Just Finished Reading: The Spitfire Story – Told by Those Who Designed, Maintained and Flew the Iconic Plane by Jacky Hyams (FP: 2017) [243pp] 

It is understandable that the RAF pilots who flew the iconic Spitfire in the Battle of Britain and beyond get the lion's share of the attention. But they could never have achieved their deserved reputation without so many others. In this slim but interesting book the author addresses that oversight by including the stories of those who designed, built, delivered, maintained, armed and repaired the fighter to ensure it flew when it needed to and kept on flying when it had to. 

From the original test pilots who were most impressed with the original design to the armourers who struggled to fit early cannon ‘upgrades’ that failed to operate as advertised because of lack of testing and an accelerated development schedule, there are many voices here to give the reader a more rounded picture of the aircraft and its operations. The fighter itself, even in action over the English countryside, was only the tip of a very long and complex spear. A significant number of cogs in this machine were, as seen in previous books, were women including transport pilots, factory workers, radar operators, anti-aircraft gunners, plotters at Sector stations, nurses, and much else besides. No doubt, if such a thing had ever been allowed or required, a goodly few would have made excellent combat fighter pilots too. 

The Spitfire airframe experienced major changes throughout the war adding armament, upgraded engines, and various design improvements. All of this had to be designed, manufactured, tested and evaluated in combat – then changed, approved or discarded as required. All of this required a whole host of experts in their particular fields – again given voice here. 

Overall, this was an interesting if a rather shallow ‘broad brush’ affair. It did cover a wide canvas, rather inevitably, but it suffered by being a bit too diffused at times. Still, it’s certainly worth a read to fill in gaps in the aircrafts story that are too often overlooked by other writers. Reasonable. 

This is the last of my ‘deep’ dives for now. I have some more scheduled for later in the year. I hope you enjoyed these first attempts and I’ll see if I can go deeper with other topics whenever possible.