Seafire III – PP972

It was origionally rebuilt by Jean Frelaut to static condition after he rescued it from a scrap yard. It then passed to Doug Arnold who had the rebuild started which meant the airframe stripped to nothing and rebuilt. After his death it went into storeage before emerging briefly to Historic Flying (not sure if they did anything to the aircraft) and then on to Hawker Restorations for completion which is where all the problems were found.

I seem to recall she was originally rebuilt by a French guy (can’t remember his name), and he used the engine from Spitfire IA P9374. Is this correct? I remember seeing it in a 1986(!) copy of Flypast which detailed the then-known Spitfire survivors worldwide.

Not the best example in the world

Bit of an old scapper then

The pic on the Vintage Fabrics site it around 3+ years old, in fact PP972 moved on shortly after that pic was taken. As Ant says some problems were found with the fuselage build (built by another rebuilder) during final assembly and the aircraft passed from the restorers back to the owner for rectification where it still is today. By this time the wings had already been away for rebuild as they were found to have a twist in them, all a bit of a mess on the whole.
By all accounts the Seafire is a long way from flying now.

Hi Graeme,
From what I’ve been told,it seems she was being prepared for flight testing at one point,but unfortunately a number of faults in the early stages of her restoration were discovered and she’s had to be taken apart again to rectify the problems.She was at Earls Colne airfield in Essex last I heard about 18 months ago,although she may well have moved on.