Liam,
Was this a trainer? any guns?
15-06-04
Crockett:
Yes, The Irish Air Corps used them as trainers. In September 1950, the Irish Dept.of Defense ( yes, we had one), ordered 6 Spitfire T.9’s ( with equipment) for a total cost of £71,502.00. Dunno if that’s per machine or overall.
The Rolls Royce Merlins were overhauled to give a service life of “400 hrs.”
They were converted from standard mark9’s, althought hte prototype wasa Mk.8.
From what I have been able to dig up, the cockpit was moved 13.5 inches forward to make room for the second cockpit, which was fully instrumented. The fuel system was revised and the wing cannon were deleted.
The outer wing guns were retained as were the underwing hard-points. This gave the T.9 a total of 4 Browning .303 machine guns and hte ability t ocarry three rocket rails under each wing.
We only managd to write off one machine, the remaining six being sold back to the RAF (I think) sometime in the 60’s. 162 started life as ML 407 , and was later bought by Nick Grace, restored to flying capability ( with his own, streamlined rear-canopy) and is flying hte war-bird circuit in England as ML407 once again.
The other 4 surviving Spitifre T.9’s are also still doing hte rounds, with 161 just finished being restored to flying condition, in it’s Irish Air Corps livery!!
Apparently it’s going to used to train pilots to fly warbirds! They’ll start on a Harvard type, move to the T.9, then fly solo in a single-seater Spitfire!
Hope this helps, thanks for asking.
Liam
And, just for those curious ones amongst you who simply MUST know these things, I can add the following, From a 2002 copy of Flypast magazine, so some info may be out of date;
The aircraft were converted at Eastleigh in the summer of 1950 by Vickers Armstrong.
158 was MJ 627, later G-BMSB, in 2002 was at Bruntingthorpe UK
159 was MJ 772, later N8R, in 2002 was at Champlin AFB
161 was PV202, later G-CCCA
162 was ML407, later G-LFIX served with 485 sqn, flown by Johnnie Houlton & marked as OU - V. Now the ‘Grace’ Spitfire, as flown by Carolyn Grace.
163 was TE308, In Colorado?
In addition, former ML417 was converted to a TRIX & went to the Indian AF as HS543,
& the former PT462 served as 20-67 with the Israeli Defence force.
The former MT818 was a TRVIII & I think is now in Oregon.
Pete