Daily Mail - 01.08.2019

(Jacob Rumans) #1
Daily Mail, Thursday, August 1, 2019 Page 33

ER SPITFIRE


REBIRTH OF THE


Bare beauty: Stripped to
the metal, MJ 271 gleams
like a mirror in sunlight.
Inset left, pilots Matt Jones
and Steve Boultbee Brooks

Picture: JOHN M. DIBBS

started
that day.’
I head up
to Duxford in
Cambridgeshire,
home of the Aircraft
Restoration Company, spe-
cialists in vintage aircraft.
They have worked on about half of
the 50 Spitfires still in operation (there
are thought to be another 200 non-flying
models in existence).
But even these experts had never seen a
silver one until they removed the paint
from MJ 271 and set to work on this project,
which is believed to have cost in the region
of £3 million.
The first thing that hits you is just how
shiny the plane really is. It is just like a
looking-glass.
We push the plane out of the hangar.
Even on an overcast morning, you want to
reach for your sunglasses.
Hangar manager Mo Overall, who led the
restoration work, explains that the first
task was to replace more than 80,000 old

plane in France
on D-Day.
Tom later told the
story in his best-selling
memoir, Silver Spitfire. The
title alluded to the abandoned
French Spitfire he had found at a
deserted airfield and cheekily comman-
deered as a private plane for a while, hav-
ing first stripped it of its RAF livery.
‘It was a huge honour to fly Tom and
we became good friends,’ says Matt. ‘So
the idea of a silver Spitfire was also down
to him.’
Incidentally, Matt was not the only one
thrilled to know Tom Neil. Prince Harry
enjoyed that day so much, he picked a
photo of himself with Tom Neil as his 2015
Christmas card.
There is also a practical reason for having
no livery. Applying the requisite coats of
paint would add an estimated 300lb to the
plane’s weight — and on a trip like this,
every pound makes a difference.
Removal of all the guns, magazines and
ammunition equipment has saved 2,000lb
and added enough space to squeeze in
another 66 gallons of fuel. Few Spitfires
would fly more than 400 miles on a wartime
operation, whereas this one needs to be
able to cover up to 1,000 miles.
‘We won’t be doing many legs longer than
400 miles,’ says Matt. ‘But you need to
have enough fuel so that if you get some-
where and discover you can’t land there,
you can still get back to wherever you

magnesium
rivets. Even
so, 95 per
cent of the original beast
remains. The main pieces of
new kit are the tyres and the
propeller — which are from
Germany, of all places.
‘They just make the best blades,’
says Mo, matter-of-factly. The cockpit has
also been modified with a few USB ports

to accommodate a handful of modern
instruments — a horizon indicator, an
electronic compass and an iPad.
Otherwise, the cockpit is much the same
as Tom Neil would have known it.
Invited to take a seat, I have the same
boyish thrill that anyone gets when
offered the chance to sit on the shoulders
of giants.
The cockpit feels compact but not
claustrophobic; there is a hypnotic smell
of engine oil and aviation fuel (just in case
it gets too hypnotic, I spot a carbon
monoxide indicator, another safety device
that was never there in the Forties).

V


IEWED in bright sunlight, MJ 271
will be painful to the naked eye.
Even the pilots, with modern
sun-visors in their helmets,
might have trouble looking out over the
casing immediately in front of the wind-
screen. So this is one part of the plane that
is not silver but has a dark, matt finish.
There are still plenty of tests to be
completed before take-off on Monday.
I meet the Boultbee Academy’s chief
pilot, former wing commander James
Schofield, who is preparing to take the
plane aloft for half an hour to check the
latest tweaks to the fuel tanks.
A former RAF test pilot, James has flown
more than 100 aircraft, from a 1917 World
War I fighter to the latest U.S. Air Force
F35. He ranks the Spitfire in his top
three all-time favourite aircraft and
has flown several models.
So how does the silver
Spitfire compare?
‘Each has its own little
quirks, depending on
how it has been put
together,’ he says. ‘I
have to say that this
is the straightest
Spitfire I have
ever flown.’
And unquestion-
ably the shiniest.

... thanks to


the British


buccaneer


who’s spent


millions


restoring it to


fly around


the world

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