A succinct summary of R. J. Mitchell's airplane designs and their development. He was an engineer at Supermarine which specialized in marine aviation. Phlegmatic and imaginative, his float plane design won the Schneider Trophy in the mid-1930s, achieving a top speed of slightly more than 400 miles per hours -- with floats attached. It's difficult to overemphasize how popular aviation was during the revolutionary 30s. Pilots were heroes. Trophies were their garlands. The world followed each new achievement in the press.
Mitchell had less success with the British government, which had a tendency to stick with traditional biplane designs but, while Hitler was building up a formidable fleet of Me-109s, the country came to its senses and funded Mitchell's experiments.
He was in a hurry, not merely because of Germany's build up but because he'd been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. The narration is slanted here. Poor Chamberlain is called "an appeaser" (although he had the backing of most of Britain, with the exception of dissidents like Churchill.) "Peace at any price," states the narration, although no one ever made a statement like that. Chamberlain's wistful hope was "peace in our time." The Hawker Hurricane and Mitchell's Spitfire were produced at about the same time. More Hurricanes were produced but they were slower and less maneuverable, although heavily armed with eight rifle-caliber machine guns. But the Spitfire excelled in most respects, a match for the 109. In the battle of Britain, the Hurricane were instructed to attack the slower bombers while the Spitfires engaged the German fighters. The narration skips what was the airplanes chief weakness in battle, its inability to dive because the gravity feed of the Merline engines wouldn't provide fuel. The 109 had no such problem.
The pilots loved it because of its easy handling and quick responses. One American pilot, used to the mammoth P-47, expressed irritation because the airplane never seemed to want to dive, but rather to continue gliding smoothly along. It was also a thing of beauty, perhaps the most graceful airplane to emerge from the war.
The Spitfire had the advantage of being the kind of design that could be upgraded, and it was improved throughout the war and put to suitable use.
R. J. Mitchell didn't live to see the contribution to victory that his machine would make. He died of cancer before England was in the war.