“I agree that the IWM have done a good job with the ‘109 but given this particular airframes history, I just feel that more could/should have been done.
It is after all, a genuine Battle of Britain survivor and as I said before, there aren’t many of them buggers left.”
I agree that it would be nice to see her on her feet sometime in future.It’s been suggested that the IWM wanted her posed on her belly to meet the deadline for the BofB exhibition,the thinking being that it’s more acceptable to see an aircraft with bits missing if it’s posed like a wreck.
As for the ‘reproduction/replica’ debate, I agree with MarkV that a replica is a lookalike,either a full size model or some homebuilt like the Clive Du Cros ‘Spitfire’.A reproduction is a new example of the original machine,like the Sopwith Tripe and Bristol M.1C at Shuttleworth.
As for original bits in Spitfires,I do wonder of it is really worth restoring something like that Mk.1 which was recovered from a French beach a few years back.I would be far happier to see the original wreck than some flying reproduction with the original identity.The same goes for the rebuilding of fatal wrecks.Why build a new aircraft with the old one’s identity when you could find an identity for the reproduction which doesn’t have a fatal history?There is always the argument that the original identity is more historic,if it was a D-Day veteran for example,but when you rebuild such badly damaged machines there is often next to nothing that will be re-used,so the owners of these machines are kidding themselves IMHO when it comes to claims about how ‘historic’ the rebuilt machine is.
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