UK family donates father’s hand-made, 40-year Lancaster cockpit to RAF Airfield

The family of a Berkshire man has donated a hand-built Lancaster bomber cockpit replica to an RAF visitor centre after he spent nearly 40 years creating it in his garden shed.Leon Ellison, a retired electronics engineer from Binfield, started the project after becoming fascinated with the 1955 film The Dam Busters as a child.Ellison spent around 20 years researching Lancaster bombers before dedicating another two decades to building an exact replica of the aircraft’s flight deck by hand.His family kept the cockpit inside a homemade hangar at his home until his death in June 2024 at the age of 77.His son, Adrian Ellison, told Bracknell News that his father devoted much of his life to learning about Lancaster bombers.“He visited every single one still in existence,” Adrian said.“We thought he was mad when he started building the cockpit from scratch but he was actually a genius.”The family has now donated the replica to the RAF Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre in Lincolnshire, where staff plan to turn it into a working flight simulator for visitors.The simulator will recreate the famous Dam Busters raids carried out by RAF Lancaster bombers during World War II.According to the family, Ellison had always hoped to transform the cockpit into a fully working simulator but died before completing the project.Most parts of the cockpit were built entirely by hand, including detailed controls and gauges. Ellison also recreated the sound of Lancaster engines using a frequency device.Adrian described watching the cockpit being lifted out of the hangar by crane as an emotional moment.“He wanted to build this cockpit to teach others about the Lancasters and the simulator was his dream,” Adrian said. .“It feels right that it will be displayed at the RAF visitor centre which was home to the Lancasters.”Ian Brett from the visitor centre described the replica as “an absolutely fantastic piece of engineering”, as quoted by Bracknell News.The centre was once home to the 106 Squadron’s fleet of Lancaster bombers.