From Nighthawk to Spitfire: the Aircraft of R J Mitchell

✍ Scribed by John K. Shelton

• Book ID: 100231587
• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1 MB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0750965509

✦ Synopsis

<div>R J Mitchell was virtually self-taught; surprisingly, almost all his other 24 aircraft were slow-flying seaplanes. How a lad from the land-locked Midlands, apprenticed to a locomotive works, came to be responsible for the Spitfire is a great tale in itself. This detailed book tells us how Mitchell learned his trade - from 1916, contributing to the production of the cumbersome Nighthawk, designed to combat the German Zepplin threat, and gradually coming to produce record-breaking racing floatplanes which in 1931 won outright the prestigious international Schneider Trophy. Michell was thus well placed to design a high speed aircraft when war began to threaten, but Dr Shelton reveals the production of the famous fighter was by no means a certainty and how, indeed, its vital contribution to winning the Battle of Britain was 'a very close run thing'.</div>