AMATEUR aviation archaeologists have recovered the wreck of a Battle of Britain Spitfire, after 57 years buried 20 feet below the surface of a bog near Stirling.

The plane, which crashed on a training flight at the height of the Second World War, was pulled in pieces from its resting place.

Yesterday the enthusiasts began the painstaking task of examining and cleaning the plane's shattered sections at the privately-run Dundonald Aviation Museum in Ayrshire, where it will be put on display.

The plane, Spitfire number P8394, went missing in January 1943 during a practice homing exercise while based at RAF Balado Bridge, Kinross-shire.

Resarchers believe that the pilot, 37 year-old Belgian Henri De La Bastita, probably blacked out when his oxygen failed.

It was three days before the plane - named "Gibraltar" by the RAF in recognition of the garrison which donated it to the war effort in April 1941 - was found, embedded in soft ground near North Third Reservoir, by Stirling.

The crash site was re-located last month by aviation enthusiast Mr Campbell Chesterman, a retired Stirling University manager.

With the help of a JCB digger loaned by Stirling developers Ogilvie Homes, the marsh gave up its secrets.

Almost the whole plane was recovered, with the undercarriage, cockpit, instruments, radios, joystick and controls, emerging one-by-one from the mire.

At a depth of 15ft, the smashed Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was found, along with its bent crankshaft.

Then, at the bottom of a now 20ft deep hole, as the excavator bucket dredged for a final time, the tip of a propeller blade emerged.

To Mr Chesterman's delight, the plane's three-bladed metal propeller was recovered, complete with the reduction gear.

Mr Chesterman said last night: ''The pieces came up without a fleck of rust or corrosion.

''It's almost like a time capsule when they are buried this deep.

''This one had obviously dived vertically into the ground at very high speed, perhaps over 400 miles an hour.

''When the engine was lifted out, the green Castrol was running out of it as if it was brand new.''

In a remarkable feat of memory, Mr Chesterman, 62, was able to point researchers to the exact spot where, as a boy of five, he was taken to see another Spitfire, which had crashed on his uncle's farm, the Hill o' Drip, near Stirling, in July 1943.

Just below the surface of a barley field, they found broken pieces of the plane left behind by the wartime RAF crew charged with clearing the wreckage, including the Spitfire's instrument dials, tachometer face, a fuel filter, the rate-of-climb indicator, and rear-view mirror.

Mr Chesterman recalled how at the time of the crash his mother, Christine, and his aunt, Isabel, had been beaten back by the heat and exploding ammunition as they tried in vain to save the 21- year-old Australian pilot, by beating out the flames with a travelling rug.

He said: "Even now when I smell the smell of burning stubble, it all comes back to me.

"I was quite surprised that going back 57 years later, I was able to pinpoint exactly where the plane had lain."