Merlins' magic

Big props keep on turnin' in Canada (via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs ):

A huge crowd gathered in Nanton on Saturday afternoon to watch as the engines of the museum's historic Lancaster bomber were started for the first time in 50 years.

"We fired up a couple of engines, listened to the old Rolls-Royce Merlin (engines)," said 78-year-old retired Royal Canadian Air Force flight engineer Bernie Hazelton, who flew the plane when it was used to patrol the East Coast in the 1950s. "We just let it idle. The crowd enjoyed it."

Volunteer crews at the Nanton Lancaster Society Air Museum worked hundreds of hours to restore two of the plane's four engines to running condition in time for the 50th anniversary of its last flight.

The Lancaster at the Nanton museum was mothballed in 1958, after a postwar career of coastal reconnaissance patrols, search and rescue missions and photography and mapping duties.

Rob Pedersen, president of the Nanton Lancaster Society Air Museum, said they wanted to salute the crews who flew Lancasters after the Second World War.

"It was amazing the hours the team put in," he said of the volunteers who donated time to restore the engines. "They're giving up hours and weekends to preserve history."

Those volunteers will be back at it over the next five or so years, restoring the remaining two engines.

Hazelton, who came from Trenton, Ont., to be in the cockpit when the engines were started, said the day brought back memories of the years he spent patrolling the East Coast during the Cold War, and mapping the Arctic.

The Lancaster, a Canadian-built bomber converted to postwar use in the 1940s, holds a special place in his heart.

"It was such an old workhorse, and because I was so young then," he said, adding part of his duties in the Lancaster in the 1950s was trying to spot enemy submarines. "It was nice talking to old war veterans who flew them."

Pedersen said about 3,500 people attended Saturday's event, which saw the plane's engines started twice.

Here's video of another Lanc with Merlins turning and then taxiing:



And one in flight:



Canada has one of only two flying Lancs in the world, at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum--here are photos of it in flight.