Maybe somewhere, stashed in a drawer, or in a box of memorabilia or among ancestors' documents, is a piece of paper that might seem irrelevant to somebody who doesn't live in aviation geekdom. It's an expensively wrong perception.
It’ll have been typed or handwritten in a factory in Castle Bromwich back in 1943, have a list of serial numbers on it – and today be worth £500,000 or more to a handful of people who’d recognise its value. Why? It would prove beyond doubt that a 1943 Supermarine Spitfire Mark LF IXb – MH415 – is as fundamentally original as the day it came off the production line.
When GQ was first tipped off in 2021 that this one-off Spitfire would soon be coming to market, world-renowned vintage aircraft restorer Richard Grace of The Aircraft Sales Company revealed it would take a £3.8m cheque to buy it. But such is the speed with which vintage aircraft market values are climbing that its price tag in January 2022 has risen to £4.5m. And it won't stop there.
Even at £4.5m, a record public sale price, there's still a queue of elite collectors and potential buyer-investors making their way to an airfield in Northamptonshire so that they might run their palms reverentially across sleek lines and peer through inspection holes at part numbers stamped on components. Such is the tantalising lure of originality, where engine and airframe numbers are recorded as having belonged together since those Pathé News days, that prices for aircraft with a known “continuous history” have exploded in recent years. An American Mustang – lauded as the US’s answer to the Spitfire – sold for $3.5m in 2019, is today valued at $4.5m, while a British Hawker Fury which cost £1m in 2016 is now a £2m aircraft. “I'd struggle to identify any aircraft of these type and standards which haven't doubled in value,” says Grace.
Of course, MH415 has that all-important known continuous history, 95 per cent of its structure is just as it emerged from the Castle Bromwich factory in September 1943. Only four wing spars, which would have probably been changed as part of scheduled maintenance anyway, have been replaced. Save for shipping and maintenance, MH415 remained in a fully assembled condition from the date of manufacture right through to the commencement of its first, but not quite faithful, restoration in 2015. Restoration 2.0 started in April 2020; 55,000 man-hours later, it flies.
But part of anything and everything collectible is that little niggle of mystery or uncertainty that journeys with it. Many high-end collectible cars or motorcycles, for example, carry with them myths and legends about their creators, their owners or their adventures – stories that add value both at the dinner table and in the sale room. As for MH415’s own niggle? Its restorer Richard Grace is “99.9 per cent sure” that the engine currently powering this Spitfire is the 1943 original.
“There's probably a difference in value of £1m between an original Spitfire and non-original. God knows what a matching numbers aircraft is worth,” says Grace. “I've spoken to every historian and gone through every record over several years, but I cannot find any evidence to confirm that one detail 100 per cent.
“All it'll take is some random piece of paper coming out of somewhere with the serial numbers of the engines fitted to all the Spitfires in September 1943. That'd add half a million quid or so, but that’s one of the perpetual frustrations of dealing with anything historic. In your gut you know something's right, but these days it's evidence, evidence, evidence.”
Grace says the “warbird” market has gone crazy since mid-2021. Globally, investors have suddenly recognised vintage aircraft, particularly those with originality and provenance, are great value compared to high-end collectible classic cars which in many cases are considered to be topping out. This is across the vintage aircraft price range, with entry-level second world war planes such as trainers doubling to, typically, around £300,000 during 2021. People who had the money to buy a Spitfire in 2019 now can't afford one. What was a restored, but not 100 per cent original, £2.8m Spitfire back in 2019 is now £3.5m. There's around 70 airworthy Spitfires globally.
“MH415 is an expensive airplane at £4.5m. It wants for nothing. It's perfect. It is the best example there is from a history standpoint, as well as being a lovely 10-out-of-10 restoration, probably as original as it is possible to get,” says Grace. “The value is definitely in them being airworthy. They don't need to be flown vigorously and frequently, just an airing of three or four flights a year. But you can buy one and store it, and it will still go up in value.”
But what's it like to fly?
“A Spitfire is arguably the best flying and best handling plane there is, but there's something about a plane that's original where you can feel how much more precisely made it was,” says Grace. “There are tiny aerodynamic gains that come from the precision of the original build that you can sense and tell, so there's something fundamentally different in the way it behaves and flies. A ‘new’ Spitfire won't match the original no matter how carefully you build it.”
Barring the engine serial number niggle, MH415's history is well documented. Its original RAF operations record books are still present: MH415 has a documented ‘kill’ on September 24, 1943, shooting down a German FW-190 over France. More recently, MH415 was key to airborne action filmed for one of the most famous war films of all time: 1969’s Battle of Britain. It featured in the vast majority of dogfight scenes filmed across Europe for the simple reason it was one of very few airworthy Spitfires at the time. Camera trickery and effects meant it appeared as several aircraft in the same scene at the same time.
Elsewhere records of it flying with the RAF, the Royal Netherlands Air Force in Jakarta, the Belgian Air Force, into private hands for civil use in 1963 and then post-filming storage in Texas, are seamless. Today MH415 flies in the livery and markings of the RAF's 222 Squadron, as flown between October and December 1943.
All of which is more than alluring enough to appeal to the same kind of folks who’d happily pay $6.5m (£4.7m) for a Tiffany Patek Philippe Nautilus. If you really want to turn a profit on such rarefied acquisitions, you’ve probably made a dash to your nearest private airfield in recent months. “Vintage aircraft are taking over from high-end classic cars in the eyes of savvy investors, but it’s crucial you buy the right one,” says Grace.
“An aircraft that was shot down during the second world war and then dug up in 2000 and restored to flight in 2010 with mainly new or replica parts does not have that ‘continuous history’. We know where MH415, and, crucially, almost all its components have been all its life.”
Still, there’s that tantalising missing component to its life story. Unless you’re immersed in vintage aircraft, the value – in every sense of the word – of matching numbers and documentation to confirm engine and airframe belong together because they have always been together, the significance may not register. MH415 already lays claim to valid use of the word “unique”. But Richard Grace and a small squadron of aviation geeks would like to believe that someone, somewhere, has stashed away a crumpled, yellowed piece of paper confirming MH415 is actually other-level unique. If uncovered, that forgotten shred of evidence could prove this £4.5m Spitfire to be a bargain.
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