6 ms·

What does it take to restore a World War Two Spitfire?

55 points by bootload 11y ago

ommunist 11y ago
these days it seems Britain prepares its spirits for the next war.
- nbevans 11y ago
  Because America isn't just as passionate in restoring P-52 Mustang's.
  - ommunist 11y ago
    not really. More because America is rebasing a bunch of Abrams tanks to Latvia and F22s raptors closer to Russian borders.
    - ommunist 11y ago
      Downvoted? I expected that. Nobody likes truth. BBC for taxpayers money advertises Christies's auction and raises public awareness in UK military. Two nice rabbits with a single shot. @nbevans. I personally like Spitfire very much. But nothing is published on BBC without dual or triple purpose these days.
  - TylerE 11y ago
    A - It's the P-51 B - There are plenty still flying. There used to be a lot more actually, as they were sold off the public quite cheaply after the war. Many many have been lost to accidents over the years - The P-51 is NOT a forgiving airplane. C - The biggest challenge - Really the ONLY major challenge, airframe/structural work is basically a solved problem - are the engines. The Rolls Royce Merlin engine, used in both the Spitfire and the P-51, was last manufactured in 1950. While there were many built (and thus many to scavenge from), that inventory is only shrinking as engines are replaced or overhauled. Basically the world's entire stock of Merlin parts lives in a group of semi trailers in the California desert (http://www.51-factory.com/merlin_overhaul.html http://www.51-factory.com/merlin_overhaul.html) - when they're gone, they're gone.
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      I find it hard to believe that there are Merlin engine parts that cannot be made from scratch. Even engine blocks - if the drag racing industry can make custom engine blocks from scratch, why can't a V12 be made?
      - Someone 11y ago
        Every part _can_ be made, and eventually, likely, every part will be made in order to keep these things operational, but enthusiasts find these machines more authentic if they are made from authentic parts. If one starts building new parts from scratch there may come a moment where people say something has become a replica, more so if one also uses new technology (philosophers discuss this as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus). The weird thing, though, is that the road along which one gets to an object is more important than the end result in determining authenticity. Replace all parts of a spitfire until just one piece remains original, and you have an original spitfire. Build a replica, buy that one original part, and include it, and you still have a replica. A nice example is HMS Victory, a wooden warship that saw battle at Trafalgar. It is kept afloat by replacing its parts. By now around 20% of the original wood remains (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/05/world/europe/hms-victory/ http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/05/world/europe/hms-victory/). Yet, we think of it as the original ship. However, it is not a given that replacing all parts makes a new object. The Ise grand shrine in Japan is over 2000 years old, but gets rebuilt with new materials every 20 years (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine)
        perfTerm 11y ago
        As an analogy, due to cell replication and replacement I'm probably 0% my original "self" but I'm obviously the original me. If you cloned me, and gave my clone my arm, that'd obviously be the replica anyways. So it seems to make sense to me.
        WalterBright 11y ago
        I understand the desire for "authentic" parts, but one is chasing rainbows. I recall once a business was selling "authentic" 1960s air in a can one could use to fill the tires on one's authentic 1960s muscle car. My personal opinion is that wrecks dredged up from swamps and such should be put into museums as is. Flying airplanes should be replicas, made as close to the original specifications as the owner wants. For example, a few years ago there was a project at Paine Field to build flying replicas of the Me262. They took apart an original to measure everything and make a specification. As a concession to safety, they used modern jet engines and instrumentation, and used lead weights instead of guns (to maintain proper balance). I would have bought one if I could afford one! Nobody would actually want to fly an original, because the engines only lasted about 20 hours, were extremely unreliable, and nobody bothered with corrosion protection (didn't expect the machine to last long enough to corrode).
rebootthesystem 11y ago
The Spitfire is a beautiful airplane. It was my first 1/4 scale (large) radio control project many, many years ago.
WalterBright 11y ago
"It's timeless, it is the most perfect piece of engineering - a work of art." True, except it was hardly perfect engineering. If you nosed it hard into a dive, the carburetors would spill fuel into the cockpit. Pilots learned to roll it on its back and pull it down that way. The Me109 was fuel injected and didn't have that problem. The 109 also took half as many hours to produce. All WW2 airplanes had their various problems that would kill the unwary pilot. The good pilots would avoid the defects in their airplane and play to the defects in the enemy machine.
- gp2000 11y ago
  The partial workaround for negative G problems is a nice little story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Shilling%27s_orifice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Shilling%27s_orifice
- jabl 11y ago
  Hum, that's the first time I have heard that explanation. What I've heard was that negative G caused the carburetor to flood, yes, but the result was the engine stalling, not fuel spilling into the cockpit. Which IMHO sounds more plausible.. Perhaps you're thinking of the typhoon & tempest which had a problem of exhaust leaking into the cockpit. Solution: pilot wad required to always use the oxygen mask.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    I read about this problem in one of many accounts on flying Spits in combat. Yes, it was the gas, not an exhaust leak. Sorry I don't have a cite. The Merlin engine had other issues - it was very sensitive to battle damage. This is in contrast to the engine on the P47, which could take a lot of damage and keep running.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - Agathos 11y ago
      Bug or intentional design tradeoff? When you choose an inline V12 over a radial engine, you're implicitly choosing to be more sensitive to battle damage. But the R-2800 Double Wasp is an engineering triumph in its own right. Hellcat, Corsair, Thunderbolt, Black Widow, Bearcat... they put it in everything.
PaulRobinson 11y ago
Little known fact: when Williams, Kilburn and Tootill were building the SSEM (nicknamed the Baby) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Small-Scale_Experimental_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Small-Scale_Experim... - the World's first stored program computer, some of the parts they used such as switches and so on were the same as those used by the Spitfire builders because there was plenty of them around spare in wartime Britain. When the reconstruction was being built, the restorers had to track down parts from Spitfires that were no longer airworthy to be as authentic as possible. Source: I know somebody who spent a lot of time talking to somebody involved in the restoration.
ourmandave 11y ago
I really like learning about all the counter measures and the like that went into these planes. I'm curious about a caption from one of the pictures though. The yellow diamond of reactive paint on the wing was supposed to give early warning of a gas attack by turning black. Do they mean gas attack like, mustard gas attack or my wing is shot up and leaking fuel?
- Mtinie 11y ago
  The former. http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aircraft-markings-and-camouflage/spitfire-mk-gas-sensitive-paint-33039.html http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aircraft-markings-and-camou...
alistairSH 11y ago
Is it just me, or does $4 million seem quite "reasonable" for something this rare and with this much work invested? Yes, it's a large sum of money, but given the choice between a vintage race car or the Spitfire, I'd take the warbird every time (and I'm not a pilot).
- akiselev 11y ago
  The cheapest fighter jet you can get is the L-39 Albatross from the 1960's which will run you between $200k-1mil depending on work required for flight worthiness while on the higher end a supersonic trainer like the F5 would run at least $2mil. Considering how rare the parts are and the difficulty of finding someone qualified to actually do the work, $4mil is certainly very reasonable, especially if the Spitfire is actually flight worthy.

55 points by bootload 11y ago

ommunist 11y ago

these days it seems Britain prepares its spirits for the next war.

nbevans 11y ago
Because America isn't just as passionate in restoring P-52 Mustang's.
- ommunist 11y ago
  not really. More because America is rebasing a bunch of Abrams tanks to Latvia and F22s raptors closer to Russian borders.
  - ommunist 11y ago
    Downvoted? I expected that. Nobody likes truth. BBC for taxpayers money advertises Christies's auction and raises public awareness in UK military. Two nice rabbits with a single shot. @nbevans. I personally like Spitfire very much. But nothing is published on BBC without dual or triple purpose these days.
- TylerE 11y ago
  A - It's the P-51 B - There are plenty still flying. There used to be a lot more actually, as they were sold off the public quite cheaply after the war. Many many have been lost to accidents over the years - The P-51 is NOT a forgiving airplane. C - The biggest challenge - Really the ONLY major challenge, airframe/structural work is basically a solved problem - are the engines. The Rolls Royce Merlin engine, used in both the Spitfire and the P-51, was last manufactured in 1950. While there were many built (and thus many to scavenge from), that inventory is only shrinking as engines are replaced or overhauled. Basically the world's entire stock of Merlin parts lives in a group of semi trailers in the California desert (http://www.51-factory.com/merlin_overhaul.html http://www.51-factory.com/merlin_overhaul.html) - when they're gone, they're gone.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    I find it hard to believe that there are Merlin engine parts that cannot be made from scratch. Even engine blocks - if the drag racing industry can make custom engine blocks from scratch, why can't a V12 be made?
    - Someone 11y ago
      Every part _can_ be made, and eventually, likely, every part will be made in order to keep these things operational, but enthusiasts find these machines more authentic if they are made from authentic parts. If one starts building new parts from scratch there may come a moment where people say something has become a replica, more so if one also uses new technology (philosophers discuss this as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus). The weird thing, though, is that the road along which one gets to an object is more important than the end result in determining authenticity. Replace all parts of a spitfire until just one piece remains original, and you have an original spitfire. Build a replica, buy that one original part, and include it, and you still have a replica. A nice example is HMS Victory, a wooden warship that saw battle at Trafalgar. It is kept afloat by replacing its parts. By now around 20% of the original wood remains (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/05/world/europe/hms-victory/ http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/05/world/europe/hms-victory/). Yet, we think of it as the original ship. However, it is not a given that replacing all parts makes a new object. The Ise grand shrine in Japan is over 2000 years old, but gets rebuilt with new materials every 20 years (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine)
      - perfTerm 11y ago
        As an analogy, due to cell replication and replacement I'm probably 0% my original "self" but I'm obviously the original me. If you cloned me, and gave my clone my arm, that'd obviously be the replica anyways. So it seems to make sense to me.
      - WalterBright 11y ago
        I understand the desire for "authentic" parts, but one is chasing rainbows. I recall once a business was selling "authentic" 1960s air in a can one could use to fill the tires on one's authentic 1960s muscle car. My personal opinion is that wrecks dredged up from swamps and such should be put into museums as is. Flying airplanes should be replicas, made as close to the original specifications as the owner wants. For example, a few years ago there was a project at Paine Field to build flying replicas of the Me262. They took apart an original to measure everything and make a specification. As a concession to safety, they used modern jet engines and instrumentation, and used lead weights instead of guns (to maintain proper balance). I would have bought one if I could afford one! Nobody would actually want to fly an original, because the engines only lasted about 20 hours, were extremely unreliable, and nobody bothered with corrosion protection (didn't expect the machine to last long enough to corrode).

rebootthesystem 11y ago

The Spitfire is a beautiful airplane. It was my first 1/4 scale (large) radio control project many, many years ago.

WalterBright 11y ago

"It's timeless, it is the most perfect piece of engineering - a work of art." True, except it was hardly perfect engineering. If you nosed it hard into a dive, the carburetors would spill fuel into the cockpit. Pilots learned to roll it on its back and pull it down that way. The Me109 was fuel injected and didn't have that problem. The 109 also took half as many hours to produce. All WW2 airplanes had their various problems that would kill the unwary pilot. The good pilots would avoid the defects in their airplane and play to the defects in the enemy machine.

gp2000 11y ago
The partial workaround for negative G problems is a nice little story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Shilling%27s_orifice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Shilling%27s_orifice
jabl 11y ago
Hum, that's the first time I have heard that explanation. What I've heard was that negative G caused the carburetor to flood, yes, but the result was the engine stalling, not fuel spilling into the cockpit. Which IMHO sounds more plausible.. Perhaps you're thinking of the typhoon & tempest which had a problem of exhaust leaking into the cockpit. Solution: pilot wad required to always use the oxygen mask.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  I read about this problem in one of many accounts on flying Spits in combat. Yes, it was the gas, not an exhaust leak. Sorry I don't have a cite. The Merlin engine had other issues - it was very sensitive to battle damage. This is in contrast to the engine on the P47, which could take a lot of damage and keep running.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Agathos 11y ago
    Bug or intentional design tradeoff? When you choose an inline V12 over a radial engine, you're implicitly choosing to be more sensitive to battle damage. But the R-2800 Double Wasp is an engineering triumph in its own right. Hellcat, Corsair, Thunderbolt, Black Widow, Bearcat... they put it in everything.

PaulRobinson 11y ago

Little known fact: when Williams, Kilburn and Tootill were building the SSEM (nicknamed the Baby) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Small-Scale_Experimental_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Small-Scale_Experim... - the World's first stored program computer, some of the parts they used such as switches and so on were the same as those used by the Spitfire builders because there was plenty of them around spare in wartime Britain. When the reconstruction was being built, the restorers had to track down parts from Spitfires that were no longer airworthy to be as authentic as possible. Source: I know somebody who spent a lot of time talking to somebody involved in the restoration.

ourmandave 11y ago

I really like learning about all the counter measures and the like that went into these planes. I'm curious about a caption from one of the pictures though. The yellow diamond of reactive paint on the wing was supposed to give early warning of a gas attack by turning black. Do they mean gas attack like, mustard gas attack or my wing is shot up and leaking fuel?

Mtinie 11y ago
The former. http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aircraft-markings-and-camouflage/spitfire-mk-gas-sensitive-paint-33039.html http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aircraft-markings-and-camou...

alistairSH 11y ago

Is it just me, or does $4 million seem quite "reasonable" for something this rare and with this much work invested? Yes, it's a large sum of money, but given the choice between a vintage race car or the Spitfire, I'd take the warbird every time (and I'm not a pilot).

akiselev 11y ago
The cheapest fighter jet you can get is the L-39 Albatross from the 1960's which will run you between $200k-1mil depending on work required for flight worthiness while on the higher end a supersonic trainer like the F5 would run at least $2mil. Considering how rare the parts are and the difficulty of finding someone qualified to actually do the work, $4mil is certainly very reasonable, especially if the Spitfire is actually flight worthy.