EXCAVATIONS will begin today to dig up a Spitfire from the field where it has lain for 75 years.

Pilot officer Harold Edwin Penketh, from Brighton, was just 20 when he died in the crash during the Second World War.

Archaeologists hope to recover surviving parts of the plane before the agricultural landscape is restored to wetlands as part of a major conservation project.

Pilot officer Penketh was on a training flight when the crash happened near Holme Lode Farm, Holme, Cambridgeshire on November 22, 1940.

It is believed there was a failure of the oxygen system or a physical failure of the plane.

Pilot Officer Penketh’s body was recovered from the crash and taken for burial in Brighton. His grave is in the Woodvale Crematorium.

But the remains of the plane, which had plummeted vertically into the ground at high speed, were left to vanish into the peat.

Geophysical surveying by Cranfield University has pinpointed exactly where the wreckage is and and a team of archaeologists and volunteers hope to extract parts of the plane including the Merlin engine and its guns.

The team will include people from the Defence Archaeology Group which oversees Operation Nightingale, a scheme using archaeology to help the recovery of injured veterans and service personnel.

Oxford Archaeology East senior project manager Stephen Macaulay, who is overseeing the dig, said it was unusual for archaeologists to excavate where they knew the names of people involved in the event.

He said: “In this case it was somebody who lost their life, a young man learning to fly, defending his country.

"It's really exciting and it's a real challenge.

“I've done all sorts of archaeology across the world, but to be able to say we've dug up a Spitfire, that's up alongside anything I've done.”

After the excavation the land, owned by the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, will continue to be turned into natural habitat to link up remaining fragments of fenland.

Kate Carver from the project said the excavation would be a celebration of pilot officer Penketh's life, as well as commemorating his death.

Ms Carver said: “When so many young men died in the war, unrecognised and unknown, it's a really nice opportunity to give him some recognition."

After the dig, the hole will be filled in, artefacts removed and cleaned with plans to eventually put them on display.

There are also plans to put a memorial to pilot officer Penketh on the bridge leading to the site.

Are you related to pilot officer Penketh? Call 01273 544543 or email news@theargus.co.uk.