Wargaming's Archaeological & Historical Projects

MMORPG.com: Wargaming also announced the collaborative preservation effort for the Dornier DO17 light bomber.  Wargaming will be working with a number of agencies including Britain’s Royal Air Force. Tell us how this project came about and more about the restoration efforts and the new display at the RAF Museum.

Tracy Spaight: We decided to sponsor the Dornier exhibition because we wanted to see planes like the Dornier 17 preserved for future generations. This is the only intact Dornier 17 bomber in the world so it needed to be recovered and conserved. It’s one thing to read about the Battle of Britain. It’s quite another to get up close with the actual hardware. This plane will help museum goers better understand this pivotal battle, a battle which Churchill memorialized for the ages as “their finest hour.”

It has been almost exactly one year since the Dornier 17 bomber was recovered from the English Channel. The plane was transported to the RAF Museum at Cosford, partially dismantled, and then placed into two hydration tunnels (wings in one, fuselage in the other) to stabilize the plane. Experts at Imperial College London pioneered new conservation methods to stabilize the plane and prevent the aluminum components from disintegrating. This involves carefully removing the accumulated barnacles, seaweed, shells, sand, and other encrustation, and spraying the plane with citric acid to protect it from the corrosive effects of oxygen. After a year of work, from dozens of volunteers and museum staff, the marine encrustations have been stripped away to reveal the unmistakable form of the ‘flying pencil.’ And the plane no longer smells like seaweed and fish!

Photo: Daily Mail, June 11, 2013.

The removal of the marine growth has allowed researchers to learn a great deal about the Dornier's last flight. Spent machine-gun cartridges found in the fuselage indicate the crew tried to fight off British fighters.  The team discovered bullet holes in the propellers and damage to the aircraft's skin. They also found that the starboard under-wing surface is distorted – probably from impact with the sea. All of these clues have helped researchers reconstruct the planes final moments.

Thousands of people have come to see the Dornier 17 and visit the Wargaming.net Dornier 17 Interpretation Zone. But many people will never have the opportunity to visit the RAF Museum to see the Dornier 17 exhibition. So we wanted to bring the Dornier to them, thanks to a mobile application called Apparitions, developed in partnership with the RAF museum and Red Loop and sponsored by Wargaming.net. Apparition is an Augmented Reality application for iOS and Android devices that allows users to see a full-sized Dornier 17 at various locations around the world. We’ve partnered with the Warsaw Museum, The War Museum in Overloon in the Netherlands, the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum, the Air Force Museum of New Zealand, the Pima Air & Space Museum in Brazil, and many others to spawn virtual Dornier 17s at these locations. You can read about the App here.

Virtual Dornier 17 in New York’s Central Park. Photo courtesy of Gavin Longhurst.

Wargaming.net also funded the creation of the Dornier 17 website at the RAF museum, which allows visitors to read about the recovery, conservation, and exhibition of the plane. The online archive allows visitors to examine the hydration centre (for conservation work), examine combat reports of Squadron 264 (which shot down the Dornier), and watch video interviews with museum staff and the last surviving Dornier 17 pilot. Site visitors can also upload photos from the Apparitions mobile APP to share their experiences visiting the virtual Dornier 17s around the world.

One of the challenges museums face today is figuring out how to engage with young people. Author Mark Prensky, who coined the term “Digital Natives” to describe those who grew up with computers and digital technology, contends that young people today access and process information differently than those who speak a ‘pre-digital’ language. Museums need to “speak digital” to engage young people, to get them interested in history, and to turn them on to reading about the past. We hope that the Dornier exhibition and mobile APP will be a step in that direction.

Wargaming produced three videos about the Dornier 17 recovery and conservation:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GenifS8BqeQ
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmvomWwjwZg
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb9v6bCG7ck

MMORPG.com: What other projects does Wargaming have planned for the future? World War II seems to be the focus at the moment. Is it possible WG will expand to restoration efforts for vehicles from other wars?

Tracy Spaight giving a talk at the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum on April 14, 2014, to announce Warplanes to Siberia.  

In April 2014, Wargaming.net, together with the BRAVO369 Flight Foundation and Rusavia (a Russian Aviation company), announced the Warplanes to Siberia project at the Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Next year, as part of the official commemoration of the 70^th anniversary of the end of WW2, our team of Russian and American pilots (including one of our game designers!) will fly several WW2 planes from the continental United States to Alaska, across the Bering Strait, through Siberia to Krasnoyarsk, and finally on to Moscow.

The Warplanes to Siberia project tells the story of the secret delivery of nearly 8,000 military aircraft (P-39s, P-63s, B-25s, etc.) from the United States to the Soviet Union during World War II along the Alaska-Siberia Air Route (ALSIB).  As part of the Lend-Lease program under the Roosevelt administration, it was one of the great logistical efforts of the 20^th century and a major supply route to aid the Soviet Union in its struggle against Nazi Germany. Few people have heard of ALSIB or the vital role it played in the war. We want to change this.

Many readers are familiar with Rosie the Riveter, the iconic WW2 poster with a woman rolling up her sleeves and proclaiming ‘We Can Do it!’ With millions of American men off to the battlefronts, millions of women entered the factories to build the planes, tanks, and ships that helped assure the Allied Victory. Less known perhaps is the role of the thousands of U.S. women pilots in the WASPs, who ferried planes from the factories to distant airfields. They flew the planes from factories all over America to Great Falls, Montana, where they were then ferried on to Alaska and from there (by Russian pilots) to Siberia. 38 of these women lost their lives. We intend to tell their stories as well.

Warplanes to Siberia is a joint heritage project to commemorate the heroism and sacrifices of the men and women who built and flew the planes to defeat Germany.  To support the project, Wargaming donated an AT-6 G single engine fighter plane which will make the historic flight next summer.  We hope that our project will remind people of the bonds between Russia, Canada, and the United States, and foster greater understanding and cooperation.

Wargaming.net has many more exciting projects under way now, which we will be announcing over the course of the next year.

Tracy Spaight announcing the Warplanes to Siberia project at the Air & Space Museum, April 14, 2014.

MMORPG.com: Besides the preservation of vehicles, Wargaming actively supports military [charitable] organizations around the world. Please tell us about some of those efforts and how the community reaction has been to those projects.

Tracy Spaight: We believe in giving back to the community. Wargaming.net is thus a strong supporter of military charities around the world. Over the past few years, we have helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities such as AMVETS, Homes for our Troops, Military Families Fund, Paralyzed Veterans of America, the National Military Family Association, Operation Homefront, and Operation Supply Drop. The reaction from our players has been overwhelmingly positive – and we are grateful to them for their support.