text: BR108 - The Malta Spitfire Vc
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  Author Topic: BR108 - The Malta Spitfire Vc (Read 7059 times)
  « on: January 02, 2010, 02:09:57 AM »
  Here is the first of some sea bed pix of BR108...
  Re: BR108 - The Malta Spitfire Vc
  « Reply #1 on: January 02, 2010, 02:17:33 AM »
  A second view of the Merlin engine...
  « Reply #2 on: January 02, 2010, 12:53:43 PM »
  An interesting pic showing Lester Sanders and Alex Henshaw at Castle Bromwich in 1942. Sanders was shot down in BR108 and collected a DFC but was killed when the Spitfire he was testing broke up in the air at Cannock Chase.
  « Reply #3 on: January 02, 2010, 01:02:10 PM »
  The remains of BR108 Merlin engine and cockpit in store at the Malta War Museum in Fort St Elmo.
  « Reply #4 on: January 04, 2010, 02:08:36 PM »
  It was the summer of '66 and I had just arrived in Malta with a Varsity aircraft of the Royal Air Force from our base in England. That afternoon a group of us made our way into Valletta to the Palace Armoury to look at the fuselage of the Gloster Gladiator biplane on display there. I had read of the exploits of these aircraft in the defence of Malta as a boy, and the opportunity to visit the island was not to be missed. Little did I realise fate would decree a year later that I would be stationed at R.A.F. Luqa for nearly three years. It was a wonderful posting with the numerous recreational activities including diving and water skiing. But it was the diving that occupied my spare time. I had learnt to dive in the UK with the R.A.F. Sub Aqua Club and soon became a member of the Luqa branch.
  Not long afterwards I dived my first aircraft wreck in Marsalforn Bay, a twin engined Martin Maryland reconnaissance aircraft lying in 80 feet. There was an engine and part of a wing and numerous small items lying around. A few weeks of research led to its identification and sometime later a meeting with one of the crew. During the next year further wrecks were dived on until one day I heard a story of a Spitfire in Marsalforn Bay, Gozo. This sounded too good to be true and that week end three of us loaded my old Rolls Royce limousine with cylinders and equipment and drove to Marfa to catch the Gozo ferry. We arrived at Marsalforn and spent the day combing the seabed in thirty feet. By late afternoon we had covered a large area and seen only sand and weed. Not to be outdone we returned the following weekend but once again, nothing. A month passed before the next trip and this time we brought a tent and small compressor and stayed the night making two full days of searching. Once again we drew a blank. I was beginning to wonder if this was a wild goose chase, but that afternoon before departing for the ferry, we sat in the seafront café and were surprised when the owner came across and asked if we were looking for the Spitfire. He remembered as a boy seeing it come down in the bay in the early morning and the pilot being brought ashore to the café for a welcome drink before returning to Malta. So it wasn't a figment of imagination after all.
  We returned to Gozo in mid 1968, when once again the Rolls was loaded with all the equipment, and this time courtesy of a Maltese friend serving in the R.A.F. we rented a flat overlooking the bay. A systematic pattern of markers was laid out using small floats with lead weights and each diver searched his square. It proved fruitless and after three days diving we were still in the dark. I began to wonder if it had broken up and buried itself. In the late afternoon of the fourth day we had been in the water for at least five hours and being almost out of air I was swimming slowly on the surface with a snorkel idly looking at the seabed. An odd shadow on the seabed caught my attention and diving down I swam straight past a propeller blade sticking out of the sand, stared briefly and surfaced shouting to the others. They swam across and with what little air I had left made a cursory inspection. There was the broken remains of a Spitfire completely covered in weed and half buried in the sandy bottom. That evening we celebrated in the café with a bottle or two of the local wine. The next morning we couldn't get in the water fast enough. Armed with two saucepans we set about excavating the sand out of the cockpit and clearing the weed. By late afternoon we had established the aircraft was broken in two with the tail section from behind the cockpit armour plate missing. The windscreen had long since gone and the cockpit was almost empty. The instrument panel had corroded away and there was only the stub of the control column and rudder pedals and seat with the remains of the harness. The under carriage selector and emergency air bottle were still in place and when the lever was moved the air burst out in a large mushroom cloud from a broken pipe on the engine compressor. But lying buried under the sand was the brass case of the P8 compass still in working condition with its circular bakelite top marked in degrees. The aircraft was tilted to starboard with that wing completely buried. The port wing was also covered with part of the tip visible in a huge clump of weed. That brought and end to the search and our brief spell in Marsalforn. The news spread quickly but we had no idea of its identity. From my own knowledge of the air war over the Maltese Islands this was obviously a Mark V Spitfire fitted with a Vokes tropical filter under the nose and probably based either at Luqa or Taqali and may have been one of those ferried to Malta from a carrier. I contacted my brother Colin in London and he spent some time researching the records in the Ministry of Defence Air Historical Branch. To look at each Spitfire identity card and the squadron records for Malta would take weeks. What he needed was a serial number or a date that would narrow the search field dramatically. Buried in the sand next to the Merlin engine was the Rolls Royce makers plate which unfortunately had no serial number on it. It proved of little use in identifying the aircraft and I kept it as a souvenir. One thing that did come to light early on was a bullet hole in the glycol cooling header tank in front of the engine. Was this the cause of the aircraft crash?
  Back we went some weeks later and began a second excavation of the wing. The first panel to be opened was that above the undercarriage main wheel, for a few moments we stared down at the tyre and magnesium wheel hub and suddenly we were looking into a white fog as the hub disintegrated into millions of tiny particles. The hub had lain in the wheel well for twenty six years gently corroding away but still retaining its shape until the small current due to opening the panel caused it to disintegrate. The tyre however was in excellent condition. The next panel held down by quarter turn Dzus fasteners was the large 20mm cannon blister panel. I unscrewed and turned it over, on the inside was painted the figure 108. Was this the clue I had been searching for. The cannon and ammo feed drum were still in perfect condition as were the two Browning guns in the outer wing. One of the team, an armourer, removed the remaining ammunition and disposed of it at sea. I gave my brother the number off the panel and he checked the serial numbers of Mk V Spitfires ending in 108. Two weeks later his search paid off and an amazing story came to light.
  On 23 October 1942 Sanders took off on a routine test flight in a Spitfire Vb, ER713. Less than half an hour later the aircraft had broken up in the air over Cannock Chase near Birmingham and Henshaw was summoned to the crash site to identify the remains. Sanders was cremated at Golders Green, London, where he is commemorated on the Second World War memorial. He was 23 years old. The Spitfire lay on the bottom of the bay forgotten until the 1960s when it became the subject of conversation and a search resulting in its discovery. In 1973 the remains were recovered by a British joint services diving team with a salvage vessel and later presented to the War Museum in Fort St Elmo, Valletta where it remains to this day. In 1986 I wrote to Alex Henshaw, following the publication of his book Sigh for a Merlin, in which Sanders is mentioned and he provided me with a picture of him taken shortly before the crash and wrote a tribute to the young pilot addressed to the Malta War Museum.
  The aircraft factory at Castle Bromwich was planned and designed specifically for the anticipated requirements of war. For this purpose it was situated within the midst of a huge industrial complex. During the period 1940-1945 it manufactured over half the total of all types of Spitfires ever produced and with the Lancaster also made a substantial contribution to the Allied Bomber Command. Over 37,000 test sorties were flow from Castle Bromwich involving 127 accidents of one sort or another
  In 2007 I returned to Malta for the first time since 1970 and handed over the Rolls Royce Merlin engine plate to the Malta War Museum curator Charles de Bono to be displayed with the aircraft. After so many years it was interesting to see the remains of 108 once more, this time on dry land. Taking the ferry to Gozo, I stood on the seafront at Marsalforn overlooking the Spitfire site. Much had changed in the intervening years but the memories of those months searching and discovering the Spitfire were still very real. Alex Henshaw the man associated with flying more Spitfires than any other and who may well have test flown 108 died on 24 February 2007 aged 94.