When designer Reginald J Mitchell died of cancer in 1937, although having seen the prototype take to the air the previous year, little could he have known just how much influence his brilliant design for “an all-metal monoplane, eight-gun fighter” would have on the outcome of the Second World War.
Spitfires fought from the earliest days of the War right through to its close in both the European and Pacific theatres and continued to serve with distinction through more conflicts to come all the way to the 1960s.
But it was in the darkest days of 1940, when Britain was on the back foot following a disastrous campaign in France, the following evacuations from Dunkirk and the consequential “Battle of Britain” that Mitchell’s graceful little fighter really proved its mettle.
Alongside the venerable Hawker Hurricane, its stablemate in many RAF squadrons of the day, pilots flew the Spitfire into battle all throughout each day of the long hot summer of 1940.
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