The Aviation Hall and the airplane collection
Origins of the Aviation Hall
Just like its neighbour Autoworld, the Royal Military Museum’s Aviation Hall a.k.a. Great Hall is the result of the division of the former ginormous Halle des Machines designed by architect Gédéon Bordiau and built by the end of the 19th century for the 1897 World Exhibition. The building is then 360 m long, 70 m wide and 40 m high; the structure has wrought iron roof trusses and glass roof panels. For the 1910 World Exhibition, Charles Girault performs a number of architectural interventions, and the Belgian airship Belgique II is for instance presented. Today the Military Museum’s hall is 170 meters long and has a circular mezzanine.
As of the 1950s the Royal Military Museum starts setting up objects in the Great Hall, and Alfred Bastien’s impressive Panorama of the Yser is then put on display. The venue is also used as a storage facility for cars, airplanes and even tanks. Aviation enthusiasts Colonel Mike Terlinden and Adjutant Jean Booten want to tell the history of aviation in the space and in 1969 the RMM management is officially granted the Great Hall by the Ministry of Public Works (owner of the Cinquantenaire site) to create an aviation department. Terlinden and others found the non-profit organization AELR (Les Amis du Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace – De Vrienden van het Lucht- en Ruimtevaartmuseum, still a privileged RMM partner to this very day) and spare neither time nor efforts to turn the dream into a reality: in 1972 the hall opens its doors to the general public as an aviation department and in 1974 the biplanes and triplanes are moved from the First World War gallery.
Airplane collection today
The aircraft collected and restored by AELR over the years, the aircraft donated to the Museum by the Belgian Air Force after active service and the collection items initially displayed in other Royal Military Museum galleries (such as the Zeppelin parts, received as German reparations after the Great War) constitute the core of the collection that has since not stopped growing.
Today, the beautiful building – which is in high demand for films and video clips because of its special aesthetics – houses one of the largest and most diverse aviation collections in the world. The ground floor and the mezzanine count a number of chronological-thematic exhibitions:
Ground floor
- The Second World War (with a special focus on the Belgians in the Royal Air Force)
- The Cold War in the West (aircraft from NATO and other Western partners)
- The Cold War in the East (Warsaw Pact aircraft)
- Training (training aircraft)
- The Belgian Air Force (with special attention for post-1945 Belgian Air Force operations and paratrooper deployments)
- Air transport (with the C-119 Flying Boxcar as an eye-catcher)
- Civil aviation (the SABENA stand)
- Helicopters (including the iconic Sea King)
Mezzanine
- Hot-air balloons and airships (including two rare Zeppelin gondolas)
- The pioneers (the first Belgian pilots and the origins of Belgian aviation)
- The First World War (a number of unique biplanes)
- The interwar period
- The Second World War (with a special focus on the German Luftwaffe)
- Light aviation (including the Alouette and Agusta helicopters)
