There is a store for RAF Cosford full of thousands of interesting items, from wings, planes, to gadgets hiding blades and maps etc. It's in a secret location on a Military base but ahead of the collection slowly being moved to RAF Cosford, they invited the Express & Star in to take a look. The move is being made possible due to a large grant they have been given, and the items will in the near future be available to be seen by all.
00:00We're here at a secret location, a brilliant storage facility where there are thousands of brilliant, fantastic objects belonging to the RAF that will be going to the Westmillan's RAF Museum in Cosford.
00:17They're being moved from this facility over the next few years, lots of staff and volunteers working very hard to do so and we've been very lucky and fortunate to be invited down today and get up close and personal with them.
00:29Let's go and chat to curator Ewan and have a look at what they've got.
00:32We're at MOD Stafford today where thousands of historic objects are being moved from storage to the Westmillan's RAF Museum in Cosford with curator Ewan.
00:44Thanks ever so much for having us today. First of all, tell us the project that is going on at the moment here.
00:50Well, everything you see in this hangar here has to be packed away and brought to the new hub building at Cosford.
01:01So we've got a little bit of a job to do because there's over 50,000 items catalogued in our system here and that's only the stuff that's catalogued.
01:12There's thousands of other items as well. So it's a bit of a movement job.
01:18Tell us some of the things you've got here. You can see a couple of planes behind us but tell everyone else about the more intricate things you've got and special things.
01:25Well, we've got everything to do with the Royal Air Force here, which goes from large aircraft to the ordnance and instrumentation that would be inside the aircraft to smaller things, personal items or items that folk would use in their trade.
01:45So tools, that sort of thing. So it was a whole gamut of items.
01:51What we've got here are some of the escape and evasion aids. These were thought up by MI9 and would help prisoners of war escape.
02:03And what we've got here is what looks like a perfectly normal comb.
02:10But inside this, if you were to break it open, there's actually a hacksaw blade, which could help you escape.
02:18Now, let's say you have escaped. How do you know where to go?
02:23Well, you've also been sent, in a comfort package, a pipe.
02:28And inside the pipe, hidden, is a little map, which will help you navigate your way around the countryside.
02:37Last but not least, though, how do you know which way north is?
02:43Well, also in the same comfort package, you might have got some of these safety pins.
02:50And what is not obvious to start with is that these have actually been magnetised.
02:55So if you dangle them from, say, a piece of string or put them on a piece of paper in a bit of water, they will actually point to north.
03:04This project, moving them into the new collections hub at RAF Cotsford, how excited, first of all, is everyone buying this?
03:12And the public are going to get to see these objects for the first time ever.
03:16Well, this is a thing that I have been up in this store for over 25 years now.
