Why were (some of) the airliners at Cosford cut up?
I have searched for "Cosford" on this forum before starting this thread, but forgive me if the subject has already been discussed here and moderators, please feel free to merge this thread with an existing one, if you think that necessary.
I was lucky enough to visit Cosford in 1994, when the "BA Collection" of airliners was intact and-thank goodness, in view of what happened 10+ years later-took photos of all of them.
I was dismayed some years ago however, to hear that several of these were to be (and were) broken up or reduced to forward fuselages only. I believe the airframes concerned were a (pretty rare) 707-436, a Trident 1 and a standard VC-10. Any others-did the Super One-Eleven get the chop too? Tho admittedly, I 'd find it a bit hard to shed too many tears over that one.
And I know that Viscount G-AMOG went to East Fortune, where I saw it three years ago, in pieces, with its fuselage indoors but the wings outside. Has this changed since? I hope so. And the forward fuselage of the 707 was there too.
I have seen various explanations/excuses over the yeasrs for why this was done: BA "disowned" their collection on money-saving grounds (that sounds very likely); Cosford needed the space occupied by the airliners to build their-far more sexy-"Cold War Jets Hall;" some, if not all of the airframes were badly corroded after many years of display outside.
So, what do people here know about this sad episode?