Qualla: Bomber Command Museum of Canada

Bomber Command Museum of Canada: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Their average age was 23. Roughly 50,000 Canadians served in RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War, and more than 10,000 of them never came home. The aircrew who climbed into Halifaxes and Lancasters knew the arithmetic better than anyone: in the worst months of 1943 and 1944, fewer than one in four would survive a tour of 30 operations. They flew anyway. Eight decades later, on a flat patch of southern Alberta prairie in the town of Nanton, one of their aircraft is still running. FM159, an Avro Lancaster built at Malton, Ontario in 1944, fires up all four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines on summer afternoons. She is one of only seventeen complete Lancasters left in the world, and one of only four that move under their own power. The Bomber Command Museum of Canada built itself around her - first to save her from rusting on a concrete pad, then to honor the men whose names fill the memorial wall outside.

Bomber Command Museum of Canada: T for Tommy

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

FM159 wears the markings of a different Lancaster - F2-T, callsign T for Tommy, the aircraft in which Squadron Leader Ian Bazalgette earned a posthumous Victoria Cross over France on 4 August 1944. Bazalgette, born in Calgary, was 25. With his bomber on fire and two crewmen wound...

Bomber Command Museum of Canada: The Restoration

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The town of Nanton bought FM159 for $513 in 1960. She had been a maritime patrol aircraft and a photo survey platform, then a gate guardian, and finally surplus. For a quarter century she sat on concrete beside Highway 2, three Lancasters' worth of Alberta weather working into he...

Bomber Command Museum of Canada: The Memorial Wall

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Outside the hangar stands a long wall of polished granite, etched with the names of Canadians killed serving with Bomber Command. There are more than 10,000 of them. The wall does not separate the dead by rank, by squadron, or by year. It does not editorialize about strategic bom...

Bomber Command Museum of Canada: The Engine Run

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Several times each summer, the volunteers open the hangar doors and roll FM159 out onto the apron. The starting sequence is slow and deliberate. One Merlin coughs, then catches, then settles into the unmistakable burble that anyone who has heard a Lancaster on film recognizes. Th...

Bomber Command Museum of Canada: The Other Aircraft

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

FM159 dominates the hangar, but she is not alone. A de Havilland Mosquito sits under restoration, its laminated wood structure being rebuilt rib by rib. A Halifax tail turret, an Avro Anson, a Bristol Bolingbroke, and a long line of aero engines - Merlins, Hercules, Wasps - fill ...