Spitfire is 'lost' after being swapped for fighter plane stranded in desert
A valuable Spitfire once stored at RAF Cosford has been lost to the nation following a deal by the RAF Museum to exchange it for the recovery of another aircraft that it is unlikely to ever receive.
Museum bosses in London "paid" a salvage team an original Spitfire PK664 – which was held at Cosford's No 9 Maintenance Unit between June 1952 and February 1954 – to retrieve a Second World War RAF Kittyhawk P40 plane found intact in the Sahara Desert 70 years after it crashed.
The museum has now conceded they may have lost the Spitfire with nothing to show for it after the political unrest in Egypt stalled negotiations to bring the Kittyhawk back to Britain.
Museum bosses, however, said their first priority was to keep the Kittyhawk in a secure location to keep it safe.
A museum spokesman said: "The aircraft is a unique example of its kind and therefore, as a matter of urgency, needed to be kept safe.
"The museum's first priority was to ensure that it was safely taken to a secure location.
"The Spitfire was one of a number given to the Museum by the MoD for use as leverage and in exchanges to acquire aircraft not in our collection.
"The agreement with regard to the Spitfire was to ensure that the Kittyhawk was placed in a safe environment – which has now been done. Negotiations are ongoing with the Egyptian authorities with a view to bringing the aircraft back to the UK, which is still our intention."
The fighter was discovered almost perfectly preserved in 2012 in the Western Desert.
It had crashed in 1942 and there was evidence that its lone pilot, Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping, survived the impact but perished in the inhospitable conditions.
The museum tasked a private salvage company with going to Egypt and saving the plane from souvenir hunters in the summer of 2012. They handed the Spitfire to Kennet Aviation as payment for the operation.
