The mark 1 Short Sunderland t9044 is at the very core of the trusts success and support is now required to raise the aircraft. A separate fund raising appeal has been started that will encourage both corporate and private donation and in kind provision of services.

Traditional business thinking would see the Flying Boat as our ‘unique selling proposition or ‘USP’  -it is genuinely unique and the reason we get visitors from across the world. The Sunderland is our ‘Brand’ and it works extremely well for us.

The recent (2013) raising of a Dornier aircraft the from the English Channel bears witness to the extraordinary worldwide interest and regard for conversation of genuine wartime relics the RAF museum have already arranged contact with the lifting team.

Sunderland T9044 has been the catalyst for the creation of two existing visitor centres which this project will combine and greatly enhance into a single Heritage Centre housed in the grounds of the fine Georgian building -the Royal Dockyard Garrison Chapel.

This aeroplane is the reason that more than a hundred people have become volunteers over time and more than one hundred and fifty have become members: these from around the world each contributing £25 per year for membership. The same contagious effect has seen the formation of a dive group, a model making group, an oral history group, an archive group, a coffee shop group and so it grows.