Elmar Meier, technical manager of Meier Motors, taxying Spitfire Tr.9 MJ772 at Bremgarten in early December. His brother, Achim, will be at the controls for the first flight.SPITFIRE Tr.9 MJ772/ D-FMKN was due to make its first flight in more than 25 years before the end of 2011 at Bremgarten, south-west Germany, following an intensive year-long rebuild by Meier Motors (MM). Once test-flying is completed the combat veteran will be ferried to a new home at the Air Fighter Academy GmbH at Heringsdorf on the island of Usedom in the Baltic, one of Germany’s top holiday tourism destinations.

The Spitfire had previously been part of the Champlin collection in Mesa, Arizona, USA, where the second seat had been faired over in the early 1980s. Led by crew chief Felix Olhoff, theMMteam has reinstated the rear cockpit and fitted a new central fuel tank with internal cross-bracing, a feature unique to the two-seat Spitfires. The trainer, which has less room between the cockpit and the firewall than the fighter version, has just one fuselage tank rather than the single-seater’s two. All of the control surfaces have received new fabric covering, and all systems and flight controls have been thoroughly overhauled.

The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was rebuilt by Vintage V12s Inc at Tehachapi, California, in the USA. Built at Castle Bromwich at the end of 1943, MJ772 flew 50 operations during the Second World War, was converted to Tr.9 configuration in 1950, and flew with the Irish Air Corps from 1951 to 1960. From 2004 to 2010 it was on static display at the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum at Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It arrived at Bremgarten, crated, in December 2010. Meanwhile, in another part of theMM hangar, restoration of a Hawker Sea Fury wing is under way. Company proprietors Elmar and Achim Meier had long wanted to get a Sea Fury to Bremgarten, having seen one performing in an air show over Freiburg in the mid-1970s.

They finally acquired Sea Fury T.20 VX302 from the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Texas, USA, in early 2011. This aeroplane has particular significance in Germany. During the 1960s and early 1970s, registered D-CACE, it was one of 17 bright red Sea Furies operated by the German Company Deutsche Luftwaffenberatungsdienst, towing targets for the new Luftwaffe over Luebeck- Blankensee. The fuselage of D-CACE is now with Sea Fury specialists Sanders Aeronautics at Ione, California, for rebuilding, and the Bristol Centaurus engine is being rebuilt by Vintage V12s. It is hoped that D-CACE will fly again in 2015, 40 years after the Meier brothers first saw Hawker’s thoroughbred in action.