French Spitfire reggies

NH188, ahh, one of the many ex-Dutch Spitfires (after the RAF used them of course) still surviving 😀

Cheers

Cees

Hi Steve.

Don’t forget that NH188 came to the musuem as an airworthy aircraft and is kept as she is because she was given in that state. It’s an honour to the chap who donated her.

And I don’t care, a Spit is a Spit.

The worse I’ve seen is the one in the NASM in Washington. Yuck!

Compare that to the Museum of Flight’s Spitfire XVI, TE462. The lower cowlings look a bit… ‘pink’ 😮

(Mark12 – “right click, save as” :p)

NH188

Guys–

It’s worse…In the early 60s (and as late as the early 80s iirc) NH188 was indeed green/brown/Sky. Today, though, the top side’s the same ’60s mess(white “football jersey” code letters and all)…but the belly and spinner are in a shade closely reminiscent of fresh USAAF Neutral Grey! Yeowch. (And then Mike Potter has SL721 refinished in beautiful early-1945 livery…from 421, the same squadron. Just as well NH188 is always inside CAvM and SL721 never is! The comparison would be way too obvious…I certainly hope CAvM refinishes their Mk.IX someday, though, of course, they have many more pressing things to accomplish before a thing like that…and they have a superb collection, minor quibbles about paint on one airframe aside…)

S.

It originally did have a 600-odd horsepower Hispano engine, but I think this was changed to the Allison because JP Dubois didn’t think the Hisso provided enough power.

I saw it at La Ferte and I was sure it had a Hispano for some reason.

Sounded like a Spit with a French accent.

I’ve never seen it in the flesh, but it has an Allison engine, so if you see the Bob DeFord replica footage, you’ll get an idea of how it sounds (video link on my site).

I know F-WGML had an accident and was being repaired – but can’t recall when this was. 🙁

Did someone see the wooden replica of the spit Spitenbois F-WGML (which you also can see at Daz his link) fly at any show. Does it look (and sound) right? It was due to appear at last years show at La ferte, but never showed up. I wonder if it is as good as they say.

J.V.

NH188 is in the museum!

RR263/”TB597″

The shrouds and and extension castings fitted to the wings of this aircraft are totally spurious in both length and proportion.

They are from the ‘French’ camp.

The overall length is far too long. The extension casting hovever should not be fitted to this type of wing. The shroud itself is too short and should be of the curved type rather than the straight taper type.

Apart from that they are fine. 🙂

Mark

Any more photos from that day Laurent? I can see something else hiding behind the Spitfire there :rolleyes:

Something like that…….

They also took the NC900 (AKA FW190) out that week.

Another one of RR263:

Laurent

Interesting to note also that the wing of RR263 is arranged as an ‘e’ but with the longer ‘c’ type barrells which appear to be even more tapered than usual! 😮

Replicas perhaps? :confused:

Cheers

Paul

Yeah, I just realised – there’s a Battle of Britain Spitfire in Green/Grey in London, too isn’t there? What are they thinking of? ;);)

I suppose I just find it a bit odd that a national museum have a Spitfire IX painted in such blatantly wrong colours.

And the Green/Dark Earth/Sky is on NH188 in Canada, still.

The fact is, in the 1950/60’s, looking back at the 1940’s, it was chiefly a ‘Black and White’ world.

There were precious few reference works available and we have all learnt an awful lot since then.

Even the TV was black and white to the early 1970’s. 🙂

Mark

NH188 (photo from Webshots.com)

And the Green/Dark Earth/Sky is on NH188 in Canada, still.

Any more photos from that day Laurent? I can see something else hiding behind the Spitfire there :rolleyes:

RR263

I agree – a caption error on Airliners.

Nice to see RR263 out for an airing. 🙂

Still in that Brown/Green plus late roundels scheme beloved of the BBMF in the 1960’s and mimicked in the US with SL721 and Canada with TE308. 🙁

Mark

Ahhh, thanks LaurentB, that clears things up a lot! 🙂

Hello,

I had written to the Airliners.net site to correct them for the first picture, but it seems they did not care.

The first picture really shows RR263 (which never had a civil reg. to my knowledge) that had been on outdoors display during the last week of June for a special event, and not the flying wooden replica that the photographer mistook for.

HTH,

Laurent