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Spitfire inventor should be honoured Dec 11 2004


Few people have heard of Reginald Joseph Mitchell - even though he designed the fighter plane which won the Battle of Britain.

But now MPs are calling for the Midland engineer and creator of the Spitfire to receive the recognition he deserves.

Si™n Simon (Lab), MP for Birmingham Erdington, has led calls for a statue to be built in Mitchell's honour.

Mr Simon launched the campaign after learning that no public memorial exists.

Spitfires were mainly manufactured at Castle Bromwich, on the site of the current Jaguar factory, in Birmingham.

They were flown by the RAF from the late summer of 1940, as the German Luftwaffe tried to destroy Britain's air defences so the country could be invaded by sea.

Manoeuvrable and fast and easy to fly, the Spitfire was a match for the German Messerschmidtt.

By contrast, the Polish and French air forces had possessed nothing which could take on the Luftwaffe's finest planes, and suffered total defeat.

Mitchell, known as RJ Mitchell, fell in love with aircraft as a young boy while making model planes in his bedroom on Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire.

He left school at 16 to work as an apprentice at Kerr Stuart and Company, a locomotive engineering works in Stoke. By 1936 he was designing planes for the RAF at the Supermarine Aviation Works in Southampton.

It was in March 1936 that his Spitfire prototype was first rolled out of the hangar at Hampshire's Eastleigh Airfield. He died of cancer aged only 42 in 1937. But the Spitfire lived on to become the most famous fighter of all time and 33,198 test flights of Spitfires took place at the Castle Bromwich factory, in Erdington.

Mr Simon's campaign to have a statue erected in Mitchell's honour has received cross-party backing with the support of Conservative front bencher Bill Wiggin (Leominster) and Liberal Democrat Lembit Opik (Montgomery-shire), a keen amateur pilot.

Mr Simon said: "The Spitfire is integral to Erdington's identity and also played a widely celebrated part in our war victory.

"RJ Mitchell enabled both of these things to occur and it is only a matter of due respect that this major contribution is publicly acknowledged".

He has issued his plea in a House of Commons motion, which has the backing of 27 MPs. They include Rob Marris (Lab Wolverhampton South West) and Mark Fisher (Lab Stoke Central).

The motion says: "This House notes with regret the lack of a public memorial to RJ Mitchell, the designer of the Spitfire fighter; and calls upon the United Kingdom's civic leaders to commemorate, in the form of a statue, the designer of the famous plane that helped to win the war."

Historians are agreed on the crucial role played by the Spitfire in what Churchill called Britain and the Commonwealth's "finest hour".

However, many have pointed out that the Hawker Hurricane played a key but less well-known role as well.

The difference was that Mr. Mitchell died before the war. Sidney Camm (who designed the Hurri) was given a knighthood.
Maybe they feel that this would even things up a little. Both aircraft performed magnificently during the BoB and earned their place in the history books.
Personally as a Spit maniac I feel that RJ does deserve a bloomin' large statue in his honour!

There are already tributes to RJ Mitchell in various parts of the country for anyone who cares to look. Two examples that come to mind are the statue at the Southamton Hall of Aviation http://www.airmuseumsuk.org/Southampton1/, (Southampton is the home of the old Supermarine works) & the tableau at the Tangmere Museum including the replica prototype Spitfire K5054 built under the supervision of Jeffrey Quill, Alex Henshaw & RJ's son among others.

Personally, I think the best possible tribute to RJ Mitchell is not a statue but the many examples of his wonderful Spitfire flying on the air display circuit, in their element where they belong, not in some stuffy museum.

Would be nice to see a statue somewhere in the area for him. However i agree with Dougs comments with that being a much more fitting tribute.

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I think a far more fitting place would be Woolston, where they're currently redeveloping the old Vosper Thorneycroft site, which either was, or was very close to, the site of the Supermarine works at Woolston. Unfortunately they knocked down the Supermarine hangars at Eastleigh in the 80's or early 902 to redevelop the airport. At least that secureed the future of the airfield.

Charlie