2 Jun 2013 12:37
There’s a clue to what is to come at the entrance to the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, USA.
As you turn off to drive up to the building, there’s a bright red British post box, incongruously sitting by the side of the road.
Inside the museum, there’s also a phone box and a 1962 London double decker bus.
But what everyone wants to see is the pride of the collection, a little bit of Birmingham standing in a foreign field – a Spitfire.
Overseeing it all is another Midland native, the museum’s director David Hunt.
He grew up in Walsall making models of Spitfires and hanging them from the ceiling.
Now he has a real one to play with.
The Supermarine Mk-1Xe fighter plane was built in the Castle Bromwich factory in December 1943 and served in North Africa, Italy, Corsica, Greece and Yugoslavia, flying 95 bomber escort missions.
After the war it ended up in the Israeli Air Force, eventually becoming a dilapidated playground attraction in a kibbutz.
David looks very at home next to all the aircraft or ‘warbirds’, perhaps because he bears more than a passing resemblance to First World War fictional pilot Biggles.
He may not have the goggles, but he’s 6ft 4ins tall with a moustache and wearing a bomber jacket.
“Actually my nickname at Walsall Leather College was Biggles!” he laughs. “I used to wear a white scarf.
“When I came out here to America, they didn’t know who I was talking about.”
David moved to Virginia in 1994 and became a US citizen in 2005.
The Military Aviation Museum opened in 2008 and he was asked to become its director by millionaire entrepreneur Jerry Yagen, the owner of the planes.
The museum now has 65 aircraft of which 55 still fly and receives 100,000 visitors a year.
“It’s the product of one man’s passion,” says David, 65.
“Jerry has been collecting planes since the 1980s. He started off with the Spitfire and a Hawker Hurricane, then he added a De Havilland Mosquito and it grew from there.
“There’s nowhere else in the world that has the collection we have. We’re told we have the largest collection of flying planes in the world from the first 50 years of the 20th century.
“We started with 27 planes and didn’t expect it to grow the way it has, but fortunately the owner has very deep pockets.
“They have come to us from all over the world – from the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Germany and Argentina.
“We have another 30 planes ready to come here at some stage when they’ve been renovated.
“We have the only flying Mosquito in the world. It’s known as the wooden wonder, a fighter with a wooden airframe because of the lack of metal in the war.
“It’s such an expensive plane to rebuild – we’ve spent almost £5 million on it. When it was found in Canada, it was pretty much gone, as termites had eaten away at it leaving just a shell.
“We sent it to New Zealand where they have the best renovators, who had to build wooden moulds for the parts. It first flew in New Zealand last September.”
But David admits the Birmingham-made Spitfire has a special place in his heart.
“My mother Edna worked in the Castle Bromwich factory making Spitfires, so you never know, she could have made this one,” he says.
Story and Photo Gallery: http://www.birminghammail.co.uk
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