A British family donated a hand-built Lancaster cockpit after their father spent 40 years building it.
The family of a Berkshire man have donated a hand-built Lancaster bomber cockpit replica to the RAF Visitor Center after he spent almost 40 years building it in his garden shed.Leon Ellison, a retired electronics engineer from Binfield, began the project after being fascinated by the 1955 film The Dam Busters as a child.Ellison spent nearly 20 years researching Lancaster bombers before devoting the next two decades to building an exact replica of the aircraft’s flight deck by hand.His family kept the cockpit inside a home-built hangar until his death in June 2024 at the age of 77.His son, Adrian Ellison, told the Bracknell News that his father devoted much of his life to learning about Lancaster bombers.“He visited every single person still in existence,” Adrian said.“When he started building cockpits from scratch we thought he was crazy but he was really a genius.”The family have now donated the replica to the RAF Metheringham Airfield Visitor Center in Lincolnshire, where staff plan to convert it into a working flight simulator for visitors.The simulator will recreate the famous Dam Busters raid carried out by RAF Lancaster bombers during World War II.According to the family, Ellison always hoped to convert the cockpit into a fully functioning simulator but died before the project was completed.Most parts of the cockpit were completely hand-built, including the detailed controls and gauges. Ellison also recreated the sound of the Lancaster engine using a frequency device.Adrian described watching the crane lift the cockpit out of the hangar as an emotional moment.“He wanted to build this cockpit to teach others about the Lancaster and the simulator was his dream,” Adrian said. .“It seems right that it would be displayed in the RAF Visitor Center which was home to the Lancaster.”Ian Brett of the visitor centre, quoted by the Bracknell News, described the replica as “an absolutely brilliant piece of engineering”.The center was once home to 106 Squadron’s fleet of Lancaster bombers.