Sparks AFC gained his pilot's wings with the Royal New Zealand Air Force in December 1941.

HX982 (EG-T) from RAF Hunsdon, Hertfordshire with his navigator Pilot Officer Arthur Cecil Dunlop during the Operation Jericho raid on Amiens prison on 18 February 1944.

[6] In 2011, Maxwell Sparks was interviewed by the BBC's Martin Shaw at The Swan Inn at Swinbrook in Oxfordshire.

Flt Lt Sparks spent the final years of his life at his home in Carterton near RAF Brize Norton with his wife Pauline.

The scale replica will be built as close to how HX982 would have been on the morning of February 18, 1944 as Max Sparks took off from Hunsdon airfield for the raid on Amiens prison, however the model will incorporate 21st-century electronics to stabilise the craft and mitigate the risk of engine or other mechanical failures.