Supermarine Spitfire: The iconic aircraft of World War II turns 85

It is considered and not unjustly one of the most emblematic aircraft of all time. He was, after all, one of its great protagonists World War II: from Western Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Soviet Union, to the Far East and the South Pacific, and his name is inextricably linked to the Allied victory over Nazism.

It was the only war aircraft maintained in production before, during and after the war. A total of 20,341 Spitfires were built, with over twenty different versions, not including off-the-shelf modifications. It was loved more than any other fighter jet by the pilots who flew it to operations for its reliability as the ultimate deterrent chase, but also its rough design lines with its elliptical wings.

“The Spitfire is like a purebred (racehorse), light, fast, agile and above all, beautiful”, has previously stressed in APE-MPE the wingman Konstantinos Hatzilakos, one of the last living veteran pilots of the Middle East, who landed with such an aircraft in Athens liberated by the Nazis in November 1944.

March 5 marks the 85th anniversary of the first test flight of the prototype Spitfire K5054 from Hampshire in the south-east of England, an area where the fiercest air battles between the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe took place during the Battle of England in the summer of 1940. Hitler wanted to gain air supremacy over Britain in order to launch an invasion operation from the sea.

A legend is born…

The Spitfire “intellectual child” of the genius British aeronaut Reginald J. Mitchell, Supermarine’s chief designer has been racing since the company built high-speed racing seaplanes in the 1930s. With such a seaplane designed by Mitchell, the British had won in 1931, for the second year in a row. Snyder Trophy “the international air games of the time. Soon this seaplane would break the world speed record by flying at 651 km / h.

When on March 5, 1936, Supermarine test pilot Matt Summers, ready to take off, closed the cover of the cockpit of the prototype Spitfire type 300, which had a double-leaf wooden propeller and a Rolls-Royce Merlin 750 hp engine, he could not imagine that with this historic flight he would be essentially the first of the “Ligos”, that is, of the pilots who four years later defended the United Kingdom with such aircraft from the Luftwaffe raids and prevented the German invasion.

“Do not touch anything,” he seems to have told engineers when he landed 15 minutes later. According to testimonies on this maiden flight, the landing gear had not been retrieved for fear of some unforeseen engagement. After all, it was one of the first pursuers with a retractable landing gear.

The original design spoke of only four machine guns, instead of the eight that were later equipped, simply because there was a shortage of machine guns shortly before World War II. But the insistence of a Fred Hill RAF officer-consultant, who with Hazel’s 13-year-old daughter, who was a mathematical genius, proved on the basis of complex algorithms that the new super-chaser had to be equipped with eight machine guns capable of firing at least 1000 bullets per minute if they wanted to have a fighter jet superior to the fighters of the time.

In September 1937, the K5054 was designed to carry eight 0.303-inch Brauning machine guns and was ready for industrial production. This first type was the “Spitfire Mark I”. The first order from the Ministry of Aviation spoke of 310 aircraft. The RAF 19th Prosecution Squadron was the first to be equipped with a “Mark I”.

Unfortunately, the designer of Spitfire, Reginald J. Mitchell did not have time to see his achievement in industrial production, nor to dominate the ethers, having died of cancer at the age of 42 in the summer of 1937. Ironically, the K5054 crashed at 4 p.m. September 1939, killing his pilot, just one day after Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, having already accomplished its intended purpose: An ideal plane to defend the British Isles from an attack from the mainland Europe.

From the 20th to the 21st century

Of the more than 20,000 Spitfires built for the war from 1938 to 1948, only 240 survive today, of which about 60 are in flight condition. One of them is the Greek Spitfire MJ755, which was recently rebuilt in Bigin Hill, Great Britain on behalf of the Air Force, and is expected to return to Greece at the end of quarantine, in order to participate in its flights on historical anniversaries and other events. .

There are another 70, which adorn museums and private collections around the world as static exhibits, while another 110 are stored awaiting reconstruction.

Locating, retrieving and rebuilding a Spitfire is often a difficult task and quite expensive. One such example is the Spitfire P9374, the “Mk1” type, which was retrieved in the 1980s from Calais beach, where it was buried for forty years after the Battle of Dunkirk, although the plane’s identity was initially a mystery. identified.

The pilot of the RAF sub-squadron, Peter Kasenovo, had survived the crash, was captured by the Nazis, but unfortunately died shortly before his plane was retrieved, and to the surprise of all the machine guns of the aircraft could still operate.

The plane, after being completely rebuilt in flight mode, was again found in the skies over the historic Daxford Airport in Cambridgeshire in 2011, seventy-one years after it crashed on the sandy shores of Calais.