At a private location near the New Zealand capital Auckland, a father and son are painstakingly resurrecting unique surviving examples of two British aircraft from the inter-war years — a Vickers Vincent and Blackburn Baffin
VINCENT AND BAFFIN RESTORATIONS
How many times have we heard the refrain, “If only we’d saved one of those”? How could they have burnt a Dornier Do 217 in the mid-1950s, or let a substantially complete Handley Page Halifax at Radlett go to the scrapyard in 1961? Notwithstanding the logistics of preserving aircraft of that size, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but how we regret it now, 50 or 60 years down the line. And if we couldn’t save a glorious de Havilland Hornet or Sea Hornet, an operational Westland Wyvern or a Supermarine Spiteful, what chance for some of the not-so-glamorous heavyweights of the 1930s, a period from which there is a multiplicity of missing types?
