Sola Flyhistorik Museum

[bvs]

During our June holiday in Norway we visited the wonderful Sola Flyhistorik Museum at the old Sola Flying Boat Base,some extremely rare birds at this museum and a friendly staff member took us for an impromptu visit to the workshop.

Outside with the old slipway on the right



Caproni 310 - lovely restoration from a rusty old fuselage (basically)



Quite a nice looking a/c but dangerous for its crews



Looking in through nose glazing one can see the nav and bomb aimers rudder hand controls for the bombing run.



A pair of Caproni 310's at Sola



Caproni Turret/Gun controls



Looking forward - what a fantastic restoration

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He 115 Fuselage



He 115 + PBY


Before



And After



Convair 440





Crewroom 'Salute' to fellow NATO members

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And so into the workshop where we were very kindly shown round by Siegfried H (ex F84/F86 and F104 pilot) who is involved with restoration of the He 115 and Norwegian built Tiger Moth (+ possibly other projects).

Arado 96 - which is looking fantastic and nearing completion.





Arado 66 - fuselage is looking lovely



He 115 as recovered (from not far away )



He 115 Cockpit and Kanzel (Chancel/nose compartment)




Close up of the Kanzel




Close up of the cockpit section

[bvs]

We could not get access to the Wings/Centre Section - the wings are in the building which was originally the 'water tank' for initial storage of all components.
The Centre section has (not surprisingly) dissimilar metal corrosion and will need fairly extensive remedial work before the aircraft can be reassembled fully.
The alloy fuselage parts we saw are in amazing condition considering how long they were at the bottom of the Fjord.

There is a website for more info on the He115 recovery and restoration - https://heinkel115.com/?lang=en

[Mustang531]

Thanks for sharing these, interesting shots and a museum I've yet to visit. When I visited the museum at Gardermoen in 1988, there were many interesting types on show. But an impromptu tour of a storage hangar contained many that had come out of a fjord, including four Ju52/3ms. Looking at these great shots, like most Norwegian museums, it's a mixture of military and civil. Nice to see the CV440 LN-KLK. Back in 1987, it attended the Fighter Meet at North Weald and I enjoyed a 25 minute joy ride in it, for the princely sum of fifteen quid. Happy days.

[bvs]

Thanks M531
Lucky you getting a 440 trip (jealous I am )
When I was based at Brawdy in the late 1970's we used to get a regular similar USN C - 131 on its 'milk run' to supply the NAVFAC 'Oceanographic Survey' facility (or whatever the cover name for the Sub tracking station was in those days )

[Vulture 01]

I managed atrip here when on a business trip quite a few years ago. Progress on some of the wrecks has been astonishing. What's in the main hangars is pretty good too. Thanks for posting

[bvs]

Thanks for the kind comment Vulture
I forgot to post any shots from the 'Jet' Hangar,I might have a look through them tomorrow and see what we have got,I had to use images from my OH's camera as mine has ended up with a bad 'mark' on each image .

[Petepilot]

Very nice, thanks for sharing!

[Doddy754]

Thanks for posting, looks a great place to visit some very interesting airframes being worked on.

[bvs]

Many thanks for the kind words Pete and Doddy.
One of the things that impressed us about Norway was an apparent lack of petty officialdom,we actually visited this museum twice - the first time was on our first day in the country - it was sunny and warm,our hotel was almost right next door to the museum so we popped round there,it was officially still closed (seasonal).The main door was partly open but there were quite a few staff around getting the place ready for opening + the airshow.
We asked a lady if it was ok to look around the main hangar and she said ''sure go ahead'',we just had a good look around the main hangar and said many thanks to her when we left - she said ''have you done the small rooms ?'' we said no as we were going to return on an official opening day near the end of our holiday - it was nice to get some pictures without any other visitors around .