Spitfire Mk1 to Mk24 | How Spitfires kept getting better

Thanks for watching! As always, let us know what aircraft you want to hear about next. Later this month, Liam Shaw will be showing you inside the cockpit of the Mk 1 Spitfire, N3200 so stay tuned for that!

I was with my mum in a café a few years ago. We heard Spitfires overhead practicing for a show. She just burst into tears remembering the sound and sights of Spitfires over London and recalling mothers running for their lives with children to the shelters. Terrible times.

As a former member of the Canadian military, it did my heart good to see those fine Canadian aviators rerpresented! I spoke to a dear old chap years ago in a nursing home and he told me how he flew Lancasters and hisTWO brothers who flew Spitfires! Canadians for the most part look at Britain's war efforts as ours as well. We were there from the start...we stayed to the end. Wonderful video.

Growing up in the 70's, I could never get enough pictures or videos of Spitfires & other plans of WWII. So glad all of these things are so easily available on the internet today.

My great grandfather was a spitfire pilot in the RCAF from 1943-45. I have many great photos he had taken of him and his kite as he called it.

Many FW190 pilots reported after the war that they were shocked to see their sudden dominance over the Spitfire 5s in dogfights suddenly disappear. They looked so similar and in the intensity of a twirling airbattle were thought to have been Spitfire 5s flown by the best RAF pilots. A few weeks after the first encounters with the '9 they realised they were up against an aircraft that could match them for speed and manoeverability once again. This innovative model relects great credit on Joe Smith and the wonderful engineers and designers at Supermarine who worked tirelessly to keep the Spitfire competitive and their pilots alive.

Sometimes in history something is just so perfect both in looks and performance that it takes your breath away. The Spitfire is such a thing. The RR engine was also a thing of beauty to those interested in mechanics.

I used to work at a factory in Sheffield that forged & machined all of the crankshafts for the Merlin, Hurricane .Lancaster Bomber, Wellington Bomber . I worked in the forge design office as a young apprentice and I went into the basement of the building and rolled up in the corner was the forging drawings for the dies used to stamp out the parts. It was an amazing experience as a young lad. Our training officer was an ex WW2 fighter pilot , his life experiences made him a real character. The hammer forge has gone now but the drawings for the forging hammers are still there. The name of the company was Ambrose Shardlow on grangemill lane , Sheffield. Happy times as a young apprentice , the filing cabinets in the drawing office had the machined component drawings that were used to design the forgings.

One of the high points of my trip home to the UK, the land of my birth, was to spend a day in Duxford. I was born into an air force family and this visit was highly emotional for me. That said, what I want to share is an experience whilst going through the museum. I heard a Merlin engine and thought, "How appropriate, sound effects in the museum". As I left the building I saw one of the Spitties just touching down. Sound effects? Hah! This was the real deal. That day has become a once in a lifetime experience for me.

Still one of the prettiest aircraft ever made. The melodious Merlin sound is still ear-candy today. The more raspy sounding Griffon still sounds good. Lucky to have seen and heard eight spitfires (4 Merlin’s and 4 Griffons) doing a tail chase at Flying Legends in 2005, the last Legends appearance of the late great Ray Hanna in MH 434. Duxford is by far my favourite place in England. Must get back there soon. Cheers from Adelaide, South Australia.

My favorite is the Spitfire with the Griffon engine. The late-model Spitfire has a sophisticated design, and I personally think it's the coolest water-cooled fighter during World War II. Impressions from Japanese🇯🇵♡🇬🇧

Enjoyed the presentation on the Spitfire exhibit at the Imperial War Museum (Duxford) and plan to visit the museum on my next trip to England. Being of Polish descent, I noticed the Kościuszko Squadron 303 logo on the Mark 5 BM 597 and the Polish Air Force checkerboard on the Mark 9 in the videos. I sincerely appreciate the recognition given to those pilots by the RAF and the Imperial War Museum. Dziękuje i Bóg zapłac!

I live not far from Derby, home of Rolls-Royce. Their Spitfire often flies over our house. What a sound! Such a beautiful plane.

WHile on business in the UK, I had the opportunity to visit Duxford. What a great place! They have a superb collection of aircraft, tanks and other items. But I have to say that the thing that impressed me the most was a wall of glass panels that lined the walkway leading up to the U.S. Air Museum. Etched into these panels were thousands of aircraft that were flown by Americans. There were BN-17's, B-24's, B-25's and on and on. Each airplane etched into this glass wall represented an aircraft lost in combat. It's nice to know that the British people are still thankful for the sacrifices made by American aircrews. Thanks for remembering!

Duxford is one of the worlds greatest aviation museums and it so good to see so many marks of Spitfires, both flying and static in one place. A great film by Graham who also gave a superb talk on the Lancaster which I attended a year or two ago.

The Spitfire was named after the daughter of chairman of Supermarine. Mitchell didn't like the "Spit" being named after this girl but accepted it. As it turned out, this was the perfect name for this fighter. The RAF was flying them in Hong Kong in the late 40's and early 50's, they'd go up and put on tremendous displays of dog fights, almost every day. There was very little commercial air traffic back then. Several of them were WW2 aces, it was really exciting to see two of them square off against 5 or 6 young pilots and go thru their moves.

Best plane ever built, i never get tired of the sight and sound of that beautiful aircraft. I live in Southampton and proud to say i had 2 family members, my great nan and great aunt who helped to build them at the supermarine factory in weston. I sadly never got the chance of meeting them as they died a good few years before i was born. RJ Mitchel lived in portswood a couple of miles away from where i live.

It’s great to see Joe Smith getting a mention when discussing the Spitfire, many videos about this great aircraft only ever mention that it was originally designed by R.J. Mitchell and leave it at that.

I remember Spits like VN 485 flying in HK, there wasn't much air traffic at Kai Tak in 1949, airlines like BOAC, PanAM, TWA, AirFrance and PAL had only a few flights per week and HK was no where near as densely packed as it became after 1952, the population was less than 140,000. There were a few WW2 aces who'd go up and practice dogfights with the younger pilots almost every day. It was better than any formal show, the only thing missing was live fire. A couple of the old boys would square off against 6 or 8 young guys and totally wax them. The younger guys got better for it which made for an even better show over time. It was the closest thing to live combat you could see anywhere.

Going back to the Mk 1, Getting in the neighborhood of 1,300hp out of an engine back in 1940 was absolutely phenomenal. Britain needed the Rolls Royce Merlin for aircraft so badly that the engine wasn't available for use in tanks(as the R.R. Meteor) until the tail end of the war in 1945 as used in the Cruiser Comet tank. The elliptical wings of the Spitfires, the sleek fuselage, and the bubble canopy are absolutely beautiful-if I may be so bold as to say that a weapon meant for killing could be deemed as such... anyone with the heart of an engineer can understand.