In the letters section of today’s Daily Mail was a letter from Arthur Barker who said that he was a flight mechanic with 66 Squadron at Duxford in 1938 and his job to take charge of the first Spitfire there. This Spitfire was to do 500 hours non-stop flying to iron out faults with the early squadron Spitfires. My question being, does anyone on here, know which particular Spitfire this would have been? Thanks.
By: Sopwith - 23rd July 2013 at 19:24
Thanks Paul, I was wondering that, because I always understood that 19 squadron were the first with Spitfires, like you said, but you learn something new every day and in fairness the guy said that he was 98, and memory can play tricks I suppose, although he ought to know because it would be an important time in his life, as they would have been state of the art in their time
By: paulmcmillan - 23rd July 2013 at 18:31
Interesting… Not doubting the mans story but I wonder if he has some of the details wrong…19 Sqn were the first to receive Spitfires, if they were fast tracking a Spitfire to its first 500 hours then it would make more sense doing it there.
However, a lot of the early Spitfires were written off or had accidents early in Service as pilots often ‘forgot’ to put wheels down
thus, you could NOT predict which aircraft hit 500 hours first…
Saying that
http://www.airhistory.org.uk/spitfire/p001.html
Shows 66 Sqn’s first Spit appears to be K9804
But look at these two…
K9789 Ia 3 EA MII 19S Duxford 4-8-38 intensive service trials
K9790 Ia 4 EA MII 19S 11-8-38 intensive service trials VA stripped for detailed exam
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July 23, 2013 at 4:32 pm