Warplane Workshop — Season 1

Documentary following engineers and aviators who battle to keep the UK's most historic warplanes in the air. In the first edition, the team rebuilds a Spitfire MJ772.

During the Vietnam War an elite team of pilots braved terrifying odds by flying unarmed light aircraft over enemy troops to mark targets for America's supersonic strike planes. Now, British airline pilot Shona Bowman is determined to return one of their planes to the sky, but the battered Cessna Bird Dog she bought for £10,000 turns out not to be the bargain it first appeared. Featuring recently rediscovered tapes of combat missions over Vietnam recorded by the pilots themselves.

In 1940, a handful of Dutch air force pilots took on the might of Hitler's Luftwaffe, shooting down hundreds of enemy aircraft. Many escaped to Britain to join the RAF, but the outdated fighter they flew vanished. Now, a flying family of restorers is recreating the legendary Fokker DXXI, in an episode that features remarkable colour archive footage shot by one of the Dutch pilots who became national heroes.

Intrepid pilot Taff Smith rescues the wreckage of a biplane with a sinister history. The Bucker Jungmeister is a relic of General Franco's fascist air force which brought civil war to Spain and introduced the world to the horrors of strategic bombing. Rebuilding the Jungmeister means long hours and big bills for Taff's restoration team - and its resurrection could prove controversial in Spain.

On Lake Windermere a restoration team is determined to recreate the first flight of Britain's first seaplane. In 1911, Winston Churchill personally championed the Waterbird to give the Royal Navy an eye in the sky ahead of the First World War. However, putting Edwardian technology into the air proves to be harder than anyone expected.

A 1930s Lockheed airliner used by MI6 to spy on pre-war Germany is restored to flight by engineer Richard Grace and his team. To the suspicious Gestapo security men who checked his documents and searched his plane, maverick Australian pilot Sidney Cotton was on a business trip to promote his film business. In reality, he was Britain's most audacious spy, photographing Hitler's military secrets from the air - and on one occasion, with a Nazi general in the cockpit. The restoration reveals tell-tale signs of the plane's top-secret past.