Building a Spitfire

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Here is the emotional story and video of the Spitfire Mk1. Review :

 

NORTH Lincolnshire motorcycling racer and speed ace Guy Martin returns to our screens tonight for a one-off special where he helps rebuild a Spitfire.

 

Guy Martin's Spitfire, on Channel 4, sees the lorry mechanic, based at Kirmington, join a two-year project to rebuild a Spitfire which was shot down over northern France in 1940 and not recovered until the 1980s.

 

He has risen to national fame with his TV series Speed, and whilst tonight's show is a one-off, a second series of his show will return to our screens this winter as he takes on four new adrenaline-fuelled challenges.

 

But not before he joins a restoration team for a two year rebuild of the Mark I Spitfire, which was shot down on a beach in northern France in 1940, where it sank.

 

The Supermarine Spitfire was Britain’s most successful fighter plane and remains an iconic symbol of the Second World War.

 

Its pilot, RAF ace Squadron Leader Geoffrey Stephenson, escaped and headed for Belgium. The wreckage was finally recovered in the 1980s and stored in France for more than 20 years until it was purchased by a specialist aircraft restoration firm. In this special film, Guy celebrates the people behind this famous fighter and its heroic pilots – the factory workers who risked their lives building the aircraft and the mechanics who worked to repair, reload and refuel the planes and send them back into the skies to defend Britain. Spitfire N3200 was part of 19 Squadron, based at RAF Duxford, Cambridgeshire, where the restoration project was based. Guy’s mechanical skills are pushed to the limit as he takes part in every part of the reconstruction, following the original blueprints in forensic detail all the way to its inaugural flight. He even tests the fighter’s Browning machine guns to see their devastating firepower. The story of Sqdn Ldr Stephenson, who would become the Queen’s pilot, is like something from a Boy’s Own paper and his private diaries, written while imprisoned in Colditz, have been uncovered for the first time for the film. Spitfires carried little more than an hour’s worth of fuel and after just eight seconds of firing would run out of bullets, meaning they had to be turned around with lightning speed to be sent back into battle. The rebuild offers an extraordinary look at the amazing engineering and skills involved in building, flying and maintaining the aircraft. Please Subscribe for more stories of world war veterans or new topics.

 

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