Gleaming Spitfire lost to the nation due to RAF Museum's bungled deal

A RARE Spitfire worth up to £500,000 has been given away by the RAF Museum in London in a bungled deal.

The Spitfire at museum BNPS

The Spitfire while at the museum

Museum bosses handed a salvage team the Spitfire – one of only 110 in Britain – as payment for the rescue of an RAF Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk fighter aircraft.

Three years on the museum, whose patron is Prince Phillip, has now conceded they may have lost the Spitfire with nothing to show in return.

Political unrest in Egypt has stalled plans to bring the Kittyhawk, discovered perfectly preserved in the Sahara Desert in 2012 – 70 years after it crashed – back to the UK.

Meanwhile the Spitfire, registration mark PK664, is in the hands of private firm Kennet Aviation which is believed to be keeping it in a hangar at an airfield in Essex.

The Kittyhawk crashed in 1942 in the Western Desert.

There was evidence that its pilot Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping survived the impact but perished before he could be rescued.

A team from Kennet salvaged the plane and placed it in a shipping container.

However, the Kittyhawk remains in secure storage in Egypt, said Simon Brand, defence attache at the British Embassy in Cairo.

It is also a shame the Kittyhawk has not been returned to the UK

Ray Burgess

The Spitfire, given to the RAF Museum in Hendon, north London in 1998, is worth anything between £200,000 and £500,000.

Pat Chriswick, a military aviation historian, said: “The RAF Museum have done a deal where they have got no delivery whatsoever.

"They have been incredibly naive.”

Ray Burgess, treasurer of the Spitfire Society said: “We are very sorry to hear that one has gone from being owned for the nation to private hands.

"It is also a shame the Kittyhawk has not been returned to the UK.”

Iain Thirsk, head of collections at the RAF Museum, described the saga as “very frustrating”.

He added: “There is no formal undertaking or promise (to get the Kittyhawk) but we are working on that.”

No-one from Kennet Aviation was available for comment. 

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