Above is an unarmed, high-altitude reconnaissance variant of the famous Spitfire aircraft, one of 79 Mk XIXs built at Supermarine in Southampton and now owned and flown by the Rolls Royce company. On 13 January 1945 this aircraft was delivered to the Central Photographic Reconnaissance Unit at RAF Benson before seeing service in the UK, Belgium and Holland. At the end of the war it returned to the UK and later became a member of a meteorological Flight. It was ultimately allocated to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. From 1987 to 1989, it was grounded and, following extensive work, a modified Rolls-Royce Griffon engine was installed. She flew once more on 20 July 1989 and has a top speed of 706 km/h and a ceiling over 13,700m. The aircraft is currently painted as 'C' of No. 16 Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 2nd Tactical Air Force. The Griffon engine was the second engine type (the first being the renowned Rolls-Royce Merlin) to be installed on the Spitfire aircraft family. The first experimental Griffon, which was a close relative of the 'R' engine used in the Schneider Cup air races of 1929 and 1930, had in fact run in about in 1933. The Griffon had the same V-12 configuration as the Merlin, but it had 36 litres capacity, instead of 27 litres in the Merlin. The engine also turned over the other way, which gave new pilots a bit of a surprise on take off, as their aircraft swung the opposite way! The first Griffon-engined Spitfire, the Mk XII, came into service with No 41 Squadron in February 1943. The engine on this Spitfire has accumulated more than 235 hours and the airframe over 1,912 hours. The aircraft was bought by Rolls-Royce in 1996 and is based at Filton Airfield, just across the road from the Rolls-Royce facilities in Bristol. Seen at the British Army Air Corps' Wallop '08 event.
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