Hi everybody its Terrys son Stephen.We very much appreciate everyones kinds words and support at this time.My father is devastated at what happend yesterday to the aircraft .Whether or not if its a real spitfire Il let you argue that out between yourselves we have lost a life longs work and more importantly his livelihood.We will be releasing details of what we plan to do in the future once we have properly assessed the damage.We are just glad nobody was injured in the incident and hope she will be back so we can keep showing her around the country for the public to see.

Stephen,

Thanks for the update. If there is a crowd-funding scheme (or whatever), I think a few here would be happy to support. Best wishes and hoping for a speedy recovery.

Can we have the title changed to REPLICA please.

Can we do the same every time one of the Duxford* replicas is spoken of too then?

*other airfields suffer from replicas behaving like the real thing.

I find it hard to understand the double standards on this forum: this is a superb piece of craftsmanship and worthy of the term ‘Spitfire’ (without the word replica, reproduction or whatever) as all the many other replica Spitfires, P-51s, whatever.

My heart goes out to the chap who made this possible and I just hope his SPITFIRE is repairable.

If she is going to be grounded for major work soon maybe start it early if it is possible to get things in place [staff,spares,workshops etc] and see if she can be back earlier as well.They can do any other remedial work she needs at the same time without worrying about this years time constraints.
I guess it will be flying into Duxford so i suppose if it has to be airworthy for that then the work will have to be finished regardless .

I’m sure SENGO at BBMF will be happy for the advice.

Though maybe they know what they’re doing.

:eagerness:

Friday wasn’t.

Ex-Ethiopian maybe? They were in South Africa for a while but I can’t recall where they went after that. Possibly with Avspecs in NZ and Jerry Yagen?

It is certainly an impressive piece. I’m still a little confused by the 1928 ‘date’ or serial number ‘VN’ (something number?) but I’d say I’m confused rather than troubled by it; if the plaque was made in 1935 then the propeller blade had to be somewhere in 1928. It is only a problem if that number is linked to manufacture (a wooden propeller would surely be marked in some way to show its age?) and I don’t see any other obvious dates on the propeller?

I’m no expert on WWI era propellers, or any propellers for that matter, but would anybody still be making propellers like this in 1928? This kind of slender, all-in-one, four-bladed propeller would look dated in 1918, never mind 1928, surely; and the BE2c (or BE2e) was certainly obsolete well before 1928 so who would be making propellers for them that late?

It is far too much effort to ‘fake’ the whole thing, even in 1935, the wood (mahogany?) and effort alone would far outweigh the price it would be likely to fetch, and this is more true at any time since 1935 surely? And why, since everything else seems so right, would any fake item have the ‘wrong’ date on it (and why wouldn’t the plaque say 1917 rather than 1935)?

Why does ‘1928’ have to be a date? It’s a BE.2e prop for sure, most likely manufactured in 1916. Good job its s/n wasn’t ‘2016’…

This is very strange: I can find no ‘George McC Littlejohn’ recorded as an RFC/AFC/RNAS etc airman/officer and ‘2702’ doesn’t correspond to a relevant BE.2e (except as stated above).

Then we find that the date/location doesn’t seem to agree with a Combat in the Air on the Western Front.

I’ve no doubt that this is a Darracq-manufactured BE.2 prop, and I’d go so far as to say that it may have been damaged in combat but I do now wonder if the data on the plaque was a confusion of dates/serial number?

Or Walter Mitty in action?

Damaged blade doesn’t necessarily mean a shoot down: ‘2702’ doesn’t correspond to a BE.2e either (ditto A2702, B2702 etc); though 2702 is a BE.2c, it was a Mespot a/c (30 Sqn) and not Western Front.