The museum
Founded in 1972, Canadian Warplane Heritage developed from a volunteer preservation effort into a major public collection centered on aircraft flown by Canadians and Canadian military services.
Canadian Warplane Heritage is best understood as both a museum and an active aircraft-preservation operation at Hamilton International Airport. Its fleet connects the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, Atlantic and Pacific maritime patrol, Canadian-made postwar aircraft and jet-age Cold War service. The airworthy Lancaster is a central attraction, but the working restoration stories of the smaller trainers and transports are equally revealing.
The museum’s official aircraft browser lists almost fifty entries, from the Tiger Moth, Anson and Cornell through Spitfire, Firefly, Lancaster, CF-100, CF-104 and CF-5. Multiple listings for such types as the Tiger Moth, Harvard and CF-104 are recorded as separate source entries without inventing serial identities. A Hurricane replica and Boeing 727 nose exhibit are distinguished from complete aircraft.
A museum-index entry alone does not prove that the aircraft is flying or on open display during a particular visit. Flight status and restoration work are changeable; the museum publishes additional details on individual aircraft pages.
What defines the collection
Canadian military aviation from the Second World War onward, with a notable concentration of maintained and flying historic aircraft.
What to expect
Visit the flying and static aircraft together to understand the restoration decisions behind keeping heritage warbirds operating. Watch for scheduled flight demonstrations and look at the aircraft maintenance work where visitor access permits. Use the museum’s individual aircraft pages to confirm the current status of a particular airframe.
What the museum holds
Almost 50 aircraft
The inventory below separates what the museum or its sources say the institution holds from the smaller set of aircraft histories already connected to the Air Archive.
- Boeing 727 (nose)Unknown
- Avro Canada CF-100 CanuckUnknown
- Avro LancasterUnknown · C-GVRA · RCAF FM213
- de Havilland VampireUnknown
- Fairey FireflyUnknown
- Hawker HurricaneUnknown
- North American B-25 MitchellUnknown · C-GCWM · 45-8883
- Supermarine SpitfireUnknown
- AusterUnknown
- Avro AnsonUnknown
- Beechcraft ExpeditorUnknown
- Beechcraft MusketeerUnknown
- Boeing StearmanUnknown
- Bristol BolingbrokeUnknown
Open full museum-listed inventory (49 entries)
| Aircraft | Status | Identity |
|---|---|---|
| Auster | Unknown | — |
| Avro Anson | Unknown | — |
| Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck | Unknown | — |
| Avro Lancaster Avro Lancaster | Unknown | C-GVRA · RCAF FM213 · 3414 |
| Beechcraft Expeditor | Unknown | — |
| Beechcraft Musketeer | Unknown | — |
| Boeing 727 (nose) | Unknown | — |
| Boeing Stearman | Unknown | — |
| Bristol Bolingbroke | Unknown | — |
| Canadair CT-114 Tutor | Unknown | — |
| Cessna Crane | Unknown | — |
| Cessna L-19 Bird Dog | Unknown | — |
| Consolidated Canso | Unknown | — |
| Consolidated Canso (museum catalog listing 2) | Unknown | — |
| de Havilland Buffalo | Unknown | — |
| de Havilland Canada Chipmunk | Unknown | — |
| de Havilland Canada Chipmunk (museum catalog listing 2) | Unknown | — |
| de Havilland Tiger Moth | Unknown | — |
| de Havilland Tiger Moth (museum catalog listing 2) | Unknown | — |
| de Havilland Tiger Moth (museum catalog listing 3) | Unknown | — |
| de Havilland Vampire de Havilland Vampire | Unknown | — |
| Douglas C-47 Dakota | Unknown | — |
| Douglas DC-3 Dakota | Unknown | — |
| Fairchild Cornell | Unknown | — |
| Fairchild Cornell (museum catalog listing 2) | Unknown | — |
| Fairey Firefly Fairey Firefly | Unknown | — |
| Fleet 21 | Unknown | — |
| Fleet Finch | Unknown | — |
| Fleet Fort | Unknown | — |
| Fleet Fort (museum catalog listing 2) | Unknown | — |
| Grumman Avenger | Unknown | — |
| Grumman Tracker | Unknown | — |
| Hawker Hurricane Hawker Hurricane (replica) | Unknown | — |
| Lockheed CF-104 Starfighter | Unknown | — |
| Lockheed CF-104 Starfighter (museum catalog listing 2) | Unknown | — |
| Lockheed T-33 Silver Star | Unknown | — |
| McDonnell CF-101 Voodoo | Unknown | — |
| Nanchang CJ-6 | Unknown | — |
| Noorduyn Norseman | Unknown | — |
| North American B-25 Mitchell North American B-25 Mitchell | Unknown | C-GCWM · 45-8883 · 108-47734 |
| North American Harvard | Unknown | — |
| North American Harvard (museum catalog listing 2) | Unknown | — |
| North American Sabre | Unknown | — |
| North American Yale | Unknown | — |
| North American Yale (museum catalog listing 2) | Unknown | — |
| Northrop CF-5 Freedom Fighter | Unknown | — |
| Stinson 105 | Unknown | — |
| Supermarine Spitfire Supermarine Spitfire | Unknown | — |
| Westland Lysander | Unknown | — |
Aircraft histories connected to this museum
These links connect museum holdings to aircraft histories already in the Trackpads Air Archive. They are not intended to imply that every museum aircraft has a dedicated archive profile yet.