The plane was the brainchild of Reginald Mitchell, a former locomotive engineer from Stoke, whose passion for flying had made him the youthful chief designer at Supermarine, a Southampton-based company that specialised in maritime aviation.
Described by one of his managing directors as ‘a curious mixture of dreams and common sense’, Mitchell had gained international renown with a succession of fast seaplanes which had thrice won the coveted biannual Schneider trophy for racing over water.
In 1931 Mitchell’s final Schneider Trophy winner, the Supermarine S6, had attained an astonishing speed of 407mph, smashing the world record. It was this achievement that led the Air Ministry to encourage Supermarine to build a new military fighter that incorporated this cutting edge technology.
But Mitchell’s initial effort was a dismal failure. Called the Type 224, it featured a thick cranked wing, fixed, trousered undercarriage and the unreliable Rolls-Royce Goshawk engine that used a complex evaporative cooling system. The test pilot Jeffrey Quill described it as ‘a dog’s breakfast, just not a very good design.’
What hindered Mitchell was not just his inexperience with landplanes but also his poor health. In 1933 he was diagnosed with cancer, for which he had to undergo major surgery and the installation of a permanent colostomy bag. But he was a resilient, determined man. Having returned to Supermarine, he came up with a far more streamlined, faster plane, complete with a retractable undercarriage and elliptical wings.
There was also a much more efficient, powerful engine, the newly created Rolls-Royce Merlin, which was to become the mainstay of the wartime RAF. The revamped design looked like a potential winner, a belief that was reinforced by the maiden flight of the prototype on March, 5, 1936, by test pilot Mutt Summers. ‘I don’t want anything touched,’ he declared once he had landed.
Amid all this praise, Mitchell’s only objection was to the title of the new plane. He favoured the Shrew or the Snipe, but the Supermarine management insisted on Spitfire. ‘Just the sort of silly name they would think of,’ Mitchell said.
The Government, deeply concerned about the pace of Nazi rearmament, was delighted with the early trials and placed an initial order for 310 Spitfires.
Mitchell had fulfilled expectations, though tragically he did not live long, succumbing to cancer in June 1937. By then, the contract had run into severe difficulties. For all its technical expertise, Supermarine was a relatively small company without the facilities for mass production.
Much of the work therefore had to be farmed out to subcontractors, many of which had little experience in aero engineering. One firm put no fewer than 15,000 queries through to Supermarine in 18 months.
The delays over the delivery of the first Spitfire contract caused official frustration — ‘a disgraceful state of affairs’ said one Government report — and political outrage, ultimately forcing the resignation of the Air Secretary, Lord Swinton in early 1938.
His successor Kingsley Wood, in a bold attempt to galvanise production, ordered the creation of a vast Spitfire factory at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham.
Run by Morris cars magnate Lord Nuffield, this colossal plant was meant to have turned out 1,000 Spitfires within two years. But by June 1940, not a single plane had emerged from Castle Bromwich, thanks to gross mismanagement and a recalcitrant workforce.
A secret inquiry found that there was ‘every evidence of slackness’ and ‘labour is in a very poor state’.
Fortunately, some of the shortfall in production was made up as Supermarine resolved its teething problems, so that by the outbreak of war at least ten RAF squadrons had been equipped with Spitfires.
Nevertheless, the early Castle Bromwich fiasco left a serious deficiency of the plane within Fighter Command on the eve of the Battle of Britain — just when it was needed most.
New management under the Vickers industrial giant, combined with political leadership from the newspaper tycoon Lord Beaverbrook, whom Churchill appointed as his Minister for Aircraft Production, brought a swift change at Castle Bromwich. Soon the factory was operating efficiently.
At its peak in 1943, the 14,000-strong workforce — 40 per cent of whom were women — was building 300 Spitfires a month.
Supermarine had also undergone a major expansion since the Battle of Britain, not least because the bombing of its Southampton factory forced the dispersal of production across southern England.
Warehouses, rolling mills, bus depots, car showrooms, a steamroller works, a strawberry basket factory and a stately home were all commandeered for this purpose.
Throughout the war, the Spitfire underwent continual improvements. In all, there were 19 different marks and 54 variants as new weaponry or engines were introduced and the airframe was altered to meet new requirements, such as photo-reconnaissance or use on aircraft carriers.
Some Spitfires were converted into fighter bombers, proving highly effective against German supply lines in the African desert and in Northern Europe.
The final land version produced during the war, the Mark XIV, was more than 3,000lb heavier than the original Mark I that went into service in 1938.
Test pilot Alex Henshaw, commenting on one of the last marks, felt something of the original spirit had been lost in the quest for more power: ‘The genius of Mitchell had died. The beautiful symmetry had gone. In its place stood a powerful, almost ugly fighting machine.’
Even so, the changes meant the Spitfire, unlike the Hurricane, never became obsolete in wartime. When the Mark IX was developed in 1942, largely to counter the new German Focke-Wulf 190 fighter, RAF pilots were thrilled.
With its roaring two-stage, two-speed supercharged Rolls-Royce Merlin 61 engine, the Mark IX was ‘the supreme’ Spitfire, according to Al Deere.
When Brian Kingcome first flew the Mark IX he said: ‘It took my breath away. It was exhilarating, a feeling I could never forget. I yearned for a chance to demonstrate this astonishing new tool to the Germans.’
Other later versions, including those powered by the mighty Rolls-Royce Griffon engine, never invoked such enthusiasm.
The Spitfire remained in British service after the war, even taking part in the campaigns in Korea and Malaya, and not finally retiring until 1955, when it bowed out in Hong Kong.
In one strange twist of history, it was involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948-9, serving not only with the RAF, which was leaving Palestine, but also with the Egyptian and Israeli air forces. In January 1949, three RAF Mark XVIIIs were shot down by Israeli Spitfires.
All this was a far cry from the glory days of the plane during World War II, when it served as an instrument of freedom.
Without the Spitfire, the course of European history might have been very different.
Pilot Neville Duke wrote that in the plane he felt ‘part of a fine machine, made by a genius’.
He added: ‘It is said that the Spitfire is too beautiful to be a fighting machine. I sometimes think that is true but then what better fighter could you want?’
Spitfire: Portrait Of A Legend, by Leo McKinstry, £12.99, John Murray.