The spectacularly acrobatic Spitfire

A STUNNING display of the Spitfire’s grace and aerobatic skill that made it so brilliantly successful in combat. ‘The bastards make such infernally tight turns. There seems no way of stopping them,’ complained one German pilot of a Spitfire Mark XIV in action.

The plane was the masterpiece of Supermarine’s leading designer Reginald Mitchell. He initially considered Spitfire to be ‘a bloody silly name’ — other titles considered were the ‘Shrew’ and the ‘Shrike’. Sadly he never saw his masterpiece in action, dying of bowel cancer in 1937.

The Spitfire was the first all-metal monoplane in Fighter Command, and served until 1955.

At the start, it was difficult to build, mainly because the elliptical wing required such precision engineering. Indeed, the slowness of production in 1938 prompted a political crisis that led to the resignation of the Air Secretary Earl Swinton.

MAIDEN FLIGHT: March 1936, entered RAF service August 1938.

MAX SPEED: 440mph with the Griffon-powered Mark XIV; 370mph with earlier Merlin-powered Mark V.

NUMBER BUILT: 20,351 in 24 different marks.

WEAPONRY: Eight .303 Browning guns, unloading 20 rounds per second. Later versions featured more powerful cannon and could carry light bombs, either one 500lb bomb under the fuselage or two 250lb bombs under each wing. WINGSPAN: 36ft 10in. AIRWORTHY NOW: 55.