Video: Yorkshire flyers recreate WW1 fighter

Inside a hanger at the Yorkshire Air Museum a little known First World War fighter plane has been rebuilt.

Work on the Eastchurch Kitten began in spring 2011 and now it is set to go on display at the Yorkshire Air Museum, at Elvington, near York.

A spokesman for the museum said: “There is no other example of this aircraft type in existence in the world.

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“Recently rebuilt here at the Yorkshire Air Museum, it joins our fleet of First World War aircraft, such as the SE5a, which is also in ‘live,’ engine running condition and the BE2c and Avro 504K, which were the backbone of the Royal Flying Corps.”

The aircraft will have its first public showing on March 2 at the museum’s monthly aircraft engine running day.

It was conceived as a fighter that would tackle the threat posed by the Zeppelin airships which brought the War to UK shores with bombing raids in 1915 and was to be launched from platforms on battleships, cruisers or even torpedo boats.

It was to be a disposable, one-operation aircraft, to simply go up, intercept and shoot down the airship, then ditch in the sea.

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However its engine was unreliable and as the threat of airships receded it was deemed unviable.

It is likely that the aircraft would have disappeared from history had an attempt not been made in the early 1980s to build one from scratch.

However, this effort stalled and what existed in the shape of a incomplete fuselage, came to the museum in 1987.

It had lain in store, awaiting its turn, in a long line of aircraft restoration projects until spring 2011.