Shopping baron launches Spitfire on south-western front

Shopping baron launches Spitfire on south-western front

IMMORTALISED in film and Churchillian speeches for its role in winning the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire is still the world's most famous military aircraft.

More than 20,000 were manufactured to take on the Messerschmitts of Germany and the Zeros of Japan, but today only a few dozen can still be flown.

Remarkably, the northern Riverina town of Temora boasts two of them.


Thanks to its benefactor and president David Lowy, son of shopping centre billionaire Frank Lowy, the Temora Aviation Museum recently acquired its second Spitfire from New Zealand. Nobody is revealing the price, but airworthy Spitfires don't come for less than $2 million.

The Mark XVI - which saw service with the RAAF in the closing weeks of World War II - will make its public flying debut at the museum today in the presence of the Prime Minister, John Howard.

Mr Lowy founded the museum in 1999 at the Temora Aerodrome, where more than 2000 pilots were trained during World War II using Tiger Moths. The museum specialises in Australian military aircraft and Mr Lowy bought a Mark VIII Spitfire in 2000.

It was the last Spitfire acquired by the RAAF, but never saw active duty.

The Mark XVI also "belongs in Australia", Mr Lowy said. "It's part of our history. It's home.

"It's a beautiful machine. It's a work of art. If you had a lounge room big enough you would hang it in there." The Mark XVI ended up a prop for the 1955 film about the fighter pilot Douglas Bader, Reach for the Sky.

Sitting on the Temora tarmac in its colours from World War II, the plane looks as menacing as ever. Russell Leith, 84, flew it when he was with the RAAF's 453 Squadron based in Britain and he has travelled from Perth to Temora to see it again today.

Mr Leith said his plane was used chiefly to attack German rocket installations. "[The Spitfire] was just everything that a pilot would want," the former flight lieutenant recalled.

"We didn't ever have an inferiority complex when we were flying it."

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