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OK. Lets go back twenty years and see what Israeli historians were thinking about these Spitfires. At that time two Spitfires on poles deep inside high security bases were just unconfirmed rumours.
The breakthrough came when one of these aircraft surfaced from the Ramat David base and was shipped out to Cyclone Aviation at Carmiel for restoration and museum display. The project manager at Cyclone was keen to know the history, dropped a note to Aeroplane Monthly, and the contact was made.
I was invited out to inspect the aircraft at Carmiel and because of my Spitfire background was granted access and inspection facilities to see the other aircraft inside the Hatzor base. At the time I didn't realise just what a privilege that was.
The Ramat David aircraft proved to be EN145 and 20-78 of the IDFAF and went on public display at Hatzorim.
The Hatzor base machine did not yield its identity although the data plates on both the firewall and the cockpit were recorded.
It is worth saying at this point that the data plates are fairly insignificant items, they do not carry the RAF serial ID. The firewall has a separate data plate and number because it is a free standing sub-assembly that is combination bolted and reivetted to the fuselage monocoque tube. This aircraft is unique in the surviving Spitfires in as much as the data plates for this aircraft carry the same number on both the firewall and the cockpit. That number is SH/CBAF/IX 578 stamped in upper case but then lower case stamps were never used to my knowledge. This dual number may well have been an inspection error at the time of manufacture.
At that time Israeli historians associated with Air-Britain thought this aircraft was 20-38. Not I must add 20-** radio call sign '38'.
When this aircraft was later dismantled and sent to the Hatzorim Museum at Beersheba, technicians photographed the inside of the top fuel tank for evidence of a previous ID. '425' in black paint was found and also '28' in red paint. The Israelis subsequently dispatched several wing gun panels to me for inspection and return. Two panels showed clearly '28' in red. 28 in red in two locations on the wing and one on the fuselage was powerful evidence that this machine was 20-28. No match could be made with an RAF serial with 425 that fitted and it was only subsequently to this that Shlomo Aloni discovered the paperwork trail and rejection in Cyprus of the original UB425. All the pieces of the jigsaw began to fit....except the RAF serial.
A document compiled by Noam Hartoch of the collective Israel knowledge in the 1980s listed 20-28 as TE578 along with several other Spitfires where there was a relationship of the construction number to the RAF 'last three'. Although this would not be normal practise, clearly these last batch of Mk. IX's built at the end of hostilities in Europe and at a time when Castle Bromwich was changing over to 20 series Spitfire and Seafire production, it seems that there was a sweeping up operation of parts and these last aircraft were final assembled at 'SH' the Shrewsbury dispersal site or '17' the Alfred Davies Ltd facility at Leicester. Here I could see how in these circumstances relationships of serial to c/n might be sequential and the same. I therefore was happy to make the provisional ID of this aircraft as TE578. It was circumstantial but rational and my view is better a provisional ID than no ID at all.
With the recent paperwork discovery by Shlomo Aloni in the IDFAF archives it is 99% sure that the aircraft is actually SL653/20-28/'call sign 34'
From other data amassed it is starting to look like 'SH' aircraft were in the SL*** RAF serial range and that '17' aircraft were in the 'TE*** serial range. The aircraft supplied to the Czechs are unfortunately all bunched up in these two respective bands.
This all does give some hope that Israeli documents may yet find a link to the ID of UB425 at Duxford and UB421 still in Rangoon.
PeterA
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