This aircraft has never been or marked as NH417 of the RAF.

Long before the current interest and communication infrastructure, the 1950’s, this training airframe was set aside for preservation and painted as 41-401 and stored.

When it emerged in the 1960’s the assumption was that it was the original 401 and thus ‘NH417’. That said the construction number in the cockpit did appear to be substantially out of sequence but this sometimes does happen.

It was not until 1998 that a restoration team including Per Thorup Pedersen, who provided this image, started to remove the layer of preservative from the firewall that the true identity MA298/6462M was revealed with its link to the Danish training airframe FMSm4.

Mark