A rare Second World War fighter plane will return to the skies above Cambridgeshire this weekend in a recreation of the battles fought over occupied Europe 70 years ago.
The P-47 Thunderbolt has been carefully restored to its wartime condition by The Fighter Collection, a private squadron of vintage aircraft owned by entrepreneur and pilot Stephen Grey and based at historic Duxford Airfield.
Having arrived in Britain in a shipping container in the early 1990s, the aircraft only recently finished a series of tests allowing it to be displayed to the public at this weekend’s Flying Legends Airshow, regarded as the best in Europe for lovers of vintage military aircraft – so-called ‘Warbirds’.
The Thunderbolt was a key fighter for the American air force when soldiers and airmen from the United States arrived in Britain to join the fight against Nazi Germany. At the time it was one of the largest and heaviest fighter planes ever built.
Decorated ace American fighter pilot James Goodson described his first sight of the P-47 on swapping them for his beloved Spitfire.
‘We gazed up at these great, solid aircraft in amazement. They looked like whales and the nimble little Spitfires, like darting minnows.’
Later he learned to appreciate the huge machine’s qualities, saying: ‘The P-47, in spite of its weight and size, was an amazing aircraft.’
Another pilot described an aeroplane that ‘climbed like a homesick angel and dived for the deck like a rock’.
One of the American squadrons, the 78th Fighter Group, was based at Duxford, which had earlier hosted RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes during the Battle of Britain and is today home to the Imperial War Museum.
From spring 1943 the Thunderbolts of the 78th began escorting heavy B-17 and B-24 bombers of the Eighth Air Force from their East Anglian bases on dangerous missions over occupied Europe.
The Fighter Collection’s P-47 has been painted to represent ‘Snafu’, the aircraft flown by Lieutenant Severino B Calderon of the 78th in late 1944 to battle enemy Luftwaffe fighters and escort the heavy bombers.
The 78th destroyed 668 enemy aircraft and damaged more than 400 before victory in Europe was declared in May 1945.
The vicious aerial fighting claimed the lives of more than 30,000 American airmen and left 14,000 wounded of the 135,000 men who flew in combat over the continent.
The Fighter Collection’s Thunderbolt is one of only two machines in the world today, having been built at the Curtiss aircraft factory in Buffalo in 1943. It never saw action in combat, being used for training before being sold to a series of private collectors in America.
After spending more than decade packed in a shipping container in Essex, the aeroplane was stripped into components for rebuilding by experts from around the world.
Last year it was given a special paint job to represent a Thunderbolt based at Duxford during the war.
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