The Royal Air Force Museum in Colindale unveiled three new aircraft this morning.


The Grahame Park Way museum unveiled the Snipe, Albatros and R.E.8 planes at the Shuttleworth Aerodrome in Bedfordshire.

More than 100 aviation enthusiasts turned out to witness the official unveiling.

The Albatros and R.E.8 will fly in an air show in Bedfordshire this weekend and then all three aircraft will be on public display at the museum.

Ajay Srivastava, who works at the RAF museum, and attended the unveiling, said: “It went really well.

“We managed to miss the rain. It was great.

“There were people from all over the world there.


“These aircraft have a big international following.”

The planes, which are all either reproductions or reconstructions of the originals, each took three years to be built.

The parts were made in New Zealand by teams of six aviation experts.

The pieces were then transported to the UK where they were assembled in time for this morning’s unveiling.

The R.E.8 was critical to the RAF’s operations on the Western Front during the First World War.

The Sopwith Snipe was the RAF’s standard fighter of the early inter-war years and the Albatros DV was the most important German single-seat fighter during the First World War.