In 1948 the Royal Air Force sold a batch of surplus Spitfires to a scrap dealer. One of them went for £25.
That aircraft, serial P7350, is still flying. It is the oldest airworthy Spitfire in the world, and the only one still in the air that actually fought in the Battle of Britain. It is a Mk. II.
The fourteenth off the line
P7350 is believed to be the fourteenth Spitfire built at Castle Bromwich, the shadow factory near Birmingham that went on to produce almost twelve thousand of them. It entered service in August 1940, in the middle of the battle, and flew first with 266 (Rhodesia) Squadron and then, from October, with 603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron at Hornchurch.
The Mk. II differed from the Mk. I mainly under the cowling: a slightly more powerful Merlin XII engine, and a cartridge starter that let the pilot fire up the engine without waiting for a battery cart to be wheeled out.
25 October 1940
That morning twelve Spitfires of 603 Squadron climbed through cloud that reached up to 20,000 feet. P7350 was flown by Pilot Officer Ludwik Martel, a Polish cadet pilot who had escaped to Britain and who, at twenty, was the youngest Polish pilot in the battle.
As the squadron broke out of the cloud, Messerschmitt Bf 109s dived on it from above. Two Spitfires went down and their pilots bailed out. A cannon shell tore a large hole in P7350's left wing, and Martel was hit by shrapnel in his side and legs. Fighting to stay conscious, he brought the aircraft down through 16,000 feet of cloud and put it down wheels-up in a field near Hastings.
The Spitfire was repaired at a civilian repair unit at Cowley run by Morris Motors, and flew again three weeks after the crash. The patched bullet holes in its left wing can still be seen today.
£25 and a second life
P7350 went on to serve with 616 and 64 Squadrons and later with a gunnery school, and ended the war in storage. In 1948 it was sold as scrap to John Dale & Sons for £25. The company recognized what it had bought and, instead of breaking it up, presented it to the museum at RAF Colerne, where it stood on the ground for almost twenty years.
In 1967 the producers of the film Battle of Britain went looking for real Spitfires. P7350 was restored to flying condition, registered as G-AWIJ, and took part in the dogfight scenes filmed over East Anglia the following summer. When filming ended, it joined what is now the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
It has flown with the Flight ever since, from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, and was back in the air for the 85th anniversary of the battle in 2025. A Spitfire that was once worth £25 is now one of the most valuable aircraft in the world.
The model
COBI's Supermarine Spitfire Mk. II, set 5778, is a 1:32 model built from 384 blocks, with a pilot figure. At the same scale, set 5868 is the Mk. I that came before it and set 5764 the later Mk. IXe.
It is available to pre-order. The expected shipping month is shown on the product page, and you can cancel any time before it ships.
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