It will certainly be interesting to re-unite Spitfire PL965 with her Merlin 70 service engine of 1945 again.

Sky undersurfaces without roundels were introduced on Hurricanes from early June 1940 (6/6/40). Roundels were not applied at the factory officially until 1st August. In practice these were then added at unit level to existing airframes but would have been somewhat sporadic at first so there is no 100% certainty (without a photo) if Nicolsons aircraft would have had them applied by 17 August although officially it should have had them by then.

Again, officially the spinner was Night and would have been when the aircraft reached 249 Sqdn, however it was not uncommon to use Sky or Eau-de-nil (or even white) at unit level to distinguish a particular aircraft or Flight. Photographic reference to this aircraft or others at the same time/place would be needed to determine this although I have seen profiles of other 249 Sqdn aircraft with a pale spinner.

PS: The all red fin leading edge is often a good indicator of a Gloster built Hurricane as they seemed to have applied fin markings consistantly like this throughout 1940 – although like everything concerning this business its indicative rather than the rule!

This aircraft crashed in the early eighties and was the only airworthy Mk 22 Spitfire in the world at the time (nothing has changed sofar).

Does anyone know the story about him acquiring the Spit and the restoration or was it in such a good shape that it was fueled, serviced and took off?

Cheers

Cees

Cees – there was a video documentary made of the whole story (shown on TV many years ago) – the final sequence sadly filmed on his final flight. Not sure how to get a copy but no doubt someone will know.

I’m sure they will cgi it out, unlike Dark Blue World and the Mountains of the Weald.

Moggy

Indeed, if you look at the video posted further down you will see a very large ‘green screen’ positioned behind the replica.

One of the aircraft, the Hangar 11 P-40, is still in its special film paint and weathering and will be displaying today at Old Warden and Abingdon so its a good opportunity to see its new look! 🙂

But why not??

As has been outlined above. Its a new aircraft type in effect and as such would require complete type authorisation as its too heavy to be placed in the homebuilt PFA catergory. Such an excercise would be very difficult, time consuming and costly to justify for one example. If the aircraft was a restored original with a BMW engine it would qualify for Permit operation being an ex-military aircraft but in the case of the Flugwerk replicas, not so.

There is no Europe wide blanket permission for Permit Aircraft either, you need permission to fly one in another countries airspace (even just over-flying one country to get to another) and the permission has time limits. This is how you see foreign participation at Legends etc but does require our CAA to agree to the aircraft being here.

The German CAA have however taken a different view and of course operation in the US would under the Experimental catergory of which there is sadly no UK equivelent.

I’m not sure if the engine is the trouble – the former OFMC Lavochkin La-9 had the same type and seems to have flown over there no sweat?

Not for very long though (unfortunately) – its a magnificent aircraft.

I think he means Douglas DAUNTLESS

They have also located a Devastator and intend to recover it according to Classic Wings magazine.

So far they have shown some reluctance in this area. 🙂

The situation regarding the recovery of lost US Navy aircraft has finally changed (for the better) following the appointment of a new director.