Supermarine Spitfire - Notable Appearances in Media

Notable Appearances in Media

During and after the Battle of Britain the Spitfire became a symbol of British resistance: for example, Lord Beaverbrook's "Spitfire Fund" of 1940 was one campaign which drew widespread public attention to the Spitfire. The Spitfire continues to be highly popular at airshows, on airfields and in museums worldwide, and continues to hold an important place in the memories of many people, especially the few still living who flew the Spitfire in combat. Numerous, films and documentaries featuring the Spitfire are still being produced, some of which are listed in this section.

• The First of the Few (also known as Spitfire in the U.S. and Canada) (1942) was a British film produced and directed by Leslie Howard, with Howard in the starring role of R.J. Mitchell, and David Niven playing a composite character based on the Schneider Trophy pilots of 1927, 1929 and 1931, and the Supermarine test pilot Jeffrey Quill. Some of the footage includes film shot in 1941 of operational Spitfires and pilots of 501 Squadron (code letters SD). Howard spent a long time researching the history of the Spitfire’s development for the film; Mrs. Mitchell and her son Gordon were on the set during much of the production. The aerobatic flying sequences featured in the last 15 minutes of the film were made by Jeffrey Quill in early November 1941, flying a Spitfire Mk II mocked up to represent the prototype.
• Malta Story (1953), starring Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Steel and Muriel Pavlow, is a black and white war film telling the story of the defence of Malta in 1942 when Spitfires were the island's main defence from air attacks.
• Reach for the Sky (1956) starring Kenneth More tells the story of Douglas Bader, using contemporary Spitfire aircraft in the production.
• Battle of Britain (1969) directed by Guy Hamilton and starring Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer, Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, Susannah York and many others. Set in 1940, this film features several sequences involving a total of 12 flying Spitfires (mostly Mk IX versions), as well as a number of other flying examples of Second World War-era British and German aircraft.
• Piece of Cake (1987) starring Tom Burlinson. Aired on the ITV network in 1987. Based on the novel by Derek Robinson, the six-part miniseries covered the prewar era to "Battle of Britain Day," 15 September 1940. The series depicted air combat over the skies of France and Britain during the early stages of the Second World War, though using five flying examples of late model Spitfires in place of the novel's early model Hurricanes. There were shots of Spitfires taking off and landing together from grass airstrips.
• Dark Blue World (2001), starring Ondřej Vetchý was a tale of two Czech pilots who escape Nazi-occupied Europe to fly Spitfires during the Battle of Britain. Svěrák filmed some new aerial scenes and reused aerial footage from Hamilton's film.
• James May's Toy Stories (2009), starring James May was a BBC TV series which featured an episode in which children constructed a 1:1 scale model of the Spitfire in the style of the Airfix 1/72 scale model first released in 1955.
• Doctor Who - "Victory of the Daleks" (2010), was an episode of a popular BBC TV series in which three Spitfires modified for spaceflight aid in defending London from alien Daleks during the Blitz.