January might be seen as one of the ‘quieter’ months of the year, but the team of dedicated restorers at Imperial War Museum Duxford is hard at work, as ever, in the recently reopened Hangar 5.

One of them is Andy Marriott, a large object conservator, who has been working on a Heinkel 162, a jet-powered German fighter used during the Second World War.

Andy said: “The restoration is right at the very start of the process, so we are doing sort of a forensic analysis of it to try and find as much of the original detail of the paint scheme that the aircraft wore when it was in service with the Luftwaffe.”

As the picture above shows, RAF markings had been applied over the original scheme. “Basically what happened was the squadrons that were operating these Heinkels surrendered,” explained Andy. “All of these aircraft arrived at this one airfield where they were planning on making a last stand, but then they decided that the best thing to do was surrender.

“So all the aircraft were captured by the RAF and then they were distributed amongst the Allies. So the RAF ones were put into RAF markings and then shipped back to the UK for testing, because it was a jet aircraft, it was cutting-edge technology. The Germans were miles ahead of us when it came to jet technology.”

Andy…