He was creating what he considered to be the most refined Spitfire incorporating technical features which he had in his experience found to be the best available and giving the optimum handling and operating features. The leading edge wing tanks on PT462 are the feature incorporated from the PRXI and the short span ailerons were a feature of the MkXIV for example. The wheels were new manufacture and of the optimum size. Dick Melton had gained a lot of experience within the RAF and during his time with BBMF and as the Chief Engineer with Doug Arnold’s Warbirds of Great Britain. His selection by Charles Church as his Chief Engineer was no surprise, he was doing a fair bit of freelance work by then and had done work with Nick Grace amongst others. All the mods were accepted design features on varying marks, he just cherry picked those that would give the performance and features he found the most suited to the Spitfires he and his team were building at the workshop at Micheldever at that time. He,his team and his employer were making great strides towards the manufacture of “hard-to-get” components such as five blade prop hubs and undercarriage legs when Charles Church was killed in the crash of “EE606″/G-MKVC. As a result of this, the operation wound down and the collection was dispersed and the workshop closed and the material and machinery sold off. A large number of items were acquired by an engineer at Bartow in the US and were shipped out there. The aeroplanes were scattered across the globe and most have continued to fly or been finished off some years later in new ownership such as Spitfire RR262. From memory those ex-Charles Church projects that have yet to be finished or in some cases progressed would include Spitfire FRXIV MV262 and Lancaster KB976/G-BCOH. The ex-Strathallan Fairy Battle that was in the pipeline for restoration ended up in Belgium after a complex exchange for Spitfire RN201.

Always very exciting to see new images from behind the scenes. These private collection images always have something special and different from the normal ones that get published. Many thanks for letting us see them.

Roobarb

FRXIVc low back, x4 cannon with strobes and finished in Red with a white/blue pin-stripe… 😎

Awesome machine and scheme. Looks better than when I knew it at Southend Historic Aircraft Museum 😎

Hi Tony T,

Ha ha ha, you should have been a rigger then! Even though the weather was crap it was a great show and the lightning take off thing was incredible. We took the Sherpa cruising the seafront at Cleethorpes in the evening and checked out the local watering facilities and some place on the pier, Pier 39 or something? Glad to know you were busy grafting and keeping the Orange forces at bay… 😉

Roobarb

I was there working as groundcrew for the 45 Sqn/TWCU Tornado GR.1. It was lovely and sunny on the Friday when we arrived and we had a great look around all of the Binbrook Hangars and took lots of photo’s out on the pan etc. Different story on the Saturday! Yuk. I was staying in probably the most derelict transit accommodation I ever encountered in the RAF, my room had a huge part of the floor with a massive hole in it! We were in huts that looked straight out of “The Great Escape” ( I think the hole was an escape tunnel!) . Great weekend though and the stories of traffic tailbacks as people tried to get in were legendary. Happy days 🙂