That's gotta' be a great story.
It is remarkable that such a thing happened in the middle of the Cold War. I don't know the exact route it took, whether it went through the DDR or Czechoslovakia but imagine the looks on people's faces, being out doing whatever Warsaw Pact bound Eastern Europeans were doing at the time (queueing for bread!
) and seeing a Spitfire going by on an RAF truck!
Here's a bit of info from my RAF Museum thread in the Warbird Display pages:
"Going into action in September 1918 in France, F1010 took part in several bombing raids against German cities, including Frankfurt and Koln, and it was during an attack on Kaiserslautern on 5 October 1918 that the aeroplane was brought down, either by engine failure or AA, but it landed intact and its crew survived and were interned. Following this, the aircraft's movements are murky, but while it was undergoing restoration back in Britain, remnants of German Lozenge camouflage covering was found. Eventually the aeroplane resurfaced in the big Deutsches Luftfahrt Sammlung in the heart of Berlin, opened in 1936, the year of the XIth Olympiade and was the world's largest aviation museum at the time. In 1943 during an air raid by the RAF, the museum was destroyed by fire, and in an act of bravery, staff members dragged half smouldering aircraft from the ruins and packed them on to trains east, ending up in Poland. Again, what happened to the DH.9A in this time is not immediately known, but it became apparent in the mid-1960s that a museum behind the iron curtain had a cache of historic Great War airframes and one of them was an ex-RAF DH.9A, devoid of wings and still bearing scars from its ordeal in Berlin. In 1968, private negotiations began with the museum housing these treasures, today the excellent Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego (MLP) in Cracow, an arrangement was made that the DH.9A would be exchanged for a Spitfire, XVIe SM411. By 1971 the details were being hammered out between the RAFM and the MLP, but it was not for another six years that an RAF low loader ventured forth through Warsaw Pact held territory to Poland carrying a Spitfire! This was known as Operation Fair Exchange and by 28 June 1977, the remains of the last surviving DH.9A were safely within the RAFM Store at Cardington."