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When a UK aviation museum asked AkzoNobel to help protect one of its remarkable aviation history exhibits, the last thing on anyone’s mind was recommending an exterior gloss paint supplied the company’s Dulux brand – but that’s exactly what happened.
It all began in April 2024 with a call from the volunteer-run de Havilland Aircraft Museum, where a prized aviation history exterior exhibit was in desperate need of preservation work.
The aircraft in question was a de Havilland DH.110 Sea Vixen – the first British two-seater combat aircraft to achieve supersonic speed. Easily identified by its twin boom-tailed design, it was flown by the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm from the 1950s to the early 1970s.
“After many years as an outside exhibit, the aircraft wasn’t looking its best,” explains William Gutch, a Specification Development Manager for the Dulux brand. “The Sea Vixen team had explored spraying the aircraft, but with no hangar space large enough to accommodate the airframe, a decision was made to explore completing the task in-situ.”
Aviation history conservation
Spraying in the open air was out of the question (ruling out a dedicated aerospace coating), so another solution was needed. “I was made aware that the plane would never be made airworthy, so rather than a restoration project, the task would be one of conservation/protection,” continues Gutch. “I felt that if we looked at the project in the same way as we would any exterior metal surface, a solution could be found within our range of Dulux Trade durable exterior coatings.”
The trustees of the museum were also keen to preserve a level of colour authenticity on the aviation history exhibit, so Gutch secured the help of colleagues Steven Plowman (Technical Support Manager) and Abbie Churchill (Senior Technical Support Manager), to assist with product selection and colour advice.
The brief was to replicate the colour of an original ‘aged’ panel to preserve its ‘in-service’ brightness and hue and not recreate a factory-perfect finish. After exhaustive trials, Dulux Trade Weathershield undercoat and exterior gloss were finally chosen because of their durability and excellent coverage rates. And, remarkably, the team was able to use vintage Ministry of Defence-specific colours, as they were still available on AkzoNobel’s in-store tinting software via the archive.
Superb results
A team of volunteers has been lovingly completing the work, which isn’t quite over yet. “I’m delighted that the Vixen team was able to achieve superb results,” continues Gutch. “In fact, many visitors have even commented they thought the aircraft had been sprayed.”
Dulux products have also been used to repaint several of the museum’s outbuildings, while the company has also been approached for assistance in refurbishing one of its three iconic aviation history Mosquito aircraft.
“The technical advances made by de Havilland from the very beginning of aeronautics to the first passenger jet airliner should be celebrated and enjoyed by generations to come,” says Gutch. “Preserving these aircraft will enable visitors to marvel at the ingenuity of the human race and help maintain the heritage of a pioneering company who were at the very forefront of world aviation.”
Check out more articles like this in the latest issue of Protective Coatings Expert
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