THE world’s most authentic rebuilt Spitfire could soon be flying high again.

Engineers are refurbishing aircraft X4650, which crashed in the North-East 70 years ago, with the hope of getting it into the sky later this year.

Pilot Sergeant Howard Squire, of Birmingham, was flying the plane on a training mission when it crashed close to Yarm, near Stockton.

The wreckage was only discovered in 1976 when low river levels exposed the metal embedded in a clay riverbank on farmland nearby.

It had been there since December 28, 1940, after Sgt Squire, then 20, bailed out after colliding with X4276, flown by Al Deere, Flight Commander of 54 Squadron at RAF Catterick, in North Yorkshire.

Flt Cdr Deere was giving his junior a lesson in how to keep close to an enemy aircraft and told him: “Stick to me like glue,” the title of a painting of the incident by aviation artist Alex Hamilton.

But Sgt Squire stuck too close and his plane hit Flt Cdr Deere’s, cutting off the tail plane with his propeller.

After escaping the wreckage, he could only watch from his parachute as it landed in field. Flt Lt Deere landed safely in a cesspit after his parachute failed to open properly.

The reconstruction of aircraft X4650 coincides with a public competition to design a permanent memorial to the aircraft’s designers.

The Mark I model has more original parts than any of the 50 Spitfires still flying.

Sgt Squire, now 89, was shot down over France in 1941 and became a prisoner of war.

He said: “The Spitfire was a beautiful aircraft, like a Tiger Moth, but with real power. A doddle to fly.

“We used to throw them about all over the place, as unfortunately I demonstrated.”

The aircraft has cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to restore, but is now thought to be worth more than £2m and is expected to enter private ownership.

It is registered to Spitfire enthusiast Peter Monk, who is overseeing the project.