Spitfires and the Schneider Trophy: Alasdair Cross (1925)
Alasdair Cross, author of The Spitfire Kids
This week marks the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Britain. In that perilous moment of the Second World War, with the Nazi forces gathered just across the English Channel, the British people put their faith in the pilots of the RAF and that most captivating of aeroplanes: the Spitfire.
The Spitfire is widely known as a masterpiece of British engineering. It could fly at speeds of around 400mph and it had enormous dexterity, making it a formidable foe in a dogfight. But where did these qualities come from? In today’s episode the writer and radio producer Alasdair Cross takes us back to the year 1925 to show us the genesis of this fabled aeroplane.
*** [About our format] ***
It did not take long for the British public to fall for the Spitfire. Soon after the war’s beginning the aeroplane was being hyped as a fast, beautiful and deadly part of the British military arsenal. Against the Luftwaffe’s brute force stood the guile, grace and power of the Spitfire.
Nowhere can this better be seen than in the 1942 motion picture, The First of the Few. Starring the popular actor Leslie Howard, the actions opens with a series of dog fights over the south coast of England. On the ground a group of pilots gaze up at the planes above. ‘I can’t see a Spit in the air without getting a kick out of it,’ says one. Another remarks that an engineer ‘invented the whole thing at two hours at a golf club.’ A third, the squadron leader, dismisses this. ‘A whole host of things had to happen before that miracle came to life,’ he says.
R.J. Mitchell (1895-1937), part of a new generation of aeronauts and the designer of the Spitfire (WikiCommons)
Indeed the history of the Spitfire’s genesis is almost as dramatic as its exploits in the summer of 1940. To trace its origins we have to leave the Second World War behind and travel back to the Roaring Twenties, a time of progress and exuberance when a new generation of aviators were testing their skills in the skies.
As today’s guest, Alasdair Cross, explains in his book The Spitfire Kids, the aviators of the twenties were a like the tech pioneers of today. Their lives were fast and glamorous and they used the skills of modern engineering to delight vast and adoring crowds.
The Schneider Trophy was one event that drew particular attention. Each year Britain, America, Italy and France would compete in an aerial time trial to win the trophy. While the initial aim was to encourage the development of air boat technology, the trophy developed into a race for pure speed.
In the early 1920s Italy and the United States had established themselves as strong entrants in the competition. But in 1925 the British entry took everyone by surprise. It was the creation of a talented young designer from the Supermarine factory in Southampton, a man named R.J. Mitchell. Mitchell’s design did away with the familiar by-plane form that had been so familiar ever since the Great War.
Instead, as Cross writes, ‘the result looked like nothing else built before. A thin, streamlined fuselage and an enormous two-blade propeller sat delicately on top of a huge pair of floats. The lines were clear and elegant. There were no wires, no flapping sheets of canvas, no visible pipes or pistons. There was nothing here that connected this plane to the first age of powered aviation.’
This 1925 entry into the Schneider Trophy was the very first glimpse the world would get of the design that would evolve into the Spitfire.
In one year and three telling scenes, Cross guides us through this aeronautical history. In 1925 we see the stirrings of nationalism and the beginning of the Age of the Dictators with the ascent of Benito Mussolini in Italy. We meet the inspired designer R.J. Mitchell at a Supermarine launch in Southampton. Finally we head to Baltimore in the United States, to see the Supermarine S4 compete for the very first time.
***
Click here to order Alisdair Cross’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
*** Listen to the podcast ***
Show notes
Scene One: 3 January 1925. Chamber of Deputies in Rome. Mussolini makes a speech which effectively makes him dictator of Italy. So begins the new age of the dictators, but also a time of glamour and speed.
Scene Two: 10 March, 1925. Supermarine factory, Southampton. Henri Biard flies the Southampton flying boat for the first time. This is the aircraft that establishes the reputation of RJ Mitchell and ensures the longevity and prosperity of the Supermarine company.
Scene Three: 23 October, 1925. Baltimore. This is the location for the 1925 Schneider Trophy race. Mitchell’s revolutionary S4- the precursor of the Spitfire crashes. Mitchell has stretched too far but will learn an enormous amount from the experience.
Memento: Henri Biard’s flying suit
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Alasdair Cross
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
Or on Facebook
See where 1925 fits on our Timeline
About Alasdair Cross
Alasdair Cross is a successful radio and TV producer with the BBC. Brought up in the Orkney Islands, an annual summer treat was Britain’s smallest air show, once memorably visited by a powder pink Spitfire. He has worked on BBC’s Coast and Countryfile and his radio series include BBC Radio Four’s Terror Through Time with Fergal Keane and Neil Oliver’s Iron Curtain as well as the BBC World Service podcast Spitfire: The People’s Plane.
Map showing the course of the Schneider Trophy in 1925
Background image: Library of Congress
Watch The First of the Few (1942)
The evolution of the Spitfire (1925 - 1940s)
Britain’s New Spitfire (Wiki Commons)
Listen on YouTube
Complementary episodes
D'Annunzio, Lenin and Hitler: Charles Emmerson (1920)
In this panoramic episode of Travels Through Time, the historian Charles Emmerson guides us from Italy to Moscow to and the boisterous beer halls of Munich. He shows us a world of volatile post-war politics and three unforgettable characters: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Vladimir Lenin and Adolf Hitler
Behind Enemy Lines: Damien Lewis (1944)
On 6 June 1944, the allied armies successfully executed Operation Overlord: the seaborne invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. We are familiar with the stories of the landing beaches in Normandy. We know less about the covert series of special forces operations that happened in the crucial weeks […]
The Space Age: Stuart Clark (1957)
In October 1957 people around the world listened to a sound that was unlike any other they had ever heard before. It was a simple beep-beep-beep emitted by the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 and to many its steady, monotonous beat was more beautiful than the music of Mozart.
