Ireand's Largest

摘要

A wartime taxiway provides a smooth approach to a pair of hangars on a former airfield southwest of Belfast, Northern Ireland. This is Long Kesh, on the edge of Lisburn, home to the largest aircraft collection in all of Ireland. The Ulster Aviation Society (UAS) acquired its first airframe in 1984 when kit salvaged a Grumman Wildcat from the waters of Portmore Lough. The aircraft had encountered difficulties on takeoff from Long Kesh. None of the team that extracted the Wildcat from the waters could have envisaged that one day the Society would be running such an impressive gathering of aircraft and artefacts fron the very site the fighter had started its last sortie. From late 1941 Long Kesh was home to various RAF units, operating such types as Bristol Beauforts, Curtiss Tomahawks, Lockheed Hudsons and Westland Lysanders. From the spring of 1944 it was also used by the Fleet Air Arm, mostly receiving or dispatching frontline units to aircraft carrier: cruising off Belfast.