The Typhoon Legacy Company, based in Comox, British Columbia, is adopting its own singular approach to returning its example of the Hawker fighter-bomber to airworthiness
“If you had a full aircraft to start with, it could be restored. If you had a full set of original drawings, it could be built, but when you have little bits of everything, you need to dig deep to put the pieces together”. While this statement from Ian Slater, project lead for the Typhoon Legacy Company, may read as obvious, it does set the scene for the remarkable work being carried out to rebuild Hawker Typhoon Ib JP843 to airworthy condition.
This was one of the fourth production-batch Typhoons, built as a ‘car-door’ example in 1943. Serving with No 197 Squadron initially in a bomber configuration before modification to a sliding-hood canopy and having its bomb racks replaced with RP-3 rocket rails, JP843 would be assigned to No 609 Squadron in June 1944, where it saw combat over Normandy with both 609 and No 198 Squadron. While with 609, JP843 and its pilot, 20-year-old Kiwi Plt Off Peter Price, RNZAF, were lost while attacking German positions around Tilly-la-Campagne on 27 July 1944, a sortie which also claimed the life of Plt Off John Buchanan, RCAF,…
