Fair comments sir,
I suspect I would have felt much the same if I had found such an item, although I would have only been a teenage when this particular aircraft was recovered, and as such not had any idea about it, let alone the ability to try and rebuild it.

I trust people wont feel too much resentment considering the passage of time.
As I say the web site will be accessible to every one, and perhaps as some one ‘has to do it’, it happened to be me for the time being, and at least it has stayed in the UK.

If any one has any further historical points of interest on this aircraft regarding service, recovery etc, I will try to add what I can to the site by way of recognition.

regards
Jon

Incidentally, to avoid confusion, messages from Jon.R & Graham H same person.
I used a friends AF access while mine was ‘down’.
regards
Jon

P8208

Good afternoon fellow Spitfire fans.

This forum has appeared quite often during my various searches and some of the questions I feel Im in a reasonable position to answer.

I note there have been a number threads discussing P8208 and questions over its current location and condition.
As you will probably know this aircraft was recovered by Silip Darkar back in the 80s. It had spent its life up to this point in the river Severn, until it was recoverd by a large team and a couple of helicopters. Quite a large amount of wreckage was recovered followed by a stint in a museum until most of the remains were sold to a collector.
Since then the collector put the remains and identity of P8208 on the market, and was purchased by us at Rad Aviation in Oxford during 2005.

The intention is to as far as possible reconstruct P8208 back to a static (possibly taxiable static with a Merlin III) display condition. As its history and service is reasonably well known and the fact that it originated from the BoB 303 sq it makes this particular project well worth while to preserve this aircraft and its history for future generations.
We intend to use all the remains we have and also as far as possible use components, fuse parts, and engine bearers etc from a large collection of original Spitfire parts we already own. Obviously where new items have to be fabricated we will use correct materials and build methods.
Hopefully we will be able to produce a symathetic restoration.

To ensure we are not the only ones who get to enjoy this project, we are currently putting together a web site which will soon be live to show our progress. We hope to include lots of interesting close ups of cockpits and engines, finished polished items, no doubt a few skinned knuckles, as well as bent bits of metal gently being heated, rolled, etc back into original and recognisable shapes.

The site will also show progress on our other Spitfire project. A MKVIII we purchased from Australia and crated over in 2003. This is provissionally identified as JG 668 from the basis of the large number of parts from the original aircraft and components marked and originating from this aircraft.

I hope adds some clarity to the questions .
regards
Jon R