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Real Second World War history is a messy business, soaked with blood, sweat and countless spilled beers. And so it is at 447 Wing, also known as the last of the “H-huts.”

Here, at the edge of Hamilton Airport, you enter a time capsule where you can blink your eyes and find yourself in 1942. The bar rail is dented by boots that worked the rudder pedals of Spitfires and Lancasters, and the walls are hung with squadron insignias and photographs of young Princess Elizabeth.

The clientele is vintage too – some of the men who come here for a quiet drink have been regulars for close to 70 years.

But forget the sepia-toned image. 447 Wing doesn't offer the brand of sanitized history you see at a Second World War cenotaph. This is the kind that comes with smells, repair problems and financial woes.

As operations go, 447 Wing could be compared to a bomber with three engines out and holes in the wings. The airport is trying to kick the club out, its membership is dwindling and it is operating deep in the red. If it weren't for a small group of volunteers who keep it running as a kind of living memorial, 447 Wing would have closed years ago.

“This is a very special place,” says Judy Brown, the club's volunteer president. “Everything in here is real. If you want to see World War II history, it's here.”

The club was built by the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1939, when the Hamilton airport was a training base for Commonwealth flight crews. Originally intended as a temporary structure, it was a military-standard design: three prefab buildings, arranged like the letter H.

Although there were once dozens of H-huts across Canada, 447 Wing is now the last of its kind. The rest have all been torn down to make way for new developments.

Connoisseurs of history consider 447 Wing unique, filled with the collective memories of thousands of pilots, soldiers and sailors who have come here to drink, dance and socialize since 1939, when the Hamilton airport was a military training base for British Commonwealth air crews.

“It's a very special place,” says Brenda Wilson, a Hamilton nurse who keeps the Wing operating along with her husband, Rob. (Both volunteer their time.) Ms. Wilson and her husband must cope with a facility that is somewhere beyond disrepair. There are four furnaces, none of them working. The kitchen was declared off-limits by city inspectors after the ceiling collapsed. That hasn't stopped the Wilsons. They have food cooked off-site, then had it reheated in a microwave (an entrée costs $5).

The Wing's finances are the stuff of nightmare. Although there were once close to 500 members, there are now 65, who pay annual dues of $70.

A couple of years ago, the Wing temporarily lost its liquor licence and got hit with a $40,000 bill from the province for unpaid sales taxes. Although that looked like the end, an anonymous donor bailed the Wing out.

Over the years, the Wing has hosted everything from Second World War send-offs and marriage ceremonies to memorials for pilots killed in training (there were 16 in 1942 alone).

The building is home to a rare and eclectic assembly of air force memorabilia. There are 1940s photographs of bomber crews that died in the sky over Europe, and magazines printed when Hitler was still alive.

The ceiling is hung with hundreds of model airplanes, their wings sagging under a growing accumulation of dust. Until a few years ago, a 447 Wing member took them down on a regular schedule and cleaned them with Q-tips, but when he died, no one took his place.

Now, the airplanes hang like small, ossifying bats, their glue joints so dry and brittle that club managers are afraid to touch them, lest they disintegrate.

Each of the airplanes is numbered and identified on a framed list that hangs on the wall, so that guests can learn the fine points of Second World War aircraft taxonomy, such as the difference between a Westland Lysander and a Fieseler Storch.

The Wing was one of dozens of H-huts. (RCAF historians think there may have been 80 or more at flight-training bases across Canada.) The clubs became unlikely icons, fixed in the memory of countless veterans and their families.This week, as Remembrance Day loomed, a group of veterans gathered around a well-worn table to share a beer and consider 447 Wing's highly uncertain future.

“This is part of us all,” said Clair (Duck) Hanson, an 82-year-old who served on a corvette in the North Atlantic during the Second World War. “But you have to wonder how much longer it can go on.”

The building was once the social centre of one of the busiest flight training operations in the British Commonwealth. Thousands of pilots learned to fly here, wobbling overhead in Tiger Moths and Harvards.

Since then, the world around 447 Wing has gradually changed. The Hamilton Airport has morphed into a major air-cargo centre. TradePort International Corp., which operates the facility, has pushed out older businesses that can't afford the higher rents. Last week, a flying school that had been in operation since 1946 was locked out of its hangar after a 10-month rent dispute.

TradePort wants 447 Wing out too, as part of an expansion plan that will increase both cargo and passenger traffic over the next several years.

TradePort spokesman Steve Howse says the Wing is a part of history, but needs a new home and business model.

“This is a struggling operation,” he says. “They need a way forward.”

What that might be, no one knows. Until last week, there were plans to move the entire H-hut structure and its contents to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, which is located just a few hundred metres away. But that plan fell through when the museum's chief executive officer, Dave Rohrer, learned that moving the existing building wasn't feasible. The only viable option was to make a replica building and move the contents of 447 Wing into it.

“That takes the history out of it,” Mr. Rohrer said. There was also a financial obstacle – the cost of making a new building and moving the contents has been estimated at $500,000.

Despite the setbacks, 447 Wing loyalists believe the club should be saved as a special part of Canada's military heritage.

“History is being swept under the carpet,” Ms. Wilson said. “If you really want to honour veterans, you don't bring them out on Remembrance Day, then jam back into the closet. You keep their history alive. Here it is, right in this building.”