Mylcraine was the girlfriend of a Spitfire squadron pilot, more than 70 years ago. Her name was written down in history when her pilot boyfriend decided to name his Spitfire after her in 1943.

This Spitfire, which is nowadays privately owned, has been replicated to scale by Maltese model maker Frank Borg, and is on show at the Police Headquarters in Floriana as part of a model airplane exhibition.

"It took about six months to build the model from scratch," said Police Constable Borg. He based his model on pictures and detailed diagrams of the original one and in fact includes the name Mylcraine too, painted by the side.

This is the biggest scale aeroplane model in Malta, and in future PC Borg is planning to install a model engine so that it can be flown.

Ex-RAF pilot, Jeff Thackeray, who flew a two-seater spit fire, and who had seen the real Spitfire, said: "If you put the two next to each other, it's absolutely one hundred per cent."

The Model Aeroplane Exhibition organised by Sergeant Joe Filletti and PC Frank Borg aims to showcase various remote-controlled model aeroplanes. "These are not toys," said PC Borg. "A model such as this would be approaching landing at 70 miles per hour – you need licensed people to control it - getting hit by a propeller can be fatal. In fact most aeroplane pilots say that it's more difficult to fly a model than a real one," he said.

The exhibition is open to the public until 5 p.m. today and tomorrow, Sunday between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m., as part of the celebrations of Police Week.