Where Every Staycationer Should Aim to Hangar Out This Summer

Blackpool’s truly hidden gem of a visitor attraction is inviting experience-seekers to cut through the flak and do what it takes to visit its unique tourism offering at the optimal time to do so.

The Spitfire Visitor Centre: Hangar 42 celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2025 and yet thousands of Brits are yet to enter its hangar door and immerse themselves in the mood and spine-tingling ambience of what was Britain’s most impressive airbase during the Second World War.

The town of Blackpool became ‘RAF Blackpool’ with good reason.  834,000 allied RAF personnel were stationed here at the RAF’s  official training base.  Wellington bombers were built in a Vickers factory. All of this, not to mention the involvement of Polish air crew, American GI troops, the German bombers seeking to strike Liverpool, Preston and Barrow, and daily life for the civilian population is brought to life in Hangar 42.

The beauty of this experience is the lack of sugar-coating of RAF wartime  life.  Hangar 42 was the first RAF hangar built at RAF Squires Gate, with its floor laid in 1939, and has hardly been touched since. When Blackpool airport planes fly over, the roar of the engines evokes a time when those based here would have feared the worst, or prayed for colleagues scrambling and heading off to try to ward off a German bomber.  Such is the authenticity, this brilliant visitor attraction – winner of Lancashire Tourism’s Small Visitor Attraction of the Year award – cannot open in the winter months, lacking heating, as RAF personnel had no such luxury.

Inside Hangar 42, there awaits the thrill of potentially seeing your first Spitfires or your first German ME109 or Hurricane.  Three planes sit as if poised for take-off at any minute and for a small additional charge, you can be photographed in the cockpit of 1942 ‘Lucy’.   For the kids, the thrill might be knowing spitfire ‘Holly’ was featured as ‘Vicky’ in David Walliams’ Grandpa’s Great Escape.  But there are so many instances of how these aerial stars have been celebrated in film, TV and through celebrity touches.

Then there is the ops room, the Archaeology room, with a German JU88 aircraft painstakingly tracked down over 12 years and recovered from the Hesketh sands across from Lytham, the briefing room and scramble hut, in which you can get real goosebumps, and the cosy NAAFI café where you almost feel you are in RAF gear and just awaiting a shout. With a Saving Amy restoration fundraising exhibit and references to Amy Johnson too (her last tragic flight being from RAF Squires Gate), girls will also find their adventure role model here.

But the beauty of this wholly volunteer-run attraction is that all is brought to life through mines of information – the costumed volunteers and brilliant story-tellers at this attraction, who can easily turn a one-hour visit into a four-hour stay, if you want to tap into their insight.

Then there are extraordinary things to do.  At an additional cost of £5, it is well worth being able to board a flight and have a virtual reality experience that takes you on a bombing raid over Germany.  Thanks to the use of a BBC correspondent’s wartime footage, that’s exactly what you can do, sitting in the plane with him and the crew, in a truly surreal way.

How about enjoying a special birthday or anniversary treat – the world’s only full-size Spitfire flying simulator in the country (£140) – in which you can fly a replica Spitfire Mark V. Or maybe put the kids on the mini-simulator and let them have a sibling battle to see who can do best?

Then, there really is no better time to head here, if you have deep pockets, than on the weekends of July 21/22, August 17/18 and September 14/15, when you can do so on an actual real-live two-seater spitfire.  Whilst these experiences, in which you can take the controls of the veteran plane, cost from £3250, the Spitfire’s arrival also makes it a remarkable time to be here for the people who just pay the £10 entrance fee.  

Not only could visitors see a Spitfire land, they could also experience the roar of its engine from inside Hangar 42 and get the goose bumps that this really should evoke.  An ordinary plane flying over Hangar 42 makes you sit up and take notice.  A Spitfire’s engines might have you diving for cover, if so immersed that you forget your actual time and place.

If you have an ounce of imagination, a visit to The Spitfire Visitor Centre: Hangar 42 will transport you back to 1940s wartime Britain, in a compelling and truly extraordinary way.  In so doing, it will make you view Blackpool through entirely different eyes, as the resort that trained, fed and watered the men and women who battled through the Blitz.  

Head to www.spitfirevisitorcentre.co.uk to find our more. Adult tickets are £10, children (6-16) enter for £6, as do armed forces veteran. Children under 6 years enter for free.  Visiting times are 10am to 4pm Saturday to Tuesday.  Last entrance is at 2.30pm.

Ends

Editors notes

The Spitfire Visitor Centre, found in Hangar 42 at Blackpool Airport, is a hidden gem and winner of the Small Visitor Attraction of the Year Award, in the Lancashire Tourism Awards 2025. Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2025, this wonderful attraction combines vintage aircraft and air paraphernalia, with atmospheric exhibits, nostalgia aplenty and wonderful wartime storytelling from passionate volunteers who are mines of information. With Spitfires, German bomber, Hurricane, the only full-size Spitfire simulator in the world, a mini simulator and the chance to experience a virtual reality wartime bombing raid, a visit to Hangar 42 and the Spitfire Visitor Centre is a must-do in Blackpool.