Originally Posted by
Archimedes
Cosford has had two VC10s as part of the museum. When it was still the Aerospace Museum, it was home to the BA collection which included VC10 'Victor Mike', which was flown in at some point in 1979/1980 as the collection was assembled. BA provided funding for the upkeep of the aircraft, but withdrew this support in the early 2000s. By that point, the 'mission' of Cosford had changed, after the 'Aerospace Museum' moniker was dropped, and the Trustees of the RAFM, AIUI, were unwilling to spend money on BA airframes when their duty was to RAF and Cold War types rather than civilian airframes (I have a very dim recollection that this is why the Britannia was repainted in RAF colours) Most of the BA aircraft were broken up with some (all?) of the fuselages/nose sections preserved and dispersed to other collections (the Viscount survived intact and went to East Fortune, I think it was), and 'Victor Mike's' fuselage now resides at Brooklands.
Edit - Wrong; the 1-11 is still intact and outside at East Fortune; the 707 was meant to go there in one piece as well, but only the forward fuselage survives.
Cosford was thus lacking a VC10 for a period until 'Bob' arrived - via the M6 as you say.
The original intent was to fly “Bob” in though, hence it was seen doing circuits on the
short runway at Cranwell just before it retired. I believe eventually it was declared a no go by someone far higher up the food chain, as although costly, the road move was far lower “risk”.