Two spitfires have just flown over our offices at The Spectator, to commemorate the
Battle of Britain. The aircraft are deservedly iconic, but it’s a bit of shame that over the years they’ve eclipsed the de Havilland Mosquito in the public memory. They were developed too late for the Battle
itself, but were incredible aircraft when they were deployed. And, crucially, privately-developed.
In 1937, the British had only 46 bombers where the Germans had about 800 – and the speed at which the RAF developed was extraordinary. The battle of Britain exposed the weaknesses in the Luftwaffe – and Nazi procurement policy. Hitler relied on a vast, unwieldy bureaucracy to produce a heavy bomber and it failed him. After the Battle of Britain, Hitler headed off to Russia where he found that – as Paul Johnson said in Modern Times – he was “fighting a Forties war with late-Thirties weaponry, and not even enough of that.”
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