Survivors
There are approximately 47 Spitfires and a few Seafires in airworthy condition worldwide, although many air museums have examples on static display, for example, Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry has paired a static Spitfire with a static Ju 87 R-2/Trop. Stuka dive bomber.
What may be the most originally restored Spitfire in the world is maintained in airworthy condition at Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida. Over a six-year period in the 1990s, this aircraft was slowly restored by Personal Plane Services in England using almost 90% of its original aircraft skins. Owner Kermit Weeks insisted that the aircraft be restored to as original condition as possible. Machine guns, cannon, gun sight and original working radios are all installed.
In August 1945, The RAF is rumoured to have buried a number of Mk.XIV Spitfires in Burma, still unassembled in their crates, in order to dispose of what had become surplus airframes upon the war's end. Their exact location has never been determined but in April 2012 the UK government announced they were working with the post-junta Burmese government to locate and potentially return the total of 20 aircraft to flying status. Leeds University experts and an academic from Rangoon, using sophisticated radar techniques claimed to believe that they had discovered the site of the buried aircraft. In addition to the 20 aircraft thought to be at this one site, other sites with buried Spitfires may exist. One such site is thought to have up to 36 Spitfires.
On 16 October 2012, the Burmese government, represented by Tin Naing Tun, Burma's director-general of civil aviation signed an agreement with David Cundall, a British farmer and aviation enthusiast, and Htoo Htoo Zaw, his Burmese business partner, allowing them to excavate the Spitfires. It was reported that there may be as many as 60 of them, and that the aircraft had been greased, wrapped, and buried in crates, and so were expected to be in good condition. Excavation was expected to start at the end of the month.
However, in spite of the media coverage these events have attracted, there is no concrete evidence that the RAF ever buried the Spitfires, and some dismiss the whole story as implausible.
Read more about this topic: Supermarine Spitfire
Famous quotes containing the word survivors:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)