In honour of the 80th Anniversaries commemorating Victory in Europe and Japan in 1945, and after aquiring a 1941 Mk2b Spitfire. The amazing engineers at RAF Coningsby and The BBMF have overhauled the Spitfire’s Merlin XII and my own engineers have painstakenly brought the cockpit back to life with help from The RAF museum’s at Cosford and Hendon.
The Spitfire has been repainted into the company colours of RAS, we have got a few other items to collect from RAF Coningsby, which we can take onboard with us.
Now, to respond to the ‘elephant in the room’, the Spitfire is a single seat fighter aircraft from World War II, so as you can imagine, space and weight are at a premium so we will be Scheduling various technical stops along the way.
The route will take us in a westerly direction, from our Headquarters in Blackpool with stops in Iceland, Canada, USA, China and UAE to name a few.
But before any of that, we have to have a period of testing the aircraft and myself as a pilot within UK airspace. Increasing in range and featuring over water operations.
The Aircraft | G-FWEP
Our Spitfire is a 1941 Mk IIb fitted with the mighty Mk XII Rolls Royce Merlin V-12 Engine with 1,310 horsepower. Although over 80 years old the aircraft has been meticulously stripped down and inspected by highly trained RAF Technicians and Mechanics along with my own engineers. Lovingly restored and with minimum modern equipment, which includes only a tablet and radio equipment. Use the buttom below to find out more about this incredible machine.
The Route
The Circumnavigation of the planet is one of the most ambitious trips for any pilot and can be a challenging venture in a modern aircraft, back in 2024 we did just that in a modified Shrike Commander 500S and there where some flights in a excess of 4hours flight time, those flight times are not going to be possible this time around, the range is far less than a Shrike, with essentially a fuel tank roughly the same size of an average family sized car, this gives us an approx range of 400miles. Usually circumnavigation flights go in an easterly direction, however we are going to head west once we leave the UK. Use the button below to find out more about the route.