Moving tribute to the Spitfire — and The Few

Spitfire (PG) Verdict: Soaring documentary

IT IS very difficult — and I confess that I failed — to watch this terrific documentary about the iconic World War II fighter aircraft without shedding a tear.

The surviving Spitfire pilots are in their 90s now, The Few are becoming ever fewer and it’s deeply moving to see pictures of them fresh-faced in uniform while listening to their remarkable reminiscences.

Directors David Fairhead and Ant Palmer make only one misjudgment, which is to allow Charles Dance to narrate their film at an almost comic level of sonorous gravity.

Otherwise, it’s utterly marvellous to hear these grand old men — and women, such as Joan Fanshawe, one of the so-called group plotters who pored over huge maps working out where the squadrons needed to be deployed — telling their wartime stories.

Among them is 96-year-old Geoffrey Wellum, whose 2002 memoir First Light made him an unlikely literary sensation.

He describes the importance of never flying level and in a straight line for more than ten seconds, to make yourself harder to hit.

‘Being shot down didn’t appeal to me,’ he says, cheerfully. The film has been made to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the RAF, and its star is the Spitfire itself, which made its inaugural test flight in March 1936.

Just two days later, Hitler’s troops marched into the Rhineland, setting Nazi Germany on a collision course with the rest of Europe.

By the outbreak of war, the Luftwaffe had four times as many aircraft as the RAF.

But the Spitfire was quicker and more versatile than anything the Germans could muster, thanks to its brilliant designer R. J. Mitchell.

He was immortalised by Leslie Howard in the 1942 film The First Of The Few, yet he had died of cancer, aged only 42, by the time his creation helped so spectacularly to win the Battle of Britain.

Stirring archive footage backs up the testimonies of those who were there and there are some fantastic aerial shots of Spitfires now.

Of those that actually took part in the Battle of Britain, only one is still airworthy.

It lives at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, where Squadron Leader Andy Millikin describes it as ‘the most precious flying machine on the planet’, apart from possibly the Apollo 11 command capsule.

That doesn’t seem at all excessive to me, and won’t to anyone who sees this film — as everyone should.