Science Museum to exhibit Spitfire

Deconstructed plane to show internal intricacies

By PH Staff / Tuesday, 21 June 2005 / Loading comments

Supermarine Spitfire: the most beautiful machine ever made?

The Science Museum in London has revealed plans for a new exhibition about the legendary Spitfire and its designer R J Mitchell. ‘Inside the Spitfire: Personal stories of Britain's most famous plane’ will open in August 2005 to mark the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

A deconstructed Spitfire, displayed in pieces and stripped down to its original structure, will offer a spectacular once-in-a-lifetime view of this icon of design and engineering. The aircraft has been generously loaned by the RAF Museum for this special exhibition.

This giant Airfix kit will show the complexity inside the apparently simple elegant Spitfire shape, revealing the celebrated Rolls-Royce Merlin engine alongside enlargements of original blueprints and cutaway drawings.

Science Museum aeronautics curator Andrew Nahum said, “The Spitfire exhibition will examine R J Mitchell’s brilliant creation, showing the human, industrial and social stories behind the design, manufacture and success of the Spitfire. The inspired engineering design and mass production of the Spitfire were critical to national survival in the Second World War, and the exhibition will also feature the large number of women who came into aircraft production to cope with the huge wartime demand.”

Personal stories will be on display from the people who built, maintained, and flew the aircraft – charting the rise of the Spitfire from design marvel to international symbol of hope and resilience. Letters, mementos, papers, security passes, medals, models and rare photographs from the immense Castle Bromwich Spitfire factory will be exhibited, as well as transcriptions of personal accounts from a number of nationalities.

The exhibition will also give context and a setting to a specially commissioned statue of R J Mitchell, and trace Mitchell’s career at the Supermarine aircraft company in Southampton from 1917 to his death in 1937.

The Spitfire exhibition will coincide with the 65th anniversary of the turning point of the Battle of Britain. The Spitfire continues to conjure up images of incredible sacrifice and triumph, testament to the enduring power of the most famous British fighter plane of World War Two. The Spitfire was a design that carried the hopes of a nation, and this exhibition will argue that this type of design creativity is still essential to national life today.