Peter Arnold’s Spitfire project sale brought £18,000 at Dominic Winter Auctioneers’ military and aviation auction on October 8, as the partially reconstructed fuselage of Supermarine Spitfire F Mk 22 PK519 changed hands with surviving original components. The buyer took on a rare reconstruction built around wreckage gathered over decades, not a complete airframe.
The lot included the fuselage, a cockpit window assembly, a Perspex canopy and five original Griffon propeller blades, along with surviving sheet metal, undercarriage legs and other wreckage from PK519. The instrument panel installed in the fuselage was a paper representation for display purposes, so the sale was about provenance and preservation as much as metal.
Peter Arnold and PK519
Peter Arnold, known among fellow enthusiasts as “Mr. Spitfire,” spent approximately five decades locating and documenting more than 350 crash sites. He was the collector behind the final restoration project, and the sale passed that work into a new collection.
PK519’s paper trail begins on June 2, 1943, when Vickers-Armstrongs ordered it as a Mk IX. It was completed at Castle Bromwich as a Griffon 61-powered Mk 22, delivered to No. 39 Maintenance Unit at Colerne, Wiltshire, on September 21, 1945, then moved to Vickers-Armstrongs at Keevil in October 1947 for modifications before reaching No. 6 Maintenance Unit at Brize Norton in September 1948.
From RAF service to recovery
On August 12, 1949, PK519 joined No. 615 (County of Surrey) Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force, at Biggin Hill. It was withdrawn in 1954 and transferred to storage at RAF Old Sarum, then became a ground target on the Salisbury Plain ranges.
Peter Foote discovered PK519’s remains in 1966, and Arnold gained access to the range in the summer of 1977. The aircraft remains were badly depleted by then, forcing him to use original panels from other Spitfires in the reconstruction, a practical compromise that kept the project moving while preserving what could still be tied to PK519 itself.
G-SPXX changes hands
On May 18, 2012, Arnold registered PK519 with the Civil Aviation Authority as G-SPXX, formalizing the project’s identity before the auction. The sale now places the fuselage and associated parts with a new owner, while the auction result leaves the next stage of the project open.
What the £18,000 price says is straightforward: this was not bought as a finished showpiece, but as a documented restoration survivor with a long service history, battlefield attrition and collector work built into the lot. The reserve or estimate was not given, and the project’s future use now sits with the buyer.
