HISTORY, LEGENDS & MYTHOLOGY

Bikaner Maharaja's rare WW One bomber restored

     London: A rare World War One bomber that was discovered in the elephant stable of the palace of the Maharajah of Bikaner, has been restored, thanks to wellknown aircraft explorer Guy Black. The de Havilland DH9 two-seat biplane is the only one in Britain and one of only six remaining in the world, a report in The Telegraph said. Black says that the chance discovery was made by a British backpacker, a keen aircraft enthusiast, who photographed a cannibalised DH9 in a new museum at the Palace of Bikaner in Rajasthan in 1995. On his return to Britain, he circulated his photograph of it and Black, who runs Aero Vintage, a specialist restoration company in Sussex, got to hear about the discovery. Three years later he visited the palace, and on making inquiries about the 1918 aircraft, was told that it did not exist. Further inquiries led him to the palace's former elephant stables, and there, among piles of elephant saddles, the airframe of the DH9 was discovered.

     Black also saw six DH9 wings and several tailfins. "I could not believe my eyes. The DH9 was the most manufactured bomber of the First World War - they made more than 2,000 of them - but they are as rare's as hen's teeth now and there wasn't a single one in a collection in Britain," the paper quoted Black, as saying. Black found the remains of three DH9s that had been given by Britain to the Maharajah of Bikaner in the early 1920s to help him establish an air force under the post-war Imperial Gift Scheme. He bought two of the rotting hulks, restored one of them, and sold it to the Imperial War Museum for nearly a million pounds. The restored plane was unveiled at Duxford, Cambridgeshire, yesterday. Black hopes to restore the other hulk to make fit for flying in the next two years.
-April 20, 2007    

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