Connie Edwards Buchons and the Battle of Britain Remake

Recently we had the opportunity to catch up with with Simon Brown of Platinum Fighters Sales. Part of what prompted the interview was the recent rumor about a Battle of Britain movie re-make spreading like wildfire on social media. Several aviation websites reported this news as a fact, but it seemed like such a massive and risky undertaking that we felt something was amiss, and wanted more formal proof before making our report. Much of what has been driving this rumor has been the recent activity concerning Connie Edwards’ former collection of Hispano Buchons. Simon Brown’s company Platinum Fighter Sales was the broker which arranged the sale of these aircraft, and also the recent re-sale of four of them, so he seemed like the perfect person to verify the facts one way or another.

Simon Brown’s definitive answer  is as follows… “Unfortunately there is not going to be a remake of the Battle Of Britain movie. I put something about that on Facebook as a joke and the next thing I knew someone wrote an article to that affect.”

Brown continued….

All eight Buchon’s were originally sold last year to a Swiss company called Boschung Global – whose principal is Paul Boschung.

In October 2015, Platinum Fighter Sales then re-sold four of the Buchon’s to an Australian entity. This includes the two-seater, one single seater, and the two project Buchons. These four aircraft are enroute to the UK, where they will be restored and the two seater will operate on a commercial ride program alongside a two-seat Spitfire.

The four single-seat Buchon’s that Boschung retained, have been shipped to California where they will all be restored to airworthy condition. Boschung then plans to keep one plane in the US, one will be shipped to Switzerland, and the other two will possibly be sold or traded. One of these single seaters s/n 220, was the last fighter that Adolf Galland flew – in 1968 when he was a consultant on the movie “Battle Of Britain”. This plane will be restored and painted just like it was in the movie and will be the plane that Boschung keeps as his personal plane.

It was amazing to me how much interest there has been in the Buchon’s. Within two weeks of listing the Buchon’s we had two offers for the entire collection (eight planes) as well as multiple offers for individual planes. What everyone liked was the fact that these planes were unrestored – no one has touched them in 45 years, so they are completely original as they came from the Spanish Air Force [Ed. – other than the paint].

We had probably ten times the amount of interest in the Buchon’s than we had on any other warbird – simply amazing!

The reason it took so long to close the deal is that there was a brand new [Pilatus] PC-12 involved as a trade and I had to order it and wait for it to be built and delivered.

Connie Edwards has enjoyed owning the planes – as people always came out to visit him and see the planes. I think he was glad that he hired us so he didn’t have to deal with all the tire kickers etc…

The Mustang needs to be sold with a huge package of spare engines (20 Merlins) and probably the worlds largest P-51 parts inventory that survives. I’m actually pretty close to selling it – to multiple people who each want parts of the entire package.