Aircraft enthusiast and landlord Paul Greig, 53, spotted the 1966 Jet Provost T Mark Three for sale on ebay for £1,000 and quickly rang ten friends who each stumped up £100 to buy it.
As Paul had the most space available, it ended up in his beer garden.
Now the jet has become something of a tourist attraction with people even coming from the Netherlands to see the plane.
Paul, 53, said: "The best part of the day is watching people come in and gasp, saying is it real? Can it fly? How did you land it here?
"We get customers coming all the way from Holland to see it – they're amazed it's just sat in the back of the beer garden."
He added: "It's honestly the best £100 I have ever spent, and that's not just because of the increase in customers, but we've not stopped working on it since."
Paul proudly says the large garden ornament is a real pull with customers at his pub The Standard in Northallerton, North Yorks.
Captain Greig, as he is now known by locals, recalls placing the bid just in the nick of time with two minutes left before the auction closed.
The band of brothers have spent hundreds of hours doing up the aircraft, working on the project at weekends.
Following a painstaking restoration, the plane is now equipped with fully working cockpit and landing lights.
Paul said: "My garden was the biggest so I decided to put it in – it took just half a day to crane it over from the neighbour's yard in four pieces.
"It all depends on the weather – and while running a pub I usually have my hands full.
"The plane had been painted over and painted over and we stripped it all back and worked and worked on it.
"We are all complete amateurs but have a love for aircrafts – it's a real hobby and we enjoy working on it."
Paul became obsessed with planes after spending his childhood living in a flight path of Edinburgh airport.
He says the hardest part of the restoration project is finding parts which now no longer exist.
Asked about the hidden secret being unearthed, Paul said: "It's funny because it's being here all this time and we've never had any publicity until a journalist wandered in and was taken aback.
"I don't know if it the best – but I can't say I know of any other pubs that have a jet in the beer garden."
The jet had flown out of RAF Linton on Ouse in the early 1960s.
Before the plane was transported to Paul's pub June 2005, it had spent the last five years in a field alongside other war machines, including at tank, in Sussex.
The previous owner had also saved it from scrap when he bought it from a museum in South Wales after it closed.
He said: "I basically wanted to stop it from being put on the scrap heap and the bloke that was selling it wanted to downsize after his wife had died."
Adding: "It's a bit of British aviation heritage which I couldn't let go to waste."
Jet Provost air-planes were used as jet trainers and Paul's model was built in Luton as an RAF jet trainer.
The plane entered service in 1960 at Linton-on-Ouse and was used until 1973.
Source: Read Full Article
