"The Seafire"

"While Sarah Hill and I were taping the first Central Missouri Honor Flight special in the Ozark Hangar at Columbia Regional Airport in January 2009, I noticed Jim Cooper working on a plane in the corner of the hangar. I love airplanes and this sight piqued my interest.

The corner was enclosed by plastic from floor to ceiling and inside sat a plane, wings folded toward the ceiling and a paint job that left more to be desired. It was the Seafire XV - one of only a handful still in existence. As soon as I saw the plane and learned a few facts about it, I knew I wanted to do a story on it and follow Cooper through the rest of the restoration process.

Cooper had already been working on the Seafire for nearly a year and half by the time we met, but there was still plenty of work that had to be done. I started shooting that night and throughout the next year and half, whenever Cooper would move to a different stage in the restoration, he'd call and I would head to the hangar to shoot video. I didn't shoot every part of the process, but tried to capture the big ones ?cleaning the plane, painting, revealing the paint job, testing the landing gear, testing the engine and of course the first flight.

After 10 trips to the airport, 130 miles and nearly 6 hours of video, it was time to start the editing process. Once all the video was in the system, I spent 14 hours typing the details from of every sound and interview captured in the video. That log was essential in writing the story. I needed to know exactly what was said in order to organize everything into a story that would hopefully hold people's interest. After I had a rough script written, I began to edit the video. After about 15 hours in the edit bay tweaking every little audio and video cut?then re-tweaking them?I was finally finished. Nineteen months later. It was a tough job picking the best four minutes from six hours of video, but in the end, I think I accomplished what I set out to do."

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Scott
• Schaefer
• Seafire
• KOMU
• News
• Columbia
• Missouri

[DaveP72006]

fantastic job,brilliant work,thanks for sharing this..

[theBike45]

SuperMarine was the name of the company that created and built the Spitfire by

R.J. Mitchell (played by Leslie Howard in the movies) . The SeaFire was a carrier version, which was updated to make it more robust for carrier landings.

[battyguy]

Thats a giant chin the new anchor has. Yikes!!!!

[AryanKnight]

~SeaFire... The last iteration of the Spitfire-series beyond the SuperMarine? (or was the SuperMarine the last?), --would indeed be most interesting to know the story about how this beautiful bird of prey was heroically absconded with, --so as to righteously preserve it for posterity! Besides the stealthy barn-owner, and the restoration-team, -the elder Test-pilot, and aerial photographer are also to be congratulated; --job well done by all...!!!

[BlueyM]

Superb restoration of a magnificent aircraft. Well done to all concerned.

[cpovey1]

Spitfire/Seafire-most beautiful plane ever made, IMO. Not the best carrier aircraft because of the narrow landing gear setup, but one of the greatest airplanes in history.

[3crowns21]

A very big thank you to all the people who made this beautiful plane fly.

[SirRobertofKnoxly]

Congratulations on a fabulous job. After watching the full video and seeing the take off, I shared in your joy at seeing YOUR work and bringing this beautiful lady back to life. Thankyou personally at providing me another warbird to see in the air, and thankyou on behalf of all future generations who will have a chance to see this lady fly.

Rob

[3000dives]

Beautiful! Just beautiful.

[willow6228]

WOW amazing. Thank you for sharing