SEEING THE SILVER LINING
A painstakingly restored Spitfire and two pilots are making history with a round-the-world adventure
The world is watching as two pilots and a 1943 warplane attempt to cover more than 43,000km across more than 30 countries in just four months. Circumnavigating the globe? It’s a pilot’s Everest.
By the time of going to print, aviation fans had seen them travel safely through the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and well across the US after leaving their Goodwood Aerodrome base in the UK. They’d watched via the live tracker on the website, their own flight trackers, or in person. Some spotters have seen them flying over their homes while others have been alerted to the aircraft’s presence by the sound of that unmistakable Rolls-royce Merlin engine while sitting in their gardens.
Of course it’s not just any aircraft, and these are not ordinary pilots. The Mk IX Spitfire — an emblem of freedom across the globe — was designed as a single-seat, short-range, highperformance interceptor fighter aircraft by Reginald J Mitchell and used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and other Allied countries before, during and after World War 2.
The men with a mission are Uk-based Boultbee Flight Academy founders Steve Boultbee Brooks and Matt Jones. Jones, 44, is a Spitfire, helicopter and business jet pilot while Brooks, 57, is an avid explorer and pilot whose record-setting achievements include being the first person to fly a helicopter from pole to pole in 2004.
The establishment of the academy is a product of their passion for Spitfires, which they wanted to share with as many pilots as possible. The decision was sparked by Brooks’s purchase of a two-seater Spitfire on auction 10 years ago. The aircraft has been used to teach about 2,000 people to fly, and is in fact registered in SA. According to Brooks, “somebody found it in a scrapyard near Cape Town in the 1980s and started rebuilding it. That’s our main machine … that’s our love, the SA one.”
I chatted to Brooks about their adventure when I met him at the watch fair — Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie — in Geneva earlier this year. Both he and Jones were there to engage with international media, VIP guests, celebrities and clients alongside their main expedition sponsors and timekeepers, IWC Schaffhausen. The Swiss watch manufacturer launched a new Spitfire line in its Pilot’s Watches collection at the prestigious watch fair and had two Spitfires there to mark the occasion. “Spitfires are so special, and so emotive, and yet they were kept behind red ropes and no-one was allowed near them,”