South African Air Force Museum

AFB Swartkop is home to the headquarters and largest of the three museum locations, occupying at least five hangars.

It contains a number of Dassault Mirage IIIs, Dassault Mirage F1s, Atlas Cheetahs and various other historical aircraft as well as aviation-related items on display such as ejection seats, uniforms, aircraft engines, aircraft weaponry and a Cheetah C flight simulator.

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  LEO deployment rocket at Swartkop
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  Replica Patterson Number 2 Biplane at Swartkop
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  Avro Shackleton at Swartkop
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  Cheetah C at Swartkop
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  SAAF North American P-51 Mustang at Swartkop
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  SAAF Blackburn Buccaneer on static display at Swartkop with munition loadout and its Blue Parrot radar system
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  SAAF fighter aircraft on static display at Swartkop

Aircraft on display

• Aerospatiale Alouette III[2]
• Aerospatiale Puma[3]
• Aerospatiale Super Frelon
• Atlas Cheetah E[4]
• Atlas Cheetah C
• Atlas Impala Mk.I
• Atlas Impala Mk.II
• Atlas XH-1 Alpha
• Avro Shackleton[5]
• Blackburn Buccaneer
• Boeing 707
• Canadair CL-13
• Douglas DC-4[6]
• Dassault Mirage III BZ
• Dassault Mirage III CZ
• Dassault Mirage III RZ
• English Electric Canberra T Mk.4
• Fieseler Storch[7]
• Lockheed Ventura[8]
• Mikoyan MiG-21[4]
• Mirage F1 AZ[4]
• North American Harvard
• North American Mustang
• Patchen Explorer
• Paterson Biplane
• Pilatus PC-7 Mk.II[9]
• Westland Wasp[10]

AFB Ysterplaat is home to the last airworthy Avro Shackleton. The Shackleton has been grounded for several years already though, as there are not enough qualified aircrew and the remaining airframe hours are insufficient to train new crew, apart from the obvious concern of preservation of this historic aircraft.

The Douglas C-47 Dakota here, is the aircraft used in 1952 by the SAAF to help Professor J. L. B. Smith acquire a coelacanth fish specimen from the Comoros Islands.[11]

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  Shackleton 1722 at Ysterplaat
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  Mirage F1 at Ysterplaat
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  Display at Ysterplaat

Aircraft on display

• Avro Shackleton[2]
• Canadair CL-13[12]
• Dassault Mirage F1 CZ
• Dassault Mirage III R2Z
• de Havilland Vampire
• Douglas C-47
• Lockheed Ventura
• North American Harvard
• Piaggio P.166
• Westland Wasp[2]

There are few exhibits at the Port Elizabeth Airport branch of the museum because of the limited hangar space available.

Static exhibits are housed in the original 42-Air School Air Gunnery Training Centre used during the Joint Air Training Scheme in World War II.[13]

Aircraft on display

• Aerospatiale Alouette III[2]
• Aerospatiale Puma[3]
• Atlas Impala Mk.II
• Mirage F1 CZ[4]
• North American Harvard
• de Havilland Vampire
• Westland Wasp[14]
• Supermarine Spitfire 1:1 Scale model built out of wood.

Active restoration is being performed on a number of North American Harvards and there is a project to restore an Airspeed Oxford. One of the more unusual exhibits is a Jorg IV Skimmerfoil ground-effect craft.

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  North American Harvard undergoing restoration
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  Skimmerfoil Jorg IV
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  Airspeed Oxford restoration project