Quote:
Rare 2-seat Spitfire up for auction
By Robert Barr - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Apr 7, 2009 12:00:03 EDT
LONDON — A rare two-seat version of the Spitfire fighter, the plane that earned a nation’s gratitude in the Battle of Britain, may fetch a record price in an auction this month. This Spitfire is unique — a one-seat World War II-era fighter that became a two-seat trainer in the 21st century. Bonhams, which is offering the meticulously restored plane at a sale April 20, estimates it will sell for $2.2 million. Retrieved from a junkyard in South Africa 30 years ago, the plane is now certified to fly.
Bonhams’ Austria unit, Bonhams & Goodman, sold a 1945 Spitfire Mark XVI for $1.8 million in September, reportedly the record auction price for a Spitfire. That plane had been on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, until 1997. The one now for sale is a Mark IX model delivered Oct. 23, 1944, one of 23,000 Spitfires built through the war. It remained a single-seater into its junkyard years, and became a trainer in the shop of Classic Aero Engineering at Thruxton Airport, 66 miles southwest of London. The company’s chief engineer, Bruce Ellis, spent weeks tracking down the original specifications for the TR9 trainer version at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, north of London.
