How to fly a Spitfire – Part one

Over 20,000 Spitfires would be built over a 10-year period, and it would stay in service at least somewhere in the world for fully 25 years, until 1961. Some 24 versions, or marks, were produced, not including the aircraft carrier compatible Seafire, with power outputs as low as 1030bhp (the original 1936 prototype) and as much as 2020bhp for later model aircraft powered by the 37-litre Griffon (another kind a vulture) engine.

It is most noted for its role in the Battle of Britain (although the Hawker Hurricane was a better gun platform and shot down more aircraft, though largely because it was slower than the Spitfire, so was sent after the lumbering bombers while the Spitfire attended to the enemy fighters), but was used by over 30 air forces the world over including those of Australia, Russia, India, South Africa, Egypt, Thailand, Syria and the United States.

It was also the recipient of one of the most unlikely apparent compliments in military history when Hermann Goering asked Luftwaffe general and air ace Adolf Galland if there was anything he wanted, to which Galland replied ‘a squadron of Spitfires’. The now famous quote has been taken out of context ever since and did not mean Galland preferred the British plane to its German equivalents (he still didn’t even after he’d flown a Spitfire after the war), but it stuck and Spitfire armchair generals have been dining out on it ever since.

My fondest hope for the aircraft I’d fly was that it would be a proper combat veteran. Plenty never even saw the enemy, or were never assembled or simply built after the war had ended. But not this one. It is a genuine warbird that both engaged the enemy and was engaged by it.

It is a Mk IX and was built in 1942 and registered BS410 (if you want to look it up today it’s registered as G-TCHI). It had a Merlin 61 engine, the first Merlin with a two-speed, twin-stage supercharger, capable of generating up to 1543bhp. It was delivered to 315 Squadron on 6 November 1942, a Polish squadron operating out of Northolt. It was flown on at least one sortie by Francis ‘Gabby’ Gabreski, a naturalised American of Polish birth who’d go on to become the United States’ most successful fighter ace in Europe during World War Two. On 10 April 1943, flown by Tadeusz Jankowski, it damaged a Focke-Wulf FW190, but on 13 May on another sortie it experienced ‘cooling issues’ (often a euphemism for a bullet in the radiator) while being flown in combat by Piotr Kuryllowicz who took the wise decision to get out while he could, and spent the rest of the war in the same Stalag Luft III from where The Great Escape was mounted. Relieved of its pilot, BS410 crashed into a French marsh, where it would stay for the next 62 years.

Its remains were exhumed in 2005 but it would be another 17 years before the aircraft, now fully restored and converted to two-seat specification, flew again. Today it is privately owned, but run by Spitfires.com at Goodwood, formerly known as RAF Westhampnett, a Spitfire base itself during the war and also the airfield from which Douglas Bader took his final wartime flight during which he was shot down and saw out the rest of the conflict as a prisoner of war.

Anyone who can afford it can just ring up Spitfires.com and book a flight. But it’s not quite as simple as making an EasyJet reservation, and quite rightly so too. This is not a passenger aircraft, but a military weapon designed for one purpose alone. The technology behind it is over 80 years old and when you’re on board, while you have a pilot ahead of you, they are in a separate cockpit and cannot be seen. Even with an in-helmet intercom, communications are not always easy and should something go wrong, there is nothing – literally nothing – your pilot can do to help you. You are on your own and have to know what to do.

So before you even leave home you have to watch 45 minutes of videos showing exactly what you should do in an emergency, whether that’s a forced landing or, heaven forbid, having to abandon ship. When you arrive you are quizzed on your knowledge and if you don’t know the basics, you don’t fly. Simple as. You then put on your flight suit and note that your right thigh is covered in the same instructions you received in the video. When you’re sitting in the aircraft you’re asked again what you’re going to do should things go badly wrong.

But far from putting the fear of God into me, I found it all rather reassuring. First, it demonstrated very clearly just what a professional outfit would be flying me today. Second, I came to understand that the chances of anything going seriously awry were incredibly remote and third, even if it did and in even the most unlikely scenarios, I would almost certainly have options which didn’t involve a short trip to a tall chimney. I think I was asked five times if I was still happy to fly. I was. But if you weren’t, they’d refund every penny no questions asked.

I still very nearly didn’t fly. Very, very nearly. It was run-for-cover raining when I arrived with a cloud base on the deck and flying out of the question. It was forecast to clear, but only because the clouds were going to be blown out of the way by 40mph winds, and the CAA have strict rules about what can fly in which kind of weather, and despite the fact that 85 years ago they’d have taken off in anything, we’re not at war and safety comes first. I was told flying wasn’t looking likely at all so was free to leave if I liked. Instead, because I had a photographer already booked, I thought I might as well go and take some shots of my long-term Range Rover. Which is why I was eight miles from Goodwood when I got the call: ‘we think we may have a window…’

I doubt I’ll ever drive the Rangie that fast on the public road again. I raced back to Goodwood, climbed into my flying suit, was shown where to find the sick bag and knife for cutting the harness should it not release by itself, signed a final indemnity and sat down for another briefing, this time with my pilot Charlie Huke. A man with decades of experience on more than 250 different flying machines, he exudes calm and confidence. He’s not there to read the riot act, but just to make sure I know what I’m letting myself in for. And then he asked the question I’ve been waiting all of my life to hear: ‘and would you like to fly yourself?’

Okay, almost all my life. I was seven when I was sent away to a boarding school in Eastbourne and if you walked out the back of the school, through a short strip of woodland and out the other side, you’d find yourself on the South Downs, where we’d play in vast divots made in the ground which were just called ‘the bomb holes’. I was quite a bit older before I realised they were so named because these were holes made by bombs, dropped from Heinkels and Dorniers fleeing the unwanted attention of the RAF in 1940.

But really it was the film, The Battle Of Britain, played seemingly on a constant loop at school because, if you knew exactly at which frame to stop the tape, it could be seen in one of the aerial shots. If you told that young lad that, half a century later, he’d actually fly a Spitfire, he’d have laughed in your face. Or wet himself. One of the two. Or both.

I had my lifejacket fitted, my helmet too and walked out to BS410 with Charlie, just trying to imagine what it would be like instead to be sprinting to intercept a wave of enemy aircraft and engage in kill-or-be-killed combat. Aged 20. I could not.

A small step ladder appeared, from which I stepped into the cockpit of the Spitfire. You can’t touch the canopy, but you can hold the screen and lower yourself down onto your seat, which turns out also to be your parachute. If you have to get out, you must first lower your seat, then pull a ball toggle to jettison the canopy, then release the straps anchoring you to the aircraft (and definitely not those that attach the parachute or lifejacket), stand up and fall over the side of the plane, aiming for the trailing edge of the wing, which should no longer be there by the time you arrive. Only once clear of the aircraft should you pull the ripcord and flutter safely down to earth.

I look around. This being a fighter, there’s nothing unnecessary in here. Like a floor. It’s why I’ve had to empty my pockets and leave everything in a locker, because if something fell out and jammed a vital flight surface, we could be in more than a spot of bother. But there are a couple of structural rails on which your feet can rest quite comfortably.

The stick is just that, with a circular grip on top and two buttons, one for firing the camera, the other for the armaments, likely to have been a combination of Hispano cannons and Browning machine guns. There’s a throttle lever to my left and an array of instruments ahead, most of which I’m pleased to be able to recognise. There are the gauges you might find in an old car: oil pressure and temperature, water temperature, fuel level and boost pressure, and a few you most certainly would not: altimeter, artificial horizon, rate of climb, brake pressure, side slip, turn meters and so on.

Up front Charlie has a rather delicate balancing act to perform. It’s an issue Michael Caine pointed out in The Battle of Britain when he said ‘the engine’s overheating and so am I. We either stand down or blow up. Which do you want?’ The problem is that the water, designed to be cooled by a wind blast of a kind never encountered on earth, gets very hot very quickly if you’re just standing still on the deck. In the meantime however there’s 12 gallons of oil that takes rather longer to reach operating temperature. The temperature window in which you have enough of the latter without too much of the former is narrow to put it mildly: you need no less than 40 deg C of oil temperature and no more than 100 deg C of water. When these marks are met, you want to be lined up on the bumpy grass strip, ready to roll.

‘It’s going to get quite noisy in here,’ shouts Charlie over the already deafening sound of the Merlin at idle, ‘so we won’t be able to speak again until we’re up and I’ve throttled back. Hope you enjoy the ride…’

And with that the rev counter flicks round to around 2400rpm – the Merlin is all done by 3000rpm – and the Spitfire is rolling. My head is now full of 27 litres of two-stage supercharged, quad-cam Rolls-Royce V12. I can now smell hot oil, see gauges dancing in front of me and watch the stick moving apparently by itself as the airflow activates the aerodynamic surfaces and Charlie wrestles to keep it straight on the bumpy strip. The ride smooths out as the rear wheel leaves the ground and I can literally feel the pressure leaving the struts under the wings as the thrust and lift finally overwhelm mass and drag. We are in a Spitfire, and we are flying.

Part two of this story, in which Andrew does his best to put you behind the controls of the Spitfire, will be published on Monday

Photography by Liam Young