The Google Earth satellite imagery of Ratmalana Sri Lanka Air Force base has been recently updated. The Google Earth satellite screen-shot in this post shows the recently renovated and expanded Sri Lanka Air Force Museum. I have crudely numbered the out door exhibits visible in the image. Despite all my Google Earthing, I’m a lousy aircraft spotter. I’m quite sure I can rely on the formidable ID skills of the Rajaratasurfer and the Tinker of Colombo. To simplify the process I’ve numbered the aircraft visible in the image. Hopefully the experts out there will help fill in the info.
11. An Avro
22. Looks like this model of Kfir jet.
The museum website has some good close ups of these aircraft in the form of a slide show sparing me quite a bit of leg work. Given the current state of my life its going to be a while before I get over there. Apparently you can take pictures with prior arrangements. Suresh A. Atapattu has good photos of static airframe displays on airliners.net along with informative descriptions. There are quite a few youtubed TV news segments about it which is the closest you’ll get to a tour without actually going there. I’ve embedded two for your convenience.
Excuse the Airwolf soundtrack.
ITN’s version which claims its Asia’s biggest Airforce museum.
However not all the aircraft in the museum are static exhibits. The SLAF museum recently restored a vintage Tiger moth and a Chipmonk trainer aircraft to flying condition (video and details on an older post). Then there’s a seemingly random clip of a more recent “museum piece” (a SIAI-Marchetti) starting up.
Hopefully I’ll get around to visiting. The busyness of life, and the fact that Mrs C is a very non museum person doesn’t make the idea easy to take off (cheap pun intended).
When I see something flying, and it makes a noise, I know it’s a plane, and that it. I’m really bad with air crafts 😦 I’m waiting till some one fills in the names. It’s really good to see, these things coming up. Thanks for sharing. Great post.
Cheers!
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Happy you liked it 🙂 Been working on this one in dirbs and drabs. Relieved I got it out of the head.
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Got to visit the museum on a class (well not really) trip once. Would love to visit it again, now that the renovation has been completed. 😀
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Me too. If you get around to going there put up a post 😀
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There are actually about 40 aircraft in that picture not 22. Send me an email and I will send you list of the aircraft in the picture
Suresh
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Thank you 😀 I’ll take you up on the offer – just sent you an email.
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[…] Sri Lanka Air Force museum aircraft identified from Google Earth Mon, 22 Nov, 10 tags: Sri Lanka Air Force by cerno Aviation photographer Suresh A. Atapattu generously identified the Sri Lanka Air Force museum’s out door aircraft exhibits seen in the Google Earth screen grab below. He also went through the trouble of re-numbering the aircraft in the image. His numbers in yellow correspond to the table below. This image was originally used in my post about the Sri Lanka Air Force Museum at Ratmalana. […]
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