Spitfire #5518 arrived in South Africa in 1947 and served in both the Cape at Langebaan at the flight
training school , and at Air Force Base Waterkloof before being decommissioned. She then served as
a gate guard at Waterkloof for a number of years. In the mid 1980’s, the South African Air Force
Museum motivated the restoration of this iconic Spitfire to flying condition to serve as the star
attraction at Air Force Air Shows and to promote the Air Force as well as aviation amongst the
youth. Spitfire #5518 took to the skies in 1994 as #5553 “The Spirit of Reutech”. Unfortunately she
crashed at an air show at Swartkop in 2000 and was consigned to a container.
Performance Centre, SAAF Museum and Friends of the SAAF are collaborating in a project to
advance the Restoration of Spitfire DBH #5518. Performance Centre acquired 10 licenses to convert
standard 5.0L Mustangs into RTR Spec 5 wide bodies. These will be limited edition, 1 of a kind, hand painted, Airplane replica, V8 supercharged vehicles. The dash plaque made out of an actual piece of the crashed Spitfire plane. These vehicles are registered on the RTR Registry in the States of America.
This project aims to raise R750 000.00 to rebuild the last remaining South African Air Force Spitfire
#5518, in South Africa in conjunction with the roll-out of the limited vehicles. These vehicles will be
serialised and built to resemble one of the aircraft flown by one of the South African Aces from the
various Wars. This campaign is done in conjunction with the SA Air Force, Friends of the SAAF Museum and Spitfire Restoration Project. This will have a major spin-off for all involved. All the vehicles are exclusively built by Performance Centre in Centurion.
No comments:
Post a Comment