Pilot error was to blame for the crash of an historic twin-seater Spitfire which claimed the lives of two men.

However, an inquest jury heard it was impossible to know whose hands were at the controls when a landing went badly wrong.

Verdicts of accidental death were returned by the jury on Norman Lees, 49, of Pine Trees Close, Copthorne, and South African businessman Greg McCurrach, 41, who ran an air aviation company in Durban.

The men were killed when the Mk9 Spitfire crashed as it was coming in to land at Goodwood airfield, near Chichester, on April 8 last year.

Mr McCurrach had recently bought the plane and had asked for help from Mr Lees to familiarise himself with flying it.

Mr Lees, who flew helicopters during the Falklands War, regularly flew Spitfires and other historic planes at airshows.

The jury heard that Mr McCurrach was in the front seat of the plane, which was fitted with duel controls.

Air accident investigators were unable to say who was bringing the plane in to land when it began to roll.

The left wing hit a grass bank and the Spitfire somersaulted onto its back and caught fire.

Fire crews at the airfield put out the flames within ten seconds of the crash and the pathologist said both men died instantly from fractured skulls and broken necks.

The jury was told there were no mechanical defects which could have caused the accident in the plane, which was used in the Second World War The men had been experimenting with the plane and had made a successful landing the same morning as the crash.

Senior investigator Phillip Giles said the Spitfire had been approaching the runway too slowly and with a "high nose altitude".

There was a last-minute increase in power but without sufficient application of the rudder to stop the plane going into a roll.

Mr Giles said it was possible Mr McCurrach had been bringing the plane in to land and Mr Lees "misjudged the intervention period" when things went wrong.

He said: "The guy in the back is there to catch the ball if the guy in the front drops it and aircraft can go very quickly out of control."

West Sussex coroner Roger Stone told the jury: "We cannot for sure know who had their hands on the controls when."

After the verdicts, Mr Lees's widow Catherine, 43, who works as a cabin crew member for British Airways at Gatwick, said: "Since the death of my husband, life has been harder than ever before and I wonder when everything will be well again.

"However Norman was a determined man and I knew him well enough to understand that he would have hated all this attention. I am sure he would have wanted me to move on and enjoy my life.

"It is because our husbands were flying a Spitfire that they have received so much attention from the media and things may have been different had it been a road accident.

"Perhaps then, with this event so raw in our minds, it is as well to remember all the Spitfire pilots who have been lost to their families, especially here in southern England where so many were lost in the Battle of Britain."