation Society keeps nearly forty aircraft and rotorcraft in a former Second World War Short Brothers hangar at Long Kesh, on the edge of Lisburn. The building once produced Short Stirling bombers and now stands as a scheduled monument. The society began in 1968 at Newtownards Aerodrome before moving to RAF Langford Lodge in 1994. In 2005 it relocated again to Long Kesh, where it occupies the only remaining hangars on the site. Early members such as Ernie Cromie and Ray Burrows recovered wrecks from crash sites across Northern Ireland. Their work led to the society’s first full airframe, a Grumman Wildcat lifted from Portmore Lough in 1984. The society is run entirely by volunteers and holds a Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. It has over six hundred and seventy members who restore aircraft, guide visitors and take exhibits to public events. The collection includes a restored tail-gun turret, cockpit sections from a Tornado and a Canberra, and a Learjet 45 test airframe built by Short in Belfast. There are themed display rooms, a library and flight simulators with virtual-reality controls. The volunteers prefer to call the site a collection rather than a museum so visitors feel free to sit in cockpits and touch the exhibits. Visitors find the huge hangar filled with military jets, trainers and helicopters alongside civil aircraft and rotorcraft. A Blackburn Buccaneer still wears its original paint after a six-kilometre flight lasting ninety-two seconds. A Hawker Sea Hawk and a Supermarine Spitfire replica stand among Short aircraft like the SB.5 and Tucano. Outside the hangar lie vehicles used by Short Brothers and the RAF, including a Bedford fuel bowser and a Thornycroft crane. The site’s wartime past and modern restoration work sit side by side in the quiet Lisburn landscape.