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| Keywords: Simon Moores Spitfire U2.jpg en wikipedia 2012 July 16 Supermarine Spitfire to find his way home to RAF Manston in 1941 My phone rang Squadron scramble said the voice at the other end of the line A patch of clear weather has just appeared and we ™ll be off in ten minutes It was Charlie Brown chief pilot of the Historic Aircraft Collection and for most of the day; he and his Spitfire Vb BM597 G-MKVB in company with a Hurricane XII Z5140 G-HURI flown by Clive Denny had been trapped by the weather at Manston en-route from Duxford to the Jersey Airshow and from there on to the Mediterranean island of Malta With the cloud base down below five hundred feet and unable to take my own aircraft out to Deanland for its fifty-hour check I had wandered over to the flying club at Manston ™s TG Aviation; to see how things were going since the airport had re-opened Heavy rain started bouncing off the road leading past the boarded-up EUjet terminal building as I arrived at Manston and the first thing I noticed was a covered Hurricane parked on the apron Behind it a small group in flying suits directed by a figure with a distinctive handlebar moustache were hurriedly pushing a blue-painted Spitfire into the shelter of the hangar I had always assumed that both the Spitfire and the Hurricane were water-resistant After all these tough aircraft had survived the Battle of Britain without dissolving in the rain but sixty-five years on however these classic collection fighters demand a great deal of loving care and maintenance and both the aircraft that had diverted to Manston that day had good reason to stay dry The Hurricane because water apparently leaks into the cockpit and can quickly wreck its radio and the visiting Spitfire because its blue paint scheme for the journey to Malta was only temporary hadn ™t yet set and was in danger of washing-off in a heavy shower Heading first for Jersey via Caen and forced into Manston by the bad weather pilots Charlie Brown Clive Denny and Howard Cook were taking the aircraft in their original 'Maltese Falcons' colours out to the Mediterranean for Merlins over Malta a battle for Malta veterans' reunion and airshow celebration of the historic defence of the island in 1942/43 At the time Malta with its Grand Harbour occupied a strategic position between Europe and Africa and had become one of the decisive battlegrounds of World War II; used by the Allies as a platform to deny the Germans a strategic advantage in the Mediterranean and north Africa where German Field Marshall Rommel was advancing towards the Suez canal Between June 1940 and December 1942 Malta became one of the most heavily bombed landscapes on earth as the Luftwaffe attempted to batter the island into submission When the siege of the island began the RAF had very few modern aircraft available to challenge German airpower but with the arrival of Hawker Hurricanes in June 1940 the RAF began to stage a heroic resistance until the arrival of more capable relief aircraft in the shape of seven Mk Vs Spitfires from the carrier HMS Eagle on the 7th March 1942 These were painted in a distinctive blue scheme seen on Charlie Brown ™s Spitfire and reproduced on a special Corgi Aviation limited collectors set featuring both aircraft The author Geoffrey Wellum also based at Manston was one of the pilots involved in delivering Spitfires to the island during the subsequent Operation Pedestal in August 1942 and he describes this experience in his autobiography ˜First Light ™ While Charlie Brown ™s MkVb Spitfire is decorated in a naval carrier blue the Hurricane Z5140 displaying the code letters HA-C wears the colours of a Hurricane IIB flown with 126 Squadron during the siege of Malta This arrived on the island on June 6th 1941 during Operation Rocket having flown off HMS Ark Royal While the defenders expected that their Hurricanes would be delivered in a more appropriate tropical paint finish there was no time available to repaint them from the familiar Battle of Britain green and brown camouflage Lucky enough to come across the team and with my camera to hand I had hoped the weather would clear for long enough for me to take some good photographs of both aircraft but as the pilots wandered off for a surprise visit and a bacon sandwich at the Manston Spitfire Museum the weather collapsed over the airfield and forced the cancellation of their fly past for the Jersey Air Show that afternoon For a while it looked as if they were going to be marooned at Manston overnight and I went off to arrange emergency hotel accommodation for the team among the fleshpots of Margate However I hadn ™t been gone an hour when the rain stopped and quite suddenly as it does over the Kent coast patches of blue sky started to appear It was then that I had the phone call from Charlie Brown Keen to escape the clutches of Manston the Spitfire and the Hurricane were going to take off into a small circle of clear sky that had appeared over Pegwell Bay We ™ll have to do the photos another time he said They ™ll never do it in ten minutes I thought turning my motorcycle around towards Manston and reaching the flying club in under fifteen just in time to see both the Spitfire and the Hurricane roar off the runway with that distinctive Merlin engine sound turn left and climb in close formation out over the English Channel towards the distant coast of France as they might have done in company with Geoffrey Welland in very different circumstances sixty-five years ago --DrMoores 13 40 23 April 2006 UTC en wikipedia Sfan00_IMG //tools wikimedia de/~magnus/commonshelper php CommonsHelper 2006-04-23 Drmoores wikipedia en Original upload log en wikipedia Simon_Moores_Spitfire_U2 jpg 2006-04-23 13 30 Drmoores 200×179× 15189 bytes <nowiki>Author - Simon Moores 2005 with Spitfire U2 from Merlins over Malta anniversary ”Public Domain</nowiki> __NOTOC__ Supermarine Spitfire warbirds Aircraft at Duxford Aerodrome | ||||
