This thread is starting to amaze me, we are talking about a nicely restored Sea Fury which happens to have a retracting tailwheel when apparently last time is was here the tailwheel was fixed, big deal…. Perhaps it should have simply been bulldozed into a hole in the field after its encounter with a couple of trees rather than somebody taking the time effort and I imagine a considerable amount of money to restore it to the condition its in today.
American enthusiasts have had the opportunity to see the aircraft fly again and now hopefully its our turn again. Life operating, collecting and restoring vintage aircraft is hard enough as it is without so called enthusiasts wittering on about tailwheels…

It’s not about the tailwheel. If you hear they used wings, tail and front fuselage of other furies to make this one, What exactly is left of WG655? Nothing. The front fuselage/cockpit section was right there, so I don’t see why they would take another section. Now we have an aircraft that is sold and marketed as being fury “WG655” while there isn’t any part of that serial in it! Even worse, front fuselage, tail, wings of WG655 still exist in other places. If I buy a specific serial and I research it’s history, I would be very disappointed to find out I bought something it isn’t. Why not be honest and sell it as the serial the front fuselage actually is? I find this deceit criminal.

If she can be saved complete, let’s try. If not, save the cockpit section and spare recover the rest. The deHavilland museum might need one or two parts?

It’s indeed a real fury and not a replica, but if the original cockpit section is right there, why not use it instead of giving the serial to a fury that has no part of WG655? Seems like a waste.

Dennis Sanders kindly gave us a guided tour and was quite open that the Sea Furies under rebuild were made up from parts that had recently been restored and not neccessarily from the original aeroplane.WG655 in the hangar was well on the way to completion,while close by was the original cockpit section of WG655 on rebuild for another Sea Fury.

Which is in my opinion a totally wrong way of restoring an aircraft. If you have the original parts, use them. Don’t mix.

Thanks for the photo, chumpy.

This means the plane got the paint sheme with the “red 14” (see the link) between the August 1987 and July 1989. Was the plane painted with this camo for the The Tuskegee Airmen movie? I dont remember the camo of the 109s in this film.

http://www.me109.info/display.php?a=e&fid=3976

That font used for “14” just looks SO wrong 😮

I’m voting for the razor wire!

I would say you might well have trouble regards export permits but worth a try .

Indeed, These are still considered weapons of war as far as I know by the American government. After 9/11 things went crazy. I was looking for a TACAN instrument, found several US sellers but none would ship a stupid instrument outside the US. I luckily found one in Canada. Then there’s the heaps of paperwork and red flags some T-33 owners had to go through to import their Canadian T-33 into the US and for the moment that ex-French skyraider is stil impounded.

Or to HHA at Scampton?

Seems they won’t let it fly in the UK 🙁