A Comox Valley group is in the process of restoring and rebuilding a Second World War fighter bomber that has a local connection.
The team at Typhoon Legacy has already spent three years restoring a pre-war Rolls Royce Merlin engine from Alberta, which was part of a trade to bring a rare wartime Napier Sabre engine from New Zealand to Canada.
The goal is use the rebuilt Sabre B次元官网网址� which the team expects to be even more challenging than the Merlin rebuild B次元官网网址� to fly the Hawker Typhoon JP843.
B次元官网网址淭he Typhoon is quite a rare breed. ThereB次元官网网址檚 one left in the world out of over 3,300 built,B次元官网网址� project lead Ian Slater said. B次元官网网址淯nfortunately, most of the drawings and surviving components were also scrapped, so weB次元官网网址檙e reverse engineering an aircraft basically from a few partsB次元官网网址hereB次元官网网址檚 an incredible amount of research and conversions required.B次元官网网址�
The Sabre, a 24-cylinder sleeve valve engine, is as rare as the Hawker Typhoon. Fewer than 40 of the engines are known to exist, largely recovered from crash sites, but only a handful worldwide can be rebuilt.
Some say the engine B次元官网网址榳on the war.B次元官网网址�
As for the Hawker Typhoon, many were flown by young Canadians during the war.
The British-designed aircraft excelled at ground attack, and was instrumental in the Normandy campaign and the Allied advance through Europe.
Hawker Typhoon JP843 served with different squadrons between September 1943 and July 1944. She was lost, along with pilot Peter March Price of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, on July 27, 1944 in the battlefields of France.
Canadian James Donald Inches, whose family lives on Vancouver Island, had once flown JP843 in July 1944.
For more information about the project, visit typhoonlegacy.com and typhoonlegacy.vhx.tv.
reporter@comoxvalleyrecord.com
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