Tue Mar 03, 2009 5:52 am
Saluting a Kiwi battle hero
Manawatu Standard
On Monday Marton businessman Brendon Deere's salute to his illustrious uncle, Word War II Spitfire ace Al Deere, rolls out of its Feilding Aerodrome hangar.
It will be put on a road transporter and taken to RNZAF Base Ohakea to be prepared for its test flight programme.Mr Deere's Spitfire Mk IX, which saw service with the air forces of four nations, is nearing completion of a 30,000-plus manhour every-last-rivet restoration.Now the legendary British steed of heroes is having the myriad final tasks of wiring, plumbing and panel fixing completed, ready for painting in the 1943 colours of the wing leader of the renowned London defence aerodrome Biggin Hill, Wing Commander Al Deere.
Mr Deere says his relationship with his famous uncle became closer in the years before his death in 1995, and he had formed a tremendous respect for him.Soon he became a pilot himself - his small plane is housed at Feilding - and began to find himself drawn toward the idea of "warbird" involvement in some form.The broad idea that one day he'd like to re-create Al Deere's Spitfire had occurred around 10 years ago, but the decision to buy the Myanmar Spitfire happened very quickly.
"Once the opportunity arose, it was done in about a week," he says.
To simply buy a going-concern Spitfire had drawbacks. The big one was the immediate cost - a recent New Zealand sale was at $2.8 million and the plane needed significant work to fly.Another factor was that Mr Deere wanted to be sure of his plane's originality and its quality."An advantage of a long-term project is that it spreads the expenditure over several years," he says - and he knows exactly what he's got.In fact, the restoration has been a five-year, 30,000-plus manhour undertaking - just a little more than the 25,000 hours originally hoped for, and well over double the 14,000 manhours that wartime construction of a Spitfire generally took. There's a good case that this restored Spitfire is built to a higher quality level than the original.
The cost? He's not saying.
"This is something, you either do it or you don't do it. And it's not for sale."
Spitfire serial PV 270 was remarkably complete and, as dismantling proceeded, the wings proved to be more corrosion-free than expected, though the fuselage was worse than hoped.Dismantling? Under the project leadership of former Air New Zealand engineer Greg Johnson, a specialist warbird restoration engineer, this aeroplane was reduced to its smallest components - every last rivet, and every part taken back to bare metal. The team has varied from four or five to a peak of eight or nine. One of those workers is Brendon Deere's son Joe, who, under the mentorship of the team's engineers, has himself achieved formal aviation engineer qualifications - and few would be able to say they qualified on a Spitfire.
Most of the work was done in the Manawatu, in the Feilding hangar, and with several local outfits undertaking contracts."It's amazing what we've been able to do locally," Mr Deere says.All of the aluminium work for the frame and skin was local, most of the components that needed replacement being hand- fabricated.The sole significant departure from the original specification is in the gun and ammunition bays within the wings. The Spitfire always had a limited range, and that space is now filled by supplementary fuel tanks - more for "insurance" than to extend the plane's range.
The engine was shipped to a specialist American rebuilder, and the propeller work was done in Britain, as were the radiators for engine coolant, engine oil and turbo intercooling.Mr Deere says the propeller will not be mounted until the plane is ready for engine testing.Monday morning the Spitfire will be rolled out of the hangar, loaded aboard a house transporter and taken to Ohakea.
The RNZAF's willingness to help in the final stages is hugely appreciated by Mr Deere."We're getting tremendous co- operation from the RNZAF," he said.The plane's final painting will be done there by the Deere team, and RNZAF technical staff will have access to the Spitfire for educational purposes. The plane will be housed with the RNZAF Historical Flight for a period.Mr Deere is allowing plenty of time to ensure everything is right when renowned international warbird pilot Keith Skilling comes down - pencilled in for mid- February - to conduct the test flight programme at Ohakea, a big, wide runway with room for second thoughts.
Mr Skilling's usual office is the flight deck of an Air New Zealand Boeing 777, but he's been a regular pilot with Britain's Old Flying Machine Company and show outfits like the Breitling Fighters. He's a Warbirds Over Wanaka regular.There had been hope that the Spitfire could fly at Wings Over Wairarapa, two weeks away, but Mr Deere said it was realised months ago that it couldn't happen without rushing the job: "We were not going to cut corners at this stage of the exercise."
MK IX SPITFIRE
Brendon Deere's Mk IX Spitfire, serial PV270, came off the production line at Vickers-Armstrong's Castle Bromwich factory, near Birmingham, in September 1944 and never saw service in Britain.It went to the Mediterranean, where it flew with at least two RAF squadrons over Italy and possibly Yugoslavia. At the war's end, it was in storage in Italy, and became part of the post-war Italian Air Force, being retired in 1950.
After an overhaul in Italy, it went to the fledgling Israeli Air Force in 1953. It was used to keep fighter pilots combat- ready.
The following year, Israel sold it to Burma (now Myanmar), then fighting an insurgent campaign by Kuomintang guerrillas on its northern border with China. PV270 flew against them. The plane's last flight was in 1956, it then spent years on a plinth outside an air base near Yangon (Rangoon).
Spitfire LF MkIXc, PV270
Wingspan: 11.3m, length 9.5m, weight 3300kg.
Weapons: Two 20mm cannon, four .303 machineguns.
Engine: Rolls Royce Merlin 70, 27 litre V-12, two-speed, two-stage supercharger; intercooled, four valves per cylinder rated at 1650hp-plus at 3000rpm at altitude; four-blade constant-speed propellor.
Performance: about 650kmh.
Range: 700km.