I was told on Thursday that the remains of the RNHF Sea Fury that crashed, the TT.20 I think it’s called, were bought by the then-owners of the NZ-based Sea Fury ZK-FRY (now living in Australia).
The chap who told me was an engineer who worked on the flying Sea Fury at Ardmore, and he said they had taken the wing folding mechanisms from the wreck to put into ZK-FRY. He said there was a substantial amount of wreckage and the thought at that time was they could rebuild it into a flyer.
Does anyone know what became of this when FRY was sold? Is the TT.20 still in NZ? Is it still going to be rebuilt?
By: Dave Homewood - 19th December 2004 at 02:44
Cheers guys for that info. Could the rear fuselage have been photographed while in New Zealand by any chance?
By: seafury 232 - 19th December 2004 at 02:22
Chuck Greenhills fury is being restored by Sanders aircraft and it does have a centaurus mounted up front. This past week the engine was run for the first time since 1971 and sounds like she will be a good runner. A few bugs need to worked out but it should be making it’s first flight shortly. The cockpit section was originaly a mk.11 but has been modified to make it a tmk.20 and has the original t.20 canopys not the slimmed down version on all the other t.20’s that are flying today.
By: David Burke - 18th December 2004 at 23:07
I noticed that Stringbag – she does seem to be suffering from an identity crisis!
By: stringbag - 18th December 2004 at 22:42
I’m pretty sure that there are major components of WG655 owned elsewhere.
I remember seeing a photo in an aviation mag, showing WG655’s original rear fuselage in storage somewhere.
The same month another mag had a feature on Chuck Greenhill’s restoration.
By: Mark V - 18th December 2004 at 11:19
It has a Centaurus. It has been offered for sale but is unfinished.
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December 17, 2004 at 11:40 pm