An original Spitfire on Thursday landed back in Britain after successfully completing a first-ever attempt to fly the iconic World War II fighter around the globe.
The gleaming silver aircraft touched down on a grass runway at Goodwood Aerodrome outside Chichester, England, exactly four months after it took off on Aug. 5.
The restored 76-year-old plane, which flew in World War II, visited 24 nations on its epic journey westward around the world, clocking up more than 37,500km.
British aviators Matt Jones, 46, and Steve Brooks, 58, took turns at the controls over 74 legs.
Jones flew the final 1 hour, 57 minute journey from Lelystad, the Netherlands, back to the Silver Spitfire’s home hangar.
The fighter, registration code G-IRTY, did a loop around the White Cliffs of Dover as it reached the English coastline.
It was flanked by two Red Arrows, from the Royal Air Force’s aerobatics display team, trailing white smoke as it approached Goodwood, near the south coast.
After stepping out of the plane, Jones hugged his partner and their newborn son, Arthur. The former banker had to dash home for the birth from Russia during the circumnavigation.
The Silver Spitfire traversed the Atlantic Ocean via the Faeroe Islands and Reykjavik, Iceland, crossing Greenland before flying south over the remote wilds of northern Canada.
In the US it spent two days on a ranch in Texas after the temperature gauge failed mid-flight, and went to Las Vegas and Santa Monica before visiting Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic project in the Mojave Desert.
After flights around the north Pacific Rim through Canada, Alaska and Russia, the Silver Spitfire hunkered down in Japan during typhoons.
It then flew on to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and India, bypassing New Delhi because of visibility-reducing pollution.
After stops in Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the longest leg was 1,336km across the desert from Kuwait to Aqaba, Jordan.
It then returned to Britain via Egypt, Greece, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.
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