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"First, we must, without another day's delay, begin to make ourselves at least the strongest airpower in the European world. By this means we shall recover to a very large extent the safety which we formerly enjoyed through our navy, and through our being an island. By this means we shall free ourselves from the dangers of being blackmailed against our will either to surrender...

"May God protect us all."

R. J. MITCHELL 

MAY 11, 1936 

PORTSMOUTH, ENGLAND 

AFTERNOON

R.J. Mitchell is dying.

A year and a half has passed since Winston Churchill's "Causes of War" speech. The aircraft designer sits alone in his Rolls-Royce with the butter-yellow door panels, parked to one side of Eastleigh Aerodrome's grass runway. Sandy blond hair combed straight back, tweed coat, and knotted tie, colostomy bag anchored to left hip. Mitchell is forty, too young to leave behind a wife and a sixteen-year-old son but accomplished enough to have been awarded one of Britain's top honors by King George V—and this fancy car from the world-famous auto manufacturer.[*1]

Mitchell draws on his pipe. Never takes his eyes off a fighter prototype purring over the quilted green Hampshire countryside. The aircraft banks to land. Today's test pilot steers toward the airstrip in a wide arc rather than approaching the runway directly. If anyone else was sitting in the Rolls and cared to ask, Mitchell would explain why the two-bladed propeller and the 900-horsepower V-12 Merlin engine in the nose, the fuel tank behind the Merlin but in front of the cockpit, and the tail-dragger landing gear make Sussex-born Jeffrey Quill's roundabout pattern necessary.

The answer, Mitchell would point out, is simple—and R.J. is a huge believer in the power of a simple explanation: Quill will be flying blind once the nose tilts upward in the last seconds before touchdown. The flier will be able to look out the canopy to the right and left, but the long forward section of the fuselage will block his frontal view. The approach is reconnaissance, a last full view of the runway to ensure there are no obstacles or other chances for ground collision.

Were he not alone, R. J. Mitchell might also talk at length about the concentric square tubing of the new plane's wing spars, the monocoque aluminum skin, the four Browning machine guns inside each wing, and the eighty thousand rivets holding it all together. And the engineer knows by heart precise reasons why the revolutionary elliptical wing means a pronounced advantage in aerial combat—should the rumored war in Europe ever take place.

But right now it is enough for a solitary Reginald Joseph "Reg" Mitchell to set details aside and simply watch fuselage number K5054 fly. A pilot himself, he scrutinizes this final approach. Mitchell sees it all. The engineer has conceived twenty-four aircraft—everything from flying boats to bombers—since assuming the role of chief engineer at Supermarine Aviation Works in 1920.

This is his first fighter.

And what a warrior she is, arguably the most nimble aircraft to ever take flight. A fighter aircraft's primary role is to attack other planes, and K5054 appears quite prepared to do just that. But R. J. Mitchell knows she is still a far cry from the airborne killing machine he promised Britain's Air Ministry. There is still much work to do.

His pilots disagree.

"Don't change a thing," proclaimed Supermarine's lead test pilot, thirty-one-year-old Mutt Summers, upon completing the maiden flight. High praise coming from a salty career flier who earned his nickname by urinating on the rear wheel before climbing into a cockpit.

That date was March 6, two months ago, back when the new plane was supposed to be a secret. Sharp-eyed Portsmouth residents, so used to witnessing Mitchell's revolutionary designs take flight, made a fuss about the unique appearance. K5054 looks different from anything the locals have ever seen.

And this new plane is fast. 

Very fast.

For all the many times the people of Portsmouth have craned their necks upward as the loud and lonely thrum of an aircraft engine pierced the calm of a blue-sky day, this fighter is the closest thing to a speeding bullet they have ever seen.

Supermarine has yet to publicly acknowledge the prototype, but as the date for mass production draws near, cryptic advertisements in London newspapers seek men qualified as "bench fitters, sheet metal workers, panel beaters, toolmakers, and assemblers, used to light and actual engineering. Applicants must be able to work to drawings."[*2]

The mystery will be revealed soon enough. Next month's Hendon Air Show in North London will be a coming-out party for K5054. British dailies will write of Mitchell's design: "the abolition of everything which could even slightly retard its speed through the air has been carried to a fine art. The fuselage is slim, the wings are cantilever, and there are no bracing wires at all. The outer covering of the wings as well as fuselage is of metal, and the paint which covers the metal is highly polished, for even a rough surface will produce what is known as skin friction and will reduce the speed."