South African Air Force Museum


The South African Air Force Museum houses exhibits and restores material related to the history of the South African Air Force. The museum is divided into three locations, AFB Swartkop outside Pretoria, AFB Ysterplaat in Cape Town and at the Port Elizabeth airport.

Exhibits

AFB Swartkop

is home to the headquarters and largest of the three museum locations, occupying at least five hangars.
It contains a number of Dassault Mirage IIIs, Dassault Mirage F1s, Atlas Cheetahs and various other historical aircraft as well as aviation-related items on display such as ejection seats, uniforms, aircraft engines, aircraft weaponry and a Cheetah C flight simulator.
Aircraft on display
is home to the last airworthy Avro Shackleton. The Shackleton has been grounded for several years already though, as there are not enough qualified aircrew and the remaining airframe hours are insufficient to train new crew, apart from the obvious concern of preservation of this historic aircraft.
The Douglas C-47 Dakota here, is the aircraft used in 1952 by the SAAF to help Professor J. L. B. Smith acquire a coelacanth fish specimen from the Comoros Islands.

File:Avro Shackleton Mk.3 SAAF.jpg| Shackleton 1722 at Ysterplaat
File:Inside hangar at Ysterplaat AFB.jpg| Mirage F1 at Ysterplaat
File:Display at SAAF Museum, Ysterplaat.jpg|Display at Ysterplaat

Aircraft on display
There are few exhibits at the Port Elizabeth Airport branch of the museum because of the limited hangar space available.
Static exhibits are housed in the original 42-Air School Air Gunnery Training Centre used during the Joint Air Training Scheme in World War II.
Active restoration is being performed on a number of North American Harvards and there is a project to restore an Airspeed Oxford.
One of the more unusual exhibits is a Jorg IV Skimmerfoil ground effect craft.