Nichol - Spitfire: a very British love story

For Sophie

This book is dedicated to all those men and women who designed, built, serviced, flew and loved the Spitfire

J UNE 2016

Mornings were a struggle for Ken Farlow; the cocktail of drugs softened but did not kill his pain. But the Yorkshireman was made of sterner stuff and a night of broken sleep wasnt going to stop him relishing every last detail of the sight that he had travelled so far to enjoy. He had lost many good friends to a different battle many years before and he knew life was precious. The cancer had been discovered a few months earlier and he had given his daughter a wish list of things he wanted to achieve before the end. Crucially, he wanted to see his beloved Spitfire one last time.

The young Ken Farlow had left his Yorkshire roots seventy-six years before, in 1940. Life had been tough in the poverty-riven mining community hed been brought up in, where a mere apple core could be an item of trade. He had left school at fourteen because money was needed to sustain his family. Still, hed enjoyed a loving upbringing with his parents and sister Rene, in a house that had been full of fun and laughter. Until 1939, when the world around him changed forever and it became time to grow up and to give something back. His beloved country and very way of life were under threat and it would be up to teenagers like Ken to fight back. He joined the Royal Air Force as a mechanic and served around the world for the entire war.

It had been both the best, and the worst of times. He had dodged U-boats in the North Atlantic, and had lived in trenches in the baking heat of day then the freezing cold of the desert night. Fresh drinking water was rare because of the dead bodies, animal and human, the enemy dumped in the wells.

He had formed lifelong friendships forged in the teeth of conflict that only those who had been there could understand. He had been strafed by low-flying Messerschmitts and watched his mates die next to him, blown apart by Nazi bombs. He had seen their shattered bodies wrapped in canvas ready for burial. He had helped to rescue stricken aircrew from burning aircraft and recovered their mangled bodies from catastrophic crashes. Of course, like most of his generation, he didnt talk about the horrors hed witnessed or how they had affected him. Not until the end was near. Then the long-buried memories would easily bring a tear to his tired eyes. But he had loved his time in the RAF, working on the likes of Wellington bombers and Hurricane fighters. And, of course, the Spitfire.

Now, at ninety-five, he was reliving the happier days of the war that had been the making of him. He sat silently in his wheelchair, gazing through the chain-link fence at Gloucester airport. Here she was, the iconic Spitfire, sunlight glinting on her long, slender nose and distinctive wings. He marvelled once more at the sleek, elemental beauty of the machine which, perhaps more than any other, had secured our enduring freedom.

His ground-crew friends no longer swarmed around the airfield working on her, ensuring she was ready for battle. Her engine cowling was screwed shut, her cockpit canopy secured, her ammunition long ago removed and stowed elsewhere. Yet he could still hear the beat of her propeller blades, the throb of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine at her formidable heart. Some described it as Wagnerian; others, a roar of defiance.

He could feel her accelerating giddily down the runway, lifting off, the gentle clunk of the wheels tucking themselves away beneath her leaf-shaped wings as she reached again for the sky. It didnt take long to fall in love with the Spitfire. Pilots, mechanics, land girls, civvies they all fell under her spell. Ken certainly loved her. And once you were smitten, she never let you go. It was different for her enemies, of course. For them, she was beautiful but unobtainable. And deadly.

As Ken stared through the fence, he gave a sigh of happiness tinged with melancholy. It was also a sigh of satisfaction. He had done his bit; though he always denied hed been a hero, he was an honourable man whod led a good life and fought for his country.

Now he had fulfilled his final wish to see his beloved Spitfire one last time before he died. He was ninety-five; it wouldnt be long now. The tears and sadness turned to a smile.

Ken Farlow died in November 2016.

Ken Farlow

INTRODUCTION

What is it about the Spitfire? Why do people stop and gaze in awe at her sleek lines? Why do eyes turn skywards when the distinctive growl of her engine is heard? Why, over eighty years after she first flew, is the Spitfire regarded as the very symbol of Britishness; of tenacity, courage, dedication, faithfulness? Why is this particular aircraft loved so much?

To be honest, I hadnt thought about these questions until I had a chance meeting with an elderly Second World War Spitfire pilot. My background in the Royal Air Force had been on more modern aircraft: the Tornado Ground Attack and Air Defence jets. My post-RAF writing career had concentrated on the aircraft of Bomber Command during WWII the legendary Lancasters and Halifaxes, and the staggering bravery of the men who flew them. The Spitfire had never been on my radar. This all changed during a visit to the Imperial War Museum at RAF Duxford, where my eyes were opened to the legendary status of an aircraft that had first flown in March 1936.

Children and adults alike were experiencing the awe of the mighty warplanes close up. The mammoth B52 bomber, the menacing outline of the Stealth bomber, the hedgehog spikes of machine guns covering the B17 Flying Fortress, the power of an F15 fighter and that great British warplane, the Vulcan bomber. The visitors to RAF Duxford were gripped by the aviation giants, eager to absorb as much detail as possible in the limited time they had available.

As I stood on the airfield, away from the public areas on grass that had once seen scores of Spitfires take to the skies during WWII, I watched in amazement as an astonishing phenomenon unfolded. For a moment, the cough and splutter of an engine went unnoticed like the preliminary chords of an orchestra and people carried on their conversations. Then the stammer turned into a roar as soothing as anything philharmonic. Chatter stopped, cameras pointed away from the domineering aircraft even from the majestic Concorde and towards the sound humming from the runway. People began to pour out of the exhibition halls and move, some even running, struggling to release cameras from their bags, towards the barriers at the edge of the airfield. The aircraft they sought out was small, one of the smallest on the Duxford track. They had recognised the distinctive notes of a Merlin engine and, yet to actually see the aircraft itself, they still knew what was to come. A few heads nodded in recognition; enthusiasts squinted, trying to identify the variant. Parents pointed and whispered to children: Spitfire .

The hum turned to the glorious crescendo of the Merlin engine at full power as the fighter streaked down the grass runway mere yards away from the admiring crowd. In seconds its curved, leaflike wings were outlined above as the wheels tucked neatly into its lean belly. Cameras tracked skywards. It was a wonderful treat to see a Spitfire in flight. Something to show those back home. As the fighter disappeared into the Cambridgeshire sky, the visitors turned back to the other displays with broad grins, happy that they had seen a legend, no, the legend, take to the air. Some had frowned at a slight deviation in the Spitfires usual elegance. A second canopy sat behind the first, for this was one of the few two-seat versions which carried passengers. What they couldnt have known the reason I was there, the reason this book came about was that a ninety-year-old veteran, who had not flown a Spitfire for nearly seventy years, sat in the rear cockpit, grinning like a schoolboy.