Wartime geniuses who gave us the sound of freedom

GLANCE up over the Campsies or Loch Lomond tomorrow and you might see a Spitfire. Boultbee Flight Academy is offering trips aboard a two-seater version of the warbird out of Cumbernauld Airport (isn’t aerodrome a nicer word for these small airfields?) Obsessive ‘rivet counters’ argue whether it was the Supermarine Spitfire, all film-star good looks, or the more numerous and workmanlike Hawker Hurricane which won the Battle of Britain and saved this country from invasion. Either way, it is hard for us to grasp just how close to disaster Britain came because we know the final score. But my late maternal grandmother gave me a taste of the reality with the story of a 1940 trip to Gourock. She saw a plane and waved and cheered only for the sound to die on her lips as she spotted Balkenkreuz crosses. It was a Luftwaffe raider, harbinger of defeat. So for me the roar of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, which powered both Spitfire and Hurricane, is the sound of freedom. The Spitfire was designed by RJ Mitchell, but while the brilliant engineer had an artist’s eye – the Spit’s elliptical wing is gorgeous and functional – he had a tin ear. He wanted to call his creation ‘Shrew’ or ‘Scarab’. ‘Achtung! Shrew!’ just doesn’t cut it. Only someone looking at the Spitfire’s eight Browning .303 machine-guns saved the day. We can move on from the past – I’m planning a city break in Berlin – but we must not forget history and its lessons. So if you catch a glimpse of a Spitfire, salute The Few of the RAF, the unsung engineers who put such marvels in the pilots’ hands – and consider what might have been but for them.