Spitfire: A Very British Love Story

by John Nichol

Joy left her job at a bank and entered the rigorous three-month training programme flying numerous aircraft. Six months later she was in a Spitfire. ‘I went to the corner of the airfield and there was my first Spitfire. Oh, it was so powerful. After everything else you’d done before, this was like someone kicking you up the backside. ‘It was so light, compact and incredibly easy to manoeuvre. You almost had to breathe on the controls and they moved.’ Yvonne agreed. ‘Flying the Spitfire was a kind of freedom you never got any other way. More than anything, with the Spit it was as if you had wings sewn on your back. It was so manoeuvrable. ‘Once, on a cloudy rainy day, I ran my right wing through a rain cloud: rain on the right wing, on the left there was sunshine. You could do almost anything with those planes.’