Warbirds: Sea Fury T.20 airworthy again

The first post-restoration flight of Sea Fury VX281 (G-RNHF) took place at North Weald, Essex, UK, on the 18 September 2010. James Kightly reports.

A T Mk.20 trainer, VX281 served briefly with the Fleet Air Arm before being refurbished by Hawker and sold as D-CACO to the Deutsche Luftfahrt-Berantungdienst (DLB), operating as a target tug from Cologne, West Germany, between 1963 and 1974.

It returned to the UK in the ownership of Doug Arnold’s Warbirds of Great Britain Ltd, as G-BCOW and was based at Blackbushe, UK, before passing to Spencer Flack in 1976. It then was flown from Blackbushe to the USA where it was registered N8476W to Dale Clarke of California, and was raced as No.40 ‘Nuthin Special’, later changing hands and registration to N281L with the Liberty Aero Corp, flying as ‘281’ ‘Dragon of Cymru’.

Passing through the hands of Wally Fisk’s Amjet Aircraft Corp, it was acquired by an anonymous benefactor on behalf of the Royal Navy Historic Flight at RNAS Yeovilton in 2007 and shipped to the UK, arriving at North Weald in April that year.

It was transferred to a new body called ‘Naval Aviation Ltd’, an off-shoot of the Fly Navy Heritage Trust (FNHT), to allow it to operate on the civilian register whilst being flown by RNHF pilots.

The Centaurus and airframe were rebuilt by Kennet Aviation.

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