A Couple of Spitfire Questions ("You boy, at the back – stop yawning!")

1. I read in ‘the book’ that all that remained of MK297 after the hangar fire were the undercarriage legs and a few small steel components. With the importance of ‘provenance’ would the legs be enough to reconstruct the aircraft? Or is the data plate the key?

2. With all these possible forthcoming restorations so exhaustively listed, could it be that the worlds supply of existing Merlin engines will limit the number of rebuilds to airworthy status? I mean, where do all these engines keep coming from? An Australian mine?

“Boy at the back who is not interested in Spitfires……you still read this thread…..didn’t you!”