“The same website ( http://www.saairforce.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3306 ) has another photo of it but the same explanation”

A poster on this site also provides a short history – ES127 – Vb – CBAF – M46 – 39MU 10-11-42 82MU 27-11-42 Empire Clive 11-12-42 Takoradi 23-1-43 NAfrica 30-11-43 417S second cockpit install Catania Sicily 1944 SOC 8-3-44 to GI airframe.

This suggests that it may have gone to 417 squadron rather than 261, which seems more plausible. Either way, it was not around long, seemingly struck off charge in earl March 1944.

Out of curiosity, why did SM520 only adopt ES127’s codes? Would have been rather nice with orange centred roundels!

Sopwith.7f1 – is your actual contention that the aircraft in India should carry the serial E 8894, as this took the main fuselage parts of the original E 8894, and the airworthy restoration has, at best, only been based around the leftover parts and hence should not carry that serial? That seems a little pedantic when there appears to be no serial claimed for the Indian aircraft, and there are definitely parts from E 8894 used in, or associated with, the airworthy build.

Has anyone got a list of the serials of the Indian Imperial Gift aircraft, that could provide possible identities to the other parts recovered?

And armed with a light sabre! :D:D

Seems surprising that it never made it back to Lambeth. If there’s any name from WW1 that non-historian (or non-aviation expert) people would have heard of or relate to, it would be ‘The Red Baron’ and there has to be some ‘wow’ factor to displaying the engine from his plane.

Hi Andrew, out of curiosity, when was 1690 BDTF set up? For some years I have been researching my mother’s cousin Ernest Deverill who was awarded his AFC for work relating to setting up a training programme for fighter evasion tactics for bomber crews, and for putting bomber crews through this, while assigned to the AFDU (Air Fighting Development Unit) during 1943. Information on this part of his career has been scant and I wondered if there was possibly a cross-over with the origins of 1690 BDTF. Apologies for the thread hijack!

I find it hard to see why people on this forum should have considered it any form of done deal that the RAFM got this aircraft, or that it was still considered ‘British owned’.

Think about it. Let’s say an intact FW 190 is located tomorrow in one of Thames Water’s reservoirs west of London by a couple of sports divers, and a German museum is keen to get it as it fills gaps in their collections – should it by right go to Germany? Is it still theirs? Do they even have a right to come to the UK and organise a recovery? I think I can say with complete certainty that Germany has no claim to it and everyone on this forum would expect it to stay in the UK and go to a UK museum and there would be an uproar if it didn’t and it was handed over to Germany. Why is anything expected to be different in Egypt?

And if you think the situation is different because Britain was at war with Germany at the time, think up any other example of a foreign nation having lost something in Britain some time ago (consider the rights around shipwrecks for example). Do they still own it and have any right to it? I don’t necessarily think so.

I repeat what I said before – good on the RAFM for taking a long shot on a possible acquisition and funding a recovery of the Kittyhawk to a safe location. I don’t think that further explanations are required. And the world is going to see a late model spitfire restored, rather than it sitting on a shelf in a warehouse – a plus I would say.

The aircraft is where it should be – on display in Egypt, at a museum in the area of the conflict in which it participated (even if the ‘restoration’ leaves much to be desired). It seems rather presumptuous to assume that in the 21st century a western country can just remove historic artifacts from someone else’s sovereign territory. The official Egyptian policy is no removal of historic artefacts – and it would have been an international scandal of note if the RAFM had removed the aircraft from the country illegally. That surely was completely foreseen and I find it shocking the number of people on this forum who seem to think it would have been alright to have the aircraft spirited away to the UK – it’s abandoned in someone else’s country, the days of taking stuff we want are long past!

If the aircraft had remained much longer at the crash site it would have been looted either for illegally-saleable artefacts or for scrap – later photos show some significant damage in the cockpit. So leaving it there was rapidly becoming not an option, and the RAFM funded a recovery and took what was in reality a very long shot on the possibility of obtaining the aircraft – well done to them, it got recovered, but it’s a pity that they (or other people) provided no advice on the restoration/conservation of the airframe if it stayed at El Alamein.

What seems to be forgotten is that WW2 in North Africa was not an Egyptian war, it was a war between the then superpowers who romped back and forth along the north African coastal plain causing absolute chaos for the local populations. From an Egyptian point of view this is not a war that they take much ‘ownership’ over or can be expected to expend much effort over commemorating or preserving – it’s interest to them is in the attraction to foreign tourists from the nations who participated in the war, who are in a minority to those interested in the ancient Egyptian relics which are also the more historically important relics from the perspective of the evolution of human society (so that’s where both Egyptian and most foreign funding go). There’s a limited museum at El Alamein and to do better requires better funding – I would suggest that this should be funded from the nations whose participation in the war it commemorates, and who have greater investment in remembering the conflict. This development of local museums would be far more worthy than taking artifacts off for display in London, or wherever.