By David Brown

Richard Paver’s superb shot of MJ627 shows the classic lines of the Spitfire/ (via Heritage Hangar)For many years, I had harbored the desire to fly a Spitfire. This dream started when I was allowed, as a schoolboy, to sit in the cockpit of a Spitfire at RAF Woodvale, and had persisted since my early flying days in England. Together with fellow Air Cadet, Alan Walker, I had spent my weekends at Woodvale supporting operations to fly other Air Cadets at 10 Air Experience Flight, which enabled us at the end of the day to wangle a quick 15-minute flight in the Chipmunks. After college in England, and more Chipmunk flying with the RAF and in civilian life, I started a career in the flight testing of jets, initially in England, and flew light aircraft at weekends.

I still had the Spitfire dream, but Spitfires (especially two-seaters) are rare. Time passed and we moved on, Alan advanced into airline flying, and eventually progressed to a Senior Captain position with Cathay Pacific flying the mighty Boeing 747. By then, I had moved to California where I worked in Flight Test and various Advanced Design groups, taught aeronautical engineering at a university and the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, and was lucky enough to be involved on the periphery of various warbird operations. We corresponded occasionally, and I saw on Facebook that he now flew a Robin, G-FEEF (aka Fifi), which he based in England. He was also an accomplished warbird pilot and flew Spitfires, Hurricane Sea Fury, the B-17 Flying Fortress, and even the notoriously tricky Messerschmitt 109… pretty impressive.