Sptifire recovered from Calais under rebuild to fly

Great pics Mark.Almost like an archeological dig these days.Wonder if in a hundred years time people will be doing this with the F18,s that have crashed over the years.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Is this the spitfire that was on display at the V3 site at Mimoyecques around 10- 15 years ago. If so it looked in a bad state. Dont think being under ground on display helped.

No that was N3200, but also owned now by the same partnership.

Possibly next in line for the ‘treatment’.

Where practical it will be provisioned for the economy of scale.

A shot below of N3200 at the recovery at Sangatte in 1986, courtesy of Jean-Pierre Duriez.

Mark

Is this the spitfire that was on display at the V3 site at Mimoyecques around 10- 15 years ago. If so it looked in a bad state. Dont think being under ground on display helped.

P9374

I take it that the recovered data plate was considered to be in potentially ‘airworthy’ condition, following a full ndt inspection of course?

There are no fuselage or firewall data plates as such.

However both P9372 and P9373 (The ‘Time Team’ Spitfire) have been recovered and yielded plates indicating the cockpit/fuselage construction number.

At this early point in the build schedule, being adjacent aircraft and also compared to other surviving Spitfires, the construction numbers are sequential.

The number is 6S-30565.

Mark

I take it that the recovered data plate was considered to be in potentially ‘airworthy’ condition, following a full ndt inspection of course? :diablo:

I love your “Enough to to maintain a ‘thin but robust’ serial provenance” statements. Which considering that this will be a very ‘new’ airframe ultimately is perfectly acceptable under the circumstances. Not enough early Spits around at the moment.

Considering the salt water buried environment, any idea how the materials survived? i.e. any airworthy parts recoverable?

Pretty rough and quite a lot of the recovered structure disappeared over a twenty year period. What is there will will yield a few fixtures, fittings, castings, forgings etc. Enough to to maintain a ‘thin but robust’ serial provenance and no difference from several current and recently completed Spitfire projects.

Mark

Considering the salt water buried environment, any idea how the materials survived? i.e. any airworthy parts recoverable?

Thats amazing, was it uncovered like that for a long time?

No not very long.

It sort of surfaced in a very moving way, just as Peter Cazenove, the pilot, passed away.

Unfortunately it was recovered in a rather brutal way by the Harbour authorities – hawser and tractor, which was a great shame.

Mark

Thats amazing, was it uncovered like that for a long time?

P9374, with empennage, still on the beach at Calais circa 1980.

Photo courtesy of Xavier Portier, via Jean-Michel Goyat, with thanks.

Mark

Hi Andy,

No, unfortunately not, We didn’t have the time. We passed through the Kielder forest where substantial Halifax wreckage is located but there wasn’t even time for that. Next time I’m sure to go have a look.

Cees

Did you have a scout about at any mass Halifax scrapping sites? Mostly farmers fields these days but infrastructure from the sattelite fields is still there.

Hello

Do you have any pictures of the recovery? that you can post.

Regards

Hi there,

I’m afraid not as I have lost the issue. There was also a small snippet in one of the early FlyPasts.
Although I have a feeling both Andy Saunders and Mark 12 have some lying around. 😉

Cees

Hello

Do you have any pictures of the recovery? that you can post.

Regards