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Even when not in flight, the Guardian will add, "the machine as it stood on the ground showed speed in every line."

R. J. Mitchell revels in the praise. The broad-shouldered engineer was an athlete before cancer. Cricket and tennis are no longer part of his life, but he still nurses a deep competitive streak. Mitchell keeps a close eye on rival manufacturer Hawker Aircraft and designer Sydney Camm—at forty-two, two years R.J.'s senior but still undeniably a young man with the same visionary mindset. Hawker is currently working on its own new fighter named the Hurricane.

But Mitchell enjoys being one step ahead. Though similar in appearance to K5054, Camm's design is slower, a throwback to a previous era when cockpits were open to the wind and rain; when landing gear was fixed into position, not folding neatly into the undercarriage after takeoff; when wings were stacked one on top of the other, wrapped in canvas, braced with wires and struts. Indeed, the wood-framed Hurricane is based on a biplane known as the Fury. Five years into its military service, Fury is already obsolete.

R. J. Mitchell has the design edge over Hawker for now, but only as long as he continues making K5054 better. There are nuances to perfect before transitioning from prototype to mass production: the piston-driven engine tends to stall in a steep dive, the fuel tank's forward position represents a fire risk to the pilot, 20mm cannon might be a better choice than .50-caliber guns, and so on. Mitchell will find his answer by questioning test pilot Quill about today's performance after he lands, then retreating into his office at Supermarine. His personal secretary Vera Cross will halt all visitors and hold all calls until the designer emerges with a solution. "His mood is not right," Miss Cross will warn. "Better leave it until later."

Yet design changes trouble Mitchell far less than the name his corporate bosses are giving the new creation.

Mitchell prefers the "Shrew."

Shrews are mammalian killing machines, some of the most voracious predators on earth.

No matter. Supermarine's sobriquet is infinitely more evocative: 

"Spitfire."

It's what Supermarine chairman Sir Robert McLean calls his daughter Ann.[*3]

Reg Mitchell loathes the name.

*  *  *

Salt breeze blows in from the solent. Sky robin's-egg blue. The air inside Mitchell's Rolls is a cloying blend of pipe tobacco and stoma, humming with the full-throated growl of K5054's approaching Merlin.[*4]

Mitchell sucks on his pipe. The diagnosis was a shock. There is no known correlation between smoking and cancer. What began as a single rogue cell became many, growing into tumors, multiplying as the disease traveled through bloodstream and lymph nodes to invade internal organs.

Surgery seems to have solved the problem. Doctors tell Mitchell there is a good chance his sickness will not return if he is cancer-free a year from August.

That's a long way off. So the designer focuses on the Spitfire instead of worst-case scenarios. Britain's need for a fighter that can dive, climb, and turn with the very best in the world is immediate. For just like the destruction visited upon R. J. Mitchell's body, a cancer has also made its presence known on the European continent. What began with Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany has resulted in that nation's military and societal overhaul. The country once crushed by World War I reparations has rearmed—secretly, at first, then openly and defiantly. Hitler commands one of the most powerful military forces in the world—and is bent on putting that juggernaut to use.

Aerial warfare will play a defining role.

On March 16, 1935, in defiance of strictures against German airpower that had been in place since the end of the Great War, Hitler militarized the nation's aircraft industry.

The Nazi Luftwaffe—"air weapon"—was not so much born as it came out of hiding. Pilots, manufacturers, and designers assumed a wartime footing. Even as Reg Mitchell studies K5054's flight right now, German designers like Willy Messerschmitt and Kurt Tank are fine-tuning fighter aircraft of their own. Their expectations for the Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf 190 are no less demanding than Mitchell's.

And it's not just fighters. Britain and Germany are also racing to produce long-range bombers.

There is a vast difference between these two types of aircraft: it can be argued that fighters are defensive in nature, a deterrent, a protector.

Bombers don't protect anything.

Bombers drop fire and brimstone from the heavens, raining instant destruction on a horrific scale.