I had had the attached image in my collection for well over 25 years and it had defied identification. A postwar silver painted Mk V or IX Spitfire with D type roundel but with no code or serial. CAACU, ATC, scrap yard, Air Force dump…a complete mystery, nothing fitted, but almost certainly pre 1960.
A casual conversation with Max Elliott last week about a couple of shots in his collection suddenly started to gel. Indeed Max had the very same shot plus a further shot in slightly different scenery. Max had got them from one Jim Acker of Colchester many years ago. Written on the back of the above shot was 26 October 1957 MH731/6026M INSKIP and on the other MH731/6026M 26 May 1958 WEETON.
In this latter shot the fuselage door is missing and it seems that Jim souvenired it at the time and it eventually ended up on the Mk V restoration of BL370, now in New Orleans.
I suspect that Inskip and Weeton are one and the same locations and in the Preston area. In 1957/8 Preston was well outside the operating radius of a ‘Southern’ schoolboy enthusiast on a bicycle.
Last entry on the movement card of MH731:- 29 July 1946 8 SoTT, which is RAF Weeton.
Can anybody please enlighten us more on this Spitfire and or location?
Mark
By: SMS88 - 12th December 2008 at 23:37
Great thread,fascinating pix.interesting to discover that MH731 lingered for 12 years and narrowly missed out on entering the 1960s
By: Cees Broere - 12th December 2008 at 11:54
Sorry, I have nothing to contribute about the Spitfire question but wasn’t Jim Acker of Colchester involved in a Halifax cockpitsection project?
Any info would be appreciated.
Cheers
Cees
By: scotavia - 12th December 2008 at 11:08
The Navy unit at Inskip is on flat ground, and the Spitfire is located in the slightly uneven scenery I recall from cycling around the Weeton base in the sixties.
RAF Weeton was the place I was taken to for a Battle of Britain day, there was a gate guard Hunter. I recall a hydraulic press being used to stamp out souvenir ashtrays from flat discs. The resulting ashtray had an RAF Eagle stamped into it.
By: John Aeroclub - 12th December 2008 at 10:41
IIRC the trade training done at Weeton was for the airframe trade, mostly National Service so it would have used a number of surplus airframes. The silver finish reminds me of our two Mk.5’s at Bridgenorth both of which are now happily flying again.
John
By: ozplane - 12th December 2008 at 10:23
That picture was a revelation. As soon as I saw it, Inskip flashed before my eyes. In 1957 I was a train spotter and was returning, on my pushbike, from watching the Stanier Pacifics belting up the West Coast mainline. A pal had suggested that aircraft spotting didn’t involve getting covered in soot hanging over bridges to get the numbers, hence the diversion to Inskip. This was a former Naval air station about 10 miles East of Blackpool, my home town. When we saw the Spitfire I rather cheekily asked the guard on the gate how much he wanted for it. He called an officer over and he said that as far as he knew the “scrappies” had paid £25 for it and the engine was available but he din’t know how much that was.
Naturally I belted home and said “Dad, we’re buying a Spitfire”. In his pragmatic Northern way he replied ” No we’re not, where would we put it”. Despite that setback I’ve always been interested in Mitchells finest.
RAF Weeton was a separate RAF base to the South West of Blackpool near Kirkham. As far as I know it didn’t have runways but did have am annual Battle of Britain show. I may still have some programmes in the loft.
By: WebPilot - 12th December 2008 at 10:15
I have this record for MH731:
MH731 LFIX CBAF M66 39MU 15-9-43 405ARF 24-9-43 317S 7-10-43 332S 8-6-44 Scottish Aviation 21-6-44 GAL 30-11-44 84GSU 20-1-45 345S 15-2-45 411RSU 1-3-45 ros 19-3-45 345S 28-3-45 to 6026M 29-7-46 8SoTT
Inskip and Weeton are both set between Preston and Blackpool, a few miles apart.
8SoTT was based at Weeton until closure in 1958/9 (it’s now an army barracks). Inskip was a RN air training station a couple of miles up the road, HMS Nightjar which later became DCAS Radio Inskip, though I understand it might have been closed earlier this year. (EDIT: I see you have this already! Sure it wasn’t there when I first read the post, am I going mad?)
It could well be a mis identification of the location but similarly might well have moved from one to the other and back, from training machine to gate guard to scrap and as has been noted the backgrounds do appear to differ.
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December 12, 2008 at 9:37 am