Bonhams To Auction Off Historic Warbird Plane

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Feb 16th 2009 at 8:02PM

We see a lot of vintage cars on this site but not so many vintage planes. Bonhams in London is set to auction off a very collectible plane on April 20, a two-seat Vickers-Supermarine Spitfire. The plane is airworthy and comes from a private source but will be auctioned at the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, near London. The plane has an estimated value of £1.5 million. This Spitfire has been restored and is a historic Warbird ready to fly. It was delivered to the Royal Air Force's No 33 Maintenance Unit at Lyneham in Wiltshire and later sold in 1948 to the South African Air Force and was eventually rediscovered in a Cape Town scrap yard. General Aviation News reports that it is the second Spitfire offered by Bonhams within the past seven months. A non-airworthy Spitfire sold for around £1.1 million.

Tags: auction, plane, spitfire, warbird