Z7015

Z7015 was built by Canadian Car & Foundry in Ontario and first flew on 18 January 1941. Shipped to Britain, it went to General Aircraft for conversion to Sea Hurricane Ib standard. It reached RNAS Yeovilton on 19 July 1941.

On 29 July a pilot of 880 Squadron collected it from St Merryn, and it went north with the squadron to Orkney. In October 880 Squadron moved to Machrihanish to join HMS Indomitable, but Z7015 went unserviceable in transit and never embarked. After repair at Barton in 1942 it joined 759 Squadron, the Naval Fighter School at Yeovilton, that December.

By late 1943 it was an instructional airframe at Loughborough College. In February 1961 the Shuttleworth Collection obtained it, with Spitfire AR501, in exchange for the prototype Jet Provost. It was too far gone to fly in the 1968 film Battle of Britain but appeared in taxiing scenes.

Two attempts to restore it stalled. In 1986 the team that had rebuilt AR501 took it on at Duxford, as a joint Shuttleworth and Imperial War Museum project. It was registered G-BKTH. Andy Sephton flew it on 16 September 1995, powered by what was then the only running Merlin III. It later returned to Old Warden.

Kept in the Shuttleworth hangars at Old Warden between flying days and flown at Collection airshows, in Fleet Air Arm markings coded 7-L.