Spitfire Read online

  For those of us on the ground it was a magical experience; we had managed to give something back, a tiny reminder of a glorious past, to a man who had given so much to his country. As time went on we began to search the skies in readiness for Brian and Cliff to appear. Matron, who had gone to enjoy a well-earned cup of tea, returned and asked, ‘Where’s Brian now?’ As the words left her lips, we all ducked as the Spitfire roared over our heads at around 50ft, waggling its wings in salute. I pointed to the sky at the retreating shape of a Spitfire: ‘He’s up there!’

  As the Spitfire taxied back towards us, Brian pushed back the hood and undid his harness, just as he had done during his wartime sorties. His enthusiasm was contagious. ‘It’s a dream come true! It brought back so many memories. It was great, terrific. Really terrific! Everything came back to me!’

  ‘Do you think you could take her up on your own?’ I asked. There was no hesitation as Brian replied: ‘Yes, yes.’ And I believed him. His face suddenly lit up, perhaps thinking it wasn’t in jest. ‘Do you want me to do it now?’

  His hands hovered over the throttle as he glanced towards Matron, who gently shook her head. There were a few more chuckles.

  The Spitfire had acted like an elixir on Brian, as if the short flight had restored something from his youth, not quite a spring in his step, but certainly a revitalisation of the spirits. The freedom and delight of flying a Spitfire had never left him, and to step back into the aircraft in his nineties was a tonic he thought he’d never take again. I could see a mental and physical change in his demeanour; it had been a privilege to see how one of the last of those who had flown the Spitfire in its fierce wartime role could now revel in the pleasure it gave in peace.

  Sadly, it was to be Brian’s final flight, as he died just a few months afterwards. In his last letter to me he wrote: ‘After a gap of seventy years since my last operational sortie in a Spitfire, the opportunity to sit in a Spit cockpit and to get airborne was an unimaginable thrill and made me wish for a return to my youth!’

  In a way, though, he truly had recaptured a sense of his youth on that last flight.

  So here was the very essence, the magic of this aircraft; the Spitfire was more than a plane; it was an aircraft like no other, it was an icon loved, worshipped by all those – apart from her enemies – whose lives she touched.

  I was determined to find out more about her and subsequently discovered many hundreds of books that already recount the technical development and wartime record of the Spitfire. This is not one of those books. I wanted more; I wanted to hear that ‘human’ story of the Spitfire, the story of the men – and women – who flew, serviced and built her. People like Brian Bird and Ken Farlow – why were they so desperate to have one last glimpse, one final flight in their beloved Spitfire, before they died? I wanted to understand the personal story of the Spitfire and why those connected with her seemed to fall in love with this iconic lady of the skies . . .

  John Nichol, April 2018

  CHAPTER ONE

  BIRTH OF A FIGHTER

  SPRING 1932

  Half-a-crown was all eleven-year-old Allan Scott needed for the ten-minute flight circling above Southport’s landmarks with the flying circus which had come to town. It was 1932 and many people were still wary of entering the strange machines that left the safety of the ground, with a mere engine to keep them aloft. It was less than thirty years since Orville and Wilbur Wright had tossed a coin to see who would be first to try out their new invention: the Wright Flyer, a skeletal flying machine constructed out of wood, string and muslin. That very first, twelve-second, 120ft flight over the sands of Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk in North Carolina changed the world forever and gave mankind a tool that would revolutionise both peace and warfare.

  The science of flight was still in its relative infancy as Allan headed alone to the Fox Moth biplane. He was gripped by the excitement of taking to the air. ‘I could not believe that it was me, that it was really me following the attendant towards the Moth. My heart thumped all the way.’ Allan was helped up the ladder into the small passenger cabin, similar to a train carriage with bench seats facing each other. He sat facing forwards, glancing out of the window at Southport’s flat, sandy beach, anxiously anticipating the moment of take-off. ‘Hello, this is the pilot.’ A voice called from the cockpit above him. ‘We’re just about to take off.’ The aircraft rolled forwards, moving faster and faster across the ground. ‘I found myself staring at the sand whizzing by in a long strip at what seemed like a dizzying speed until it came to that incredible, magical feeling of lift. We were in the air, we were flying.’1

  As the left wing dipped and they headed out to sea at 100mph, Allan marvelled at the tiny dots of cars and people disappearing below. ‘It was the most wonderful, most exciting sight to behold, but I had only a few moments to take it in before the sand was whizzing by again and I felt a bump.’ They had landed.

  ‘The whole trip took ten minutes but what could I expect for only half-a-crown [12½ pence]? As far as I was concerned, it was worth every single penny. The seeds of my future were sown the minute I had stepped into that Moth.’

  A few years later, as the storm clouds of war spread over Europe, Allan found himself drawing precise lines and reading mighty tomes as an architect’s apprentice. He was bored and his mind drifted both to flying and to duty. His thoughts went back to the empty seats in the Fox Moth and to his twin sister, Lena. They had both been caught by the tail end of the influenza epidemic that had followed the Great War. Allan, being the stronger of the two, had survived. Lena, aged four, had not. Somewhere in his heart he felt that she had died so that he could live. He would make something of himself, something of which she would have been proud.

  He now knew precisely what that was.

  He was going to be a fighter pilot.

  * * *

  It was perfect timing. Flying was no longer the exclusive preserve of the rich or the military. The sleek, streamlined aircraft competing in the Schneider Trophy heralded a new era of speed that seemed fully in tune with the decade of Art Deco, Hemingway, champagne and jazz. Crowds of 200,000 or more would clamour to watch the race for the world’s fastest seaplane.

  Jeffrey Quill in prototype K5054, 18 June 1936, before the first demonstration to the press

  The trophy had largely been won by Italians and Americans, until a Staffordshire-born engineer stepped into the arena. Hardworking, plain-speaking and brilliant, R. J. Mitchell built the swift and elegant S5 and S6 racing seaplanes which from 1927 won three Schneider competitions in a row, thus securing the trophy permanently for Britain. The S6B was the first to break the 400mph barrier, setting a new world record in 1931.

  Other nations took note. None more so than the Germans. They were beginning to take their flying – and everything else – very seriously indeed.

  APRIL 1935

  Two years into power, Adolf Hitler had openly established his ‘air weapon’, in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. The time of secretly training pilots in glider clubs or the Soviet Union was over. The Luftwaffe began its first fighter pilot training sorties in February1935.

  Winston Churchill warned of Nazi belligerence. ‘A terrible process is astir,’ he wrote in the Daily Mail. ‘Germany is arming.’ But he was virtually a lone voice. Britain and the rest of the world still chose to avoid confrontation.

  The Nazi threat was seen first-hand by RAF pilot Jeffrey Quill when he flew a grand tour of Europe soon after. Quill was a cool, astute observer of people and places, and not readily fazed by confrontation.

  His skills had been quickly recognised by the RAF. He had first flown solo after just five hours and twenty minutes of instruction, when the average was over ten hours. He achieved an ‘exceptional’ rating out of the four possible categories for trainee pilots. And he took one particular piece of wisdom from his instructor very much to heart: ‘Aeroplanes are not inherently dangerous, but they are very unforgiving.’

  His fortitude ha
d been further examined in the hazardous Meteorological Flight. Taking temperature and humidity readings at 20,000ft in an open-cockpit Siskin biplane was a challenging occupation. Foul weather sometimes made it impossible. But for every calendar day of 1935, bar Sundays, Quill and a fellow pilot flew through storms, hail, fog and blizzards, earning the Air Force Cross, awarded for valour while flying not on combat operations.

  He was a good man to examine the calibre of the new enemy at close quarters. On his flying tour of Germany, Quill landed first in Saarbrücken, which Hitler had recently managed to get returned to German sovereignty by plebiscite. No ‘booted and strutting Nazis’ appeared at the small airfield before Quill refuelled and continued to Munich.2

  A visit to a bierkeller further calmed his fears. The mood was jovial and boisterous. Buxom waitresses carried five massive steins of Bavarian beer in each hand, and slender women polished them off as if they were cups of tea.

  Then he began to notice aerodromes packed with paramilitary aircraft and flying clubs full of purposeful-looking air and ground crew. The atmosphere of vigour and menace made Quill uneasy. There was only one conclusion: Britain was being left behind in a race that had no rules.

  The RAF had been basking in the glow of bygone days. Small, agile biplanes with a couple of Vickers machine guns were the norm. But some members of Britain’s defence establishment had begun to share Churchill and Quill’s concern. As the Luftwaffe sprang into life, the Air Ministry issued Specification F10/35 in the search for a new fighter.3

  The RAF had woken up to the demands of modern air warfare. They needed a single-engine, single-seat fighter armed with eight machine guns that could produce the greatest destructive power possible in one quick attack.

  Building on his success in the Schneider Trophy, R. J. Mitchell seized upon F10/35 and assembled a team at Supermarine’s headquarters at Eastleigh, Hampshire, to come up with the best possible design for a fast, manoeuvrable aircraft. Its planform wing, a leaflike elliptic or oval shape, was close to perfection aerodynamically, and allowed the thinnest possible structure to accommodate four machine guns.

  Using the technical skills evolved from the successful seaplane designs, the prototype took shape in an erecting shop at Supermarine’s aircraft manufacturing plant in Southampton. Hitches were overcome. Rolls-Royce’s magnificent Merlin engine had originally been developed for the Wellington bomber, not for a high-altitude fighter, and lost efficiency the higher it went. Rolls-Royce’s engineers resolved this by using a coolant of pure ethylene glycol, which boiled at 160°C at sea level and 120°C at 27,000ft.4 Mitchell had more difficulty with the aircraft’s name. He had hoped to call it the Shrew. Sir Robert McLean, chairman of Vickers engineering company, who now owned Supermarine, wanted it named after his daughter Ann, ‘a little spitfire’. On such a minor whim, a legend was born.5

  Willy Messerschmitt did not need a name for his deadly efficient fighter. A number was enough. Three years younger than Mitchell, aged thirty-six, the brilliant German aircraft engineer designed the prototype of the 109 that took to the air in May 1935 and moved swiftly towards mass production.

  Spitfire prototype K5054 made an eight-minute maiden flight over Southampton ten months later.

  It had cost £20,765 to develop, looked good and flew well. Everyone at Vickers Supermarine was delighted.

  But it was not headline news.

  The very next day, 7 March 1936, Hitler’s Stormtroopers marched into the Rhineland demilitarised zone.

  SUMMER 1936

  There was a certain élan about the members of White’s Club, the exclusive gentlemen’s club in Mayfair, London. Blue stock and Tory, many had time on their hands, and most had a sense of duty and a nose for danger. Some were restless, some eccentric. And some had the prescience to realise that defending the skies would be vital in any future conflict.

  Lord Edward Grosvenor, son of the Duke of Westminster, an habitué of White’s and a former naval flier, had set up 601 as one of the five new squadrons in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. The Auxiliaries were formed as an elite corps of civilian pilots who would fly for the RAF in time of war. The initial batch of pilots for 601 was almost exclusively recruited from the distinguished drinking clientele of White’s. It seemed only sensible that their summer camps should be held at Lympne airport in Kent, close to Goldenhurst Farm, owned by Noël Coward, and Port Lympne, seaside home of Sir Philip Sassoon, the urbane politician and art collector.6

  It was to prove a most satisfactory way of balancing the intensity of flight with the more indulgent demands of their lifestyle. And there was much that was indulgent about Port Lympne. Gilt-edged chairs with jade-green cushions stood in the dining room; nude statues disported themselves among the greenery of the splendid landscaped garden. Its guest list was as notable as the roses and juniper trees: Hollywood’s Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, the backbench MP, and T. E. Lawrence, of Arabia fame.

  The men of 601 Squadron were welcome any time. Port Lympne was their unofficial mess, where officers came to swim, sunbathe and play tennis.

  Wealth counted for something in Lord Grosvenor’s selection criteria, but not everything. One recruit who turned up for interview wearing a shiny suit and scuffed shoes refused to accept his rejection and soon embraced the Auxiliary ethos: ‘Be a good pilot and a good comrade, but don’t take anything other than flying too seriously.’7

  * * *

  Jeffrey Quill certainly took flying seriously. Despite some misgivings, Quill had resigned his RAF commission and joined Vickers as Assistant to the Chief Test Pilot.

  When he saw the Supermarine fighter take to the air, he knew he had made the right choice. Three weeks after the maiden test flight he climbed into the Spitfire cockpit for the first time.

  He was immediately struck by ‘a very long nose’ that completely blocked the forward view. Zigzagging to ensure all was clear ahead, he opened the throttle for take-off. The acceleration was ‘sluggish’. Strangely, he needed to apply full right rudder to maintain a straight line.

  When the wheels of the Spitfire finally left the ground Quill was immediately impressed. It was in a class of its own.

  ‘It began to slip along as if on skates with the speed mounting steadily. An immediate impression of effortless performance was accentuated by the relatively low propeller RPM at that low altitude. The aeroplane just seemed to chunter along at a very much higher cruising speed than I have ever experienced before, with the engine turning over very easily. In this respect it was somewhat reminiscent of my old Bentley cruising in top gear. I climbed up to a few thousand feet and carried out some steep turns and gentle rolls. The aeroplane was light and lively, but with a tendency to shear about a bit directionally. I put it into a gentle dive and it accelerated with effortless ease; then it was time to rejoin the circuit for landing . . . As I chopped the throttle on passing over the boundary hedge, the deceleration was hardly discernible and the aeroplane showed no desire to touch down – it evidently enjoyed flying. I noticed how the stick hardly moved during the flare-out for landing, and in fact the aircraft seemed almost to land itself. “Here,” I thought to myself, “is a real lady.” ’8

  Despite its smoothness the plane was struggling to find the speed required of a true fighter. Quill recorded a disappointing 335mph on his first outing, in the same league as the Hawker Hurricane, the other new single-seat monoplane fighter. There would be no room for two fighters of the same ilk. And no production order.

  The Spitfire’s two-bladed propeller was taken off and worked on by Mitchell’s team of engineers to make it produce more speed by refining the tips, making them more aerodynamic. It was also given an ultra-smooth paint finish. ‘I think we have something here,’ Quill said on landing in May 1936. Its top speed was now 348mph – close enough to Mitchell’s 350mph objective for it to be sent to the RAF for official trials just three months after its maiden flight.

  On 26 May 1936, Humphrey Edwardes-Jones, commander of A Flight at the RAF testing
airfield in Martlesham, became the first air force pilot to fly the Spitfire.

  On landing he had been instructed to immediately call the Air Ministry.

  ‘I don’t want to know everything and obviously you can’t tell me,’ the Air Ministry man said. ‘All I want to know now is whether you think the young pilot officers and others we are getting in the Air Force will be able to cope with such an advanced aircraft?’9

  His answer was affirmative. Edwardes-Jones shared Quill’s sentiments.

  ‘The aeroplane is simple and easy to fly and has no vices,’ the official report said. ‘The controls are well harmonised and appear to give an excellent compromise between manoeuvrability and steadiness for shooting. Take-off and landing are straight-forward and easy.’

  The Ministry immediately put in an order for 310 of them. On the same day, 6 June 1936, it signed a contract for 600 Hurricanes. Finally, the RAF would have a force of modern fighters.

  * * *

  The Germans flew the V1 prototype Me109 proudly over the audience for the Berlin Olympics in August 1936.10

  Willy Messerschmitt had focused on combining the most powerful engine with the lightest possible body. He built an advanced, all-metal airframe with closed canopy and retractable landing gear. German test pilots were impressed with its speed and agility.

  When it went up against the Luftwaffe’s He51 biplane in a mock dogfight in front of the Reichsminister of Aviation, Air Marshal Hermann Goering, he too was impressed. With news of the major Spitfire and Hurricane commitment, Goering ordered it into production at the Regensburg factory in Bavaria in November 1936.

  It was also going to have one significant advantage over its British rivals. The 109 was going to war. By February 1937 the first models were delivered to the front line in Spain to help prop up Franco’s Nationalist government.

  As the Germans trialled their aircraft in combat, the British were using dried split peas to improve performance.