During World War II, the US built more than 18,000 B-24 Liberator aircraft.
Australia bought 247 of the long-range heavy bombers, which were a key part of the Allied effort against the Japanese in the South-West Pacific.
Just eight remain, with the only one in the southern hemisphere housed and displayed since 1995 in a working museum inside a historic WW II hangar at Werribee.
Over the past 23 years volunteers have put more than 250,000 hours into restoring it – and recently, the B-24 Liberator Memorial Australia was accredited by Museums Australia (Victoria).
The project goes back to 1988, when an incorporated fund was established to create a national memorial to the aircraft. A search was begun to find a Liberator to restore and display.
Dave Miller, the memorial’s future development co-ordinator, said that in 1991, the group found a Liberator fuselage that had been on a property in Moe for 47 years.
“The owner, George Toye, bought it as scrap in 1948-49. He stayed in it over seven or eight years while he built a home,” he said. “It never saw active service. It was one of 50 used for training at the RAAF base in Tocumwal. We sourced the wings from PNG – they had come off a USAAF Liberator.”
It took five days to remove the fuselage from the property, said Dave, an ex-production supervisor and quality manager who worked at Avalon Airfield for 32 years.
“It was amazing that people could see the potential back then, but once we’d acquired it, interest really grew because now we had something to work on.
“We went on a recruitment drive. We targeted people who had family connections to the Liberator, we looked for old log books, gathered photos.”
Four years ago, ex-academic Lyn Gorman visited the memorial. Her father had been a Liberator pilot and she became fascinated with the project. The committee ultimately convinced her to take on the role of president.
“We had a clear idea of the direction we wanted to go, and looked for experts in different areas and recruited them – square pegs in square holes,” Dave said.
“Lyn was very keen on museum accreditation and drove the administrative work that was needed, but it was an intellectual minefield for me – I had to learn museum-speak.”
The museum also holds a collection of other aircraft, photos, books and personal memorabilia dated from the late 1930s through to 1947, providing a fascinating insight to the wartime experiences of crew and pilots.
The memorial is on the corner of Geelong Road and Farm Road, Werribee, and is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays between 9.30am and 3.30pm.
