Highest hours flying a Spitfire?

I recall reading The Forgotten Fleet by John Winton, about the ’44-’45 RN Pacific Fleet, many years ago. In that I recall reading that a large number of the Seafire pilots were Australasian combat veterans from the European campaign who all had at least 2,500 hours on Spits and how helpful their expertise in flying the spit was in minimising landing crashes, given the general unsuitability of the type as a carrier aircraft.

Checked the logbook of the Spit pilot that I have. He started on Spits in December 41 and finished up his combat flying in August 44.

His totals were 569.15 hours in Spits.

I’d assume that might be about normal for the average Spit pilot during the war.

He flew Is, IIs, Vs, IXs, XIIs and XIVs

Dan

There is an interesting item on page 12 of the current issue of our Forum’s sponsor, Flypast, stating that John Romain of the Aircraft Restoration Company at Duxford has totalled 500 hours on Spitfires.

Considering the short life of planes and pilots in the war, I wondered if anyone else might have exceeded that total?

On thinking further I considered names like Henshaw, Quill and Curtis. If Alex Henshaw actually flew 10% of all Spitfires produced as has been suggested, say for a test flight of 30 minutes, this would give him a total of about 1000 hours flying time. Anyone like to suggest any other contenders?

David Glaser (E D Glaser) was operational from the Battle of Britain 65 Sdr until the end of the war. During this time he clocked up 3000 operational Hrs all on Spits. Pretty hard to top I would say. He was a personal friend of mine and I saw the log books so i know it for a fact.
You can see how he aged from the freshed faced 19 year old in 1940 to the Battle hardened Squadron Ldr in the Northern Territories in 1945. A Brave man!

Here is a link to his story.

http://www.spitfirespares.com/SpitfireSpares.com/Pages/reference2l.html

Jerry Billing with 52.5 years displaying Spitfires with 250 + combat sorties with the RAF and RCAF. I know during the 1970’s-1990’s he put a lot of hours on MK923, as for he would be over the house I grew up in by Windsor air port which seemed daily back then.

Cheers Dave C

Without doubt, given his 35+ years of flying MH434, Ray Hanna must probably have notched up over 1,000 hours on that one aeroplane, not to mention the other Spitfres he occaisionally displayed.

I’d imagine Ray Hanna clocked a few Spit hours over 30 odd years….;)

And I seem to recall Paul ‘The Major’ Day has logged well over 1000 hours on Spit’s.