'Why I'm burying a plane in my back garden'

An engineer and content creator has bought an old aircraft fuselage that he plans to bury in his back garden to create what he has called his "Fallout bunker".

Dave Billings has already created a network of underground rooms and tunnels at his home in Hilton, Derbyshire, which he has documented on his YouTube channel.

So when he spotted the cabin section of a former Bmibaby Boeing 737-500 for sale on Facebook Marketplace, he said he knew "there and then" that he had to buy it.

The 44-year-old paid £4,000 for the fuselage section and plans to add it to his existing network of underground structures after he is granted planning permission.

Dave bought the fuselage section as a bare shell but is keen to reintroduce some features synonymous with passenger aircraft.

"I want to keep the toilet and kitchen area at the back as it is," he said.

"But I want to show the rugged aluminium framework that lies beneath the plastic interior."

His seven-year-old son, who is a big fan of aeroplanes and is keen to use the bunker for his next birthday party, encouraged Dave to buy the fuselage.

"He was the main reason I bought this and when I first showed him the picture he asked why I hadn't bought it already," Dave said.

"I then suddenly realised I could bury it in my garden to make a cool space."

But his wife Beth took a little longer to be convinced.

"When she first saw it, she asked me why I was buying a pile of junk but once I bought it she was OK about it," Dave added.

Hundreds of thousands of people have already watched the tunnel project's progress via Billings's YouTube channel, called Tornado Dave.

Dave decided to set up his own YouTube channel after he worked on the Guy's Garage television programme with presenter and former motorcycle racer Guy Martin, who drove one of Dave's modified Land Rovers.

His channel has documented his projects since 2021 and now has more than 276,000 subscribers, a figure he finds hard to comprehend.

"I would have been happy had I reached 100,000 but it's jumped right up and I now get around 10,000 new subscribers a month," he said.

Dave's home and business premises sit on the site of a former military camp, thought to have been used by the US Army during World War Two.

He said: "When I was younger I remember there being around 15 Nissen huts on the site, in addition to the well the troops dug for water, a feature I have made the most of."

The tunnel which connects his family home to his existing bunker was dug by hand and is reinforced with folded galvanised metal sections.

"I managed around a foot a day, using a battery-powered drill," Dave said. "It was hard work but well worth it."

But aircraft bunker looks set to be his last underground project. "But I do have other big ideas, so watch this space," he added.

Dave, who also runs storage and fabrication businesses, has used a 3D printer to create a scale model of how the fuselage will connect to an existing underground room beneath his garden.

It will be accessed via an old well, which he discovered when clearing the site or along a narrow tunnel that connects to an underground room at his home.

"I'm hoping to get one of the rubber seal things you get on walkways at airports to make it as realistic as possible," he said.

"And I'll create an extra entrance using a vertical lift accessed by an old phone box."

In its heyday, the aircraft which had the call sign G-BVKB, ferried passengers from East Midlands Airport to destinations like Alicante, Faro and Malaga.

Built in 1993, it made its maiden flight for British Midland in 1994 and later became part of the Bmibaby fleet.

In 2009, the plane was named Pudsey Baby as part of BBC Children in Need.

Its final landing was at Bruntingthorpe airfield in Leicestershire in 2013 where it was later scrapped.

Bmibaby operated from a number of UK Airports including East Midlands, Manchester and Cardiff but closed in 2012 after sustaining heavy losses.

Some of its aircraft were transferred to other operators while others like G-BVKB were sent for scrap.

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