Spitfire at 90

It was airborne for just eight minutes – but those eight minutes changed the course of World War II. With the chief test pilot of the Vickers aviation company, Captain Joseph ‘Mutt’ Summers, at the controls, the Supermarine Spitfire prototype K5054 – fitted with a fine-pitch propeller for additional take-off power – soared into the skies over Southampton’s Eastleigh Aerodrome for its maiden test flight. The aircraft’s baptism came just four months after the equivalent flight of the Hawker Hurricane. Together, the two single-seat fighters would play a decisive role in the Battle of Britain, and ensure Winston Churchill’s boast that the UK would ‘never surrender’ had bite a