Twenty-two years after being recovered from the tundra on the Kola Peninsula in the far north-west of Russia, Peter Teichman's Spitfire Ⅸ PT879 was engine-running at Biggin Hill on 14 September, with a first flight expected in October. Restored at the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar, the machine was originally built at the Castle Bromwich factory in August 1944, supplied as part of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union and delivered by sea via Murmansk to the 2nd Squadron, 767th Regiment, 122nd Division of the VVS. One of 1,331 Spitfires delivered to the Soviet forces, PT879 only flew for 29 hours before colliding with another Spitfire during a training dogfight on 18 May 1945, the pilot, Junior Lt Semyonov, bailing out and surviving. When recovered, the fighter - which had hit the ground in a flat attitude - still retained much of the original paint, and a very high quantity of original parts has been used during the rebuild.
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