After 70 years, the Spitfire still stirs the heart

[Steel God]

I spent a day at Duxford in the 1990s. No air show such as this article describes, and in some ways that is an advantage, as the sparsely populated museum is for me a treat as I can squint my eyes and better imagine the setting as another time and place.

For Americans the image of "fighter planes" from WWII varies more than it does for the British. Perhaps because we have no event like the Battle of Britain to link our memories too and are forced to scatter them across a wider period of time, blurring the lines some what. But I confess to having always been in awe of the Battle of Britain as a topic, and having read a great deal about it, so for me the reflex isn't easily to think of the Spitfire because I am aware that the leading contributor was the Hurricane. Still, for me, it's not even the Hurricane I think of first. When the battle of Britain is mentioned to me, my first thought always is of aircraft on alert with pilots in the cockpits. The aircraft are actually indistinct to me, it's the worn faces of the pilots that stand out to me. British yes, but Canadian, Polish, American, Commonwealth and others too. British production or aircraft during the battle was surprisingly resilient. The threat was always to "the Few", and the decision point was always whether "the Few" would be enough, or hold out under the strain.

The Spitfire is a great aircraft, and I honor it as such, but God Bless the memory of the RAF Pilots, or all nations, who did battle in the skies in the Summer of 1940. Where do such men grow? It seems we have lost the recipe.