The Spitfire

by Ivan Rendall

Designed to be the best fighter in the world the creators of the Spitfire married science, technology and art to create both 'a thing of beauty' and a deadly weapon that changed the course of the war. 'You don't just strap yourself in, you buckle the Spitfire on, like girding on armour...' Squadron Leader William Duncan Smith The Spitfire is part of popular culture and from the Battle of Britain to the present day it has remained a national celebrity. As a focus of appeals, for scrap aluminium - 'turn your saucepans into Spitfires' - for the 'Spitfire Fund' and 'Wings for Victory Week' the British people had a stake in the Spitfire. Working People contributed through their companies to present Spitfires to the RAF in return for letters from the pilots. After the war, no victory flypast was complete without a Spitfire, and today no air show is over until the roar of the Merlin engine has been heard overhead. This book, with its wealth of unusual contemporary imagery, modern photography, first-person reminiscence and high production standards is the last word on a subject of enduring appeal.

Genres: Military History, Military Fiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Magpie6493 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Though this book has great pictures the text is... well a bit dry. Where this book looses a lot of points was it's decision to include some very blatant Zionist Israeli propaganda and gloss over even mentioning the Nakba at all when discussing the beginnings of Israel and instead portray it as poor little Israel just defending itself which I will not get into the exact reasons as to why is highly offensive esspecially in the light of recent Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the west bank.

I am upset and disappointed the author decided to go that direction when he very reasonably should have known and done better.

If you are looking to read about spitfire I would highly suggest going elsewhere as this book chose in a very comoaritvley small amount of text to vo opt something into the spitfire that is.... at minimum extremely uncomfortable.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a beautiful coffetable book I received fro my birthday. I grabbed it to fill in gaps in reading time between school reading assignments and was quite surprised.

I expected lots of pretty plane porn and boilerplate discussions of the Battle of Britain and maybe some pre-war history, schematics, and later operational history. But this is not a history book (eventhough I have shelved it as such). This is much more of an art-theory book. When the subtitle says "Icon of a Nation" that is really what they are talking about - the role that the Spitfire holds in the culture and subconscience of the British nation. yes, the book is arranged mostly chronologically, and it does cover all the points above that I expected it to, but the lens the author sees this history through is one of design and culture. The famous ellipital wing of the Spitfire is lauded for it's instant recognition and connection to the streamlined shapes of Art Deco architecture. There is no discussion of the benefits of of an ellipse vs. a squared-off wing (though the book does show Spitfires with clipped wings - a successful attempt to reduce the planes turning radius further to out maneuver the Fw 190).

Reading the paragraph above, a WWII historical buff (like myself) might be turned-off from this book, dismissing it as artistic fluff. It is not. The design, improvement, financing, and manufacture of the Spitfire (as well as the Schneider Cup racers that pre-dated it) is covered in detail. But this is all presented in a way that looks at how those processes shaped the plane and the society around it. In this way, the Spitfire is presented less as another weapon of war, and more as a mythological symbol of the country - a pulp trope of Britain - a modern-day Excalibur.

[Martin Simonsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I is a good and quite thorough and well illustrated story of a very important and fascinating aircraft.