A Seafire, three Bleriots, two Sopwith Camels, a Yak-1, a Yak-11, two S.E.5as, one Sopwith Pup, three Hurricanes, a Mew Gull, four Avro504s, one Spad XIII, a P-47 and a Spitfire: this remarkably varied tally of aircraft is the work not of an entire preservation industry, but of a single group of British restorers, surely unrivalled for prolific output and variety of subject.
They have all either been completed or are currently under way with AJD Engineering and two other companies in the same group – Hawker Restorations and Euroair Technical Services. At the heart of these three companies is pilot, engineer and entrepreneur Tony Ditheridge, whose activities are based at Earls Colne Airfield in Essex and Moat Farm at Milden in Suffolk. It is impossible to cover in detail the workings of such an extensive organisation in one report, but this feature is designed to give readers a brief glimpse of them.
At Earls Colne, Ditheridge has established an operating base for warbirds and other classic types. This lovely Essex airfield is the home of Hawker Restorations (HR), which was established as a Hurricane specialist but which currently has a number of rare types in for restoration or maintenance. At the time of my visit in early February, the team was working on three Spitfires, a very rare Seafire III, a rare F4U-5N Corsair, Yak 11, Bucker Jungmann and Mew Gull. Seafire PP972/G-BUAR and Corsair N197PT were both formerly associated with Doug Arnold’s Warbirds of Great Britain (WGB) organisation based at Biggin Hill during the late 1980s.
Flying ‘A’ Services
HR has also recently completed work on FM-2 Wildcat N909WJ, although this aircraft has recently been flown out of Earls Colne. These former WGB aircraft are currently under the care of Flying ‘A’ Services at Earls Colne, with HR providing engineering support, restoration and certification services with CAA A8-20 approvals.
The Corsair was flown into Earls Colne last summer by Pete Kynsey and is in immaculate concours condition, having been flown very rarely in the last few years. Originally operated by the Honduran Air Force, it was acquired by American warbird operator Howard Pardue and restored at Breckenridge in Texas in the late 1970s. It was then extensively rebuilt to as-new condition by Peter Thelen at Fort Lauderdale during 1986-87, which included the fitting of a second seat. It arrived in the UK in August 1988 and was based with WGB at Biggin Hill. Its only known airshow appearance was at the June 1989 Biggin Hill Air Fair and so it is good to see such a rare and exotic example of true warbird heavy metal making a reappearance on the UK scene.
The Seafire is an even rarer type and this example, PP972, is believed to have been operated by Aeronavale marked as “1.F.9” from the French carrier Arromanches in Indo-China during the late 1940s. It was displayed statically at the Musee de la Resistance at St-Marcel in France during the early 1980s before being moved to Biggin Hill in 1988. Since its arrival in the UK, the folding-wing fighter has been under restoration to airworthiness. Tony Ditheridge’s team is now completing the project, and it is hoped that this unique warbird will be ready for air-testing this summer.
The other Spitfire projects under way at Earls Colne are an overhaul and rebuild of Rick Roberts’ two-seat Spitfire, PV202, which suffered some accident damage last autumn, an annual check and maintenance on Intrepid Aviation’s MkXVI Spit, TE184, and some engine work on the Alpine Fighter Collection’s MkV Spit, AR614, which was completely restored and first flown by Historic Flying at Audley End last year.
Engineering team
Well-known Spitfire and Yak expert Phil Parish is senior engineer, overseeing a team led by Paul Mercer. Parish led the restoration of Eddie Coventry’s airworthy Yak-11 G-OYAK, first flown in November 1990; he is now working on another identical Yak-11 for Coventry, G-IYAK, which is due to be test flown later this year. Work on this new Yak is well advanced – the engine will be fitted soon, the fuselage and wings are structurally complete, and the systems are being installed.
In parallel with these mainstream warbirds at Earls Colne, Euro Technical Services (ETS) is carrying out maintenance and restoration on lighter types and, with AJD, has recently finished the total rebuild of Desmond Penrose’s famous Percival Mew Gull G-AEXF, which was due to be flown to Old Warden after a respray at Duxford during February. ETS has CAA M3 Maintenance approval and is licensed for the restoration of wood-and-fabric vintage types.
Some 25 miles north of Earls Colne, in the heart of the Suffolk countryside, lies Moat Farm, Tony Ditheridge’s home and the main restoration centre for the AJD Group, where a team of specialist craftsmen have produced a huge variety of classic wood-and-fabric aircraft restorations and replicas. AJD has an extensive track record of World War One types; however, in recent years, with the establishment of Hawker Restorations, the company is now involved in heavier warbird work as well, and has A8-20 approvals allowing it to rebuild and certify true “basket case” projects.
The company has three Hurricane projects under way which are now the core of its warbird work, but further projects in the pipeline include Hawker inter-war biplanes. Ditheridge sees this in many ways as a natural extension of the company’s background in World War One types. The Hurricane and the other inter-war Hawker types were all essentially hand-built using quite different construction techniques from the later generation stressed-skin aircraft. These major differences are graphically illustrated by the fact that Ditheridge’s “basket case” Hurricane project will take between 35,000 and 40,000 man-hours to complete, whereas a typical Spitfire project would take about 10,000-15,000 man-hours.
Historic identities
Ditheridge explained to me that, even if you were able to start a Hurricane project with an intact recovered airframe, if it had remained outdoors for 50 years weather damage would necessitate comprehensive stripping just to repair damage. In most projects, however, sufficient items are reused to retain the identity of the original aircraft. All of the Ditheridge Hurricanes, he points out, have their original data plates and accompanying history.
At the time of my visit to Moat Farm in February, AJD had also just completed a Spad XIII for Jack Ericson in Oregon, utilising a large batch of World War One timber components. The original part numbers have been left exposed on the wingtips and fuselage sides, and this Spad will shortly be dismantled and crated for export to the USA.
AJD has also just finished the scratch-building of a new set of wing spars for the Historic Aircraft Collection’s Yak-1 project, based on an airframe recovered from a Russian lake some years ago.
This Yak was discovered partly submerged, which did its wooden components no good at all, and the wing is being rebuilt by AJD without the benefit of original detailed drawings. AJD started off by jigging the old wings and accurately measuring them with the use of a theodolite, thereby creating their own drawings before work commenced.
Tony Ditheridge explained to me that he aims to have two Hurricans essentially complete by the end of this year at Moat Farm – and so, with the Seafire and Yak-11 also being close to completion at Earls Colne, Aeroplane will be publishing more detailed restoration reports on specific types from this facinating variety of projects.
Tony Ditheridge
An accomplished pilot and engineer, Tony Ditheridge began his career as a toolmaker and instrument maker. He went into business during the 1960s building and selling some of the first commercially-available scanning electron microscopes, which provided far higher magnification levels than traditional visible-light microscopes. This business led Tony into a new area - marketing X-ray equipment and other scientific apparatus - and gave him a thorough understanding of metallurgy which he finds essential for the restoration of complex metal structures such as the Hurricane.
Car connection
Like so many of the UK's pioneering vintage aircraft collectors and restorers, Tony became involved in aviation through his interest in historic racing cars, and his restoration business was founded on the rebuilding of vintage cars. He established AJD Engineering in order to specialise in rebuilding World War One aeroplanes, and his first major complete project was a fully airworthy Bristol M.1C monoplane replica for the Chilean Air Force Museum.
Narrow escape
On August 10 last year Tony Ditheridge and fellow aircraft restorer Craig Charleston narrowly escaped with their lives with their Pitts S,2A crashed into trees near Ipswich after entering an uncontrollable spin. The trees absorbed enough of the impact to save their lives, but Tony suffered serious leg injuries and Craig was also very severely hurt. Despite this setback, Tony is now back at work and is clearly well on the way to a full recovery; he hopes to be back flying again very soon. Thankfully, Craig is also continuing to make good progress towards recovery.