{"id":28505,"date":"2024-04-29T16:42:33","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T16:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saj.pachecostudios.com?p=28505"},"modified":"2024-04-29T16:42:35","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T16:42:35","slug":"ww2-spitfire-lost-in-norwegian-wilderness-for-76-years-now-being-rebuilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/international-news\/ww2-spitfire-lost-in-norwegian-wilderness-for-76-years-now-being-rebuilt\/%20","title":{"rendered":"WW2 Spitfire Lost in Norwegian Wilderness for 76 years, Now Being Rebuilt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photo above – Robert Tomlinson taxies Spitfire AA810 at RAF Wick on 29 January, 1942, just 5 weeks later the aircraft would be shot down with Sandy Gunn at the controls. (Courtesy of Tomlinson family).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engine parts from a rare Second World War Photo Reconnaissance Spitfire\nthat was shot down by German armed forces in 1942 and lost until being\nrecovered from a Norwegian peat bog 76 years later are being rebuilt at the\nUniversity of Sydney.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Spitfire\u2019s Royal Air Force pilot, Flight Lieutenant\nAlastair \u2018Sandy\u2019 Gunn, escaped the fiery Norwegian crash but was captured and\nlater executed by the German army for his role in the prisoner of war camp\nbreak out immortalized by actor Steve McQueen in the 1963 film The Great\nEscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After more than 80 years, the long-lost Spitfire is being entirely rebuilt by an international team\nheadquartered in the United Kingdom in the hopes it will take to the sky again\nin 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the University of Sydney, Chief Engineer at the Sydney Manufacturing Hub<\/a>, Bruce McLean<\/a>, and his team are rebuilding the aircraft\u2019s Rolls Royce Merlin V12 exhaust manifolds using industrial 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Bruce McLean, Chief Engineer at the Sydney Manufacturing Hub who is leading the restoration of Sandy’s Spitfire recovered by the AA810 Spitfire Project. He is pictured with the one of the aircraft’s original manifolds, which was flown to Australia in April. Image: Luisa Low, University of Sydney <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Spitfire is iconic. It is one of the machines that won\nthe war. The aircraft we are helping restore is very special indeed as a rare\nPR-IV model,\u201d said McLean, who has worked for several decades in aeronautical\nengineering.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Sydney Manufacturing Hub is supporting the AA810\nRestoration Project using advanced digital scanning technology, computer-aided\ndesign and additive manufacturing to reverse engineer and restore the six\noriginal exhaust stacks from the aircraft in a modern superalloy material known\nas Inconel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese were originally handmade articles that were damaged\nalmost beyond recognition in the crash and are unobtainable today. Using modern\nmanufacturing tools enables faithful and fully functional replicas to be\nmanufactured and eventually flown on the restored Spitfire AA810 airframe,\u201d he\nsaid.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the original manifolds salvaged from the wreckage\narrived in Sydney this month. It, and a set of exhausts from a Spitfire that\nflew in the Battle of Britain, have been scanned at ultra-high resolution by\nthe University\u2019s Zeiss partner Scan-Xpress. These scans will help Mr McLean\u2019s\nteam at the Sydney Manufacturing Hub to develop a blueprint for the restored\nengine exhausts.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AA810 Spitfire Project remembers forgotten Australian airmen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Close to 1700 airmen who flew in the Royal Air Force\u2019s\nunarmed Photographic Reconnaissance Units have been identified, but only 652\nhave been confirmed as having survived the war. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Australia contributed 96 airmen to the unit, the second\nhighest number of nations involved in this highly clandestine work. Tragically,\nat least 37 of these men died during the war. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sandy Gunn seated in Spitfire AA793 preparing for his trip from Wick on the 19 February 1942. (Peter Arnold collection)<\/em> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Alongside the project\u2019s ambitious restoration of the rare\nPR.IV Spitfire, the team is commemorating the airmen whose work provided about\n80 percent of the intelligence information used in the tactical planning of the\nAllied campaign.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tony Hoskins, who orchestrated the Spitfire\u2019s salvage and is\nnow leading the project from Britain said the project is about people.\n\u201cResearching the people behind such a secretive mission is a great challenge\nand few people realize there were so many Australians who played a pivotal\nrole,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake, for example, Australian actor Bud Tingwell. He was\nknown and loved as a popular film and TV star, but Bud also flew 75\nreconnaissance operations in Spitfire and Mosquito aircraft over Italy from\n1944. Finding out what other stories are out there and being able to record\nthem for future generations is what makes this project so rewarding.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research Infrastructure) Professor Simon Ringer<\/a>, commended the team on their efforts. \u201cWe are delighted to contribute to this global project to achieve an historic restoration,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a fascinating case of reverse engineering. We\u2019re using state-of-the-art design, materials science and manufacturing technologies to build this engine system. Apart from the learning opportunities for our engineers, it is a very special way to honor the service and sacrifice of the people involved at such a difficult time in history. Nearly 150 pilots of WW2\u2019s Royal Air Force Photographic Reconnaissance Unit were from Australia and New Zealand.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AA810 Spitfire<\/a> project is appealing for families of Royal Australian Air Force airmen seconded to fly Royal Air Force Reconnaissance missions during the Second World War to come forward to help identify the 11 Australian nationals that the project holds incomplete data on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

25 April is the National Day of Commemoration of Australia\nand New Zealand for victims of war and for recognition of the role of their\narmed forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The University of Sydney is part of an international project\nthat is “reverse-engineering” engine parts for a rare Spitfire that\nwas last flown by a Great Escape pilot and recovered from a peat bog in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo above – Robert Tomlinson taxies Spitfire AA810 at RAF Wick on 29 January, 1942, just 5 weeks later the aircraft would be shot down with Sandy Gunn at the controls. (Courtesy of Tomlinson family). Engine parts from a rare Second World War Photo Reconnaissance Spitfire that was shot down by German armed forces in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28507,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Spitfire-2-edit.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28509,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28505\/revisions\/28509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}