The Supermarine Spitfire, the only British fighter to be manufactured before, during and after the Second World War, was designed as a short-range fighter capable of defending Britain from bomber attack and achieved legendary status fulfilling this role during the Battle of Britain. According to fighter ace J.E. "Johnnie" Johnson it was the best conventional defensive fighter of the war.
The fighter evolved into a multi-role aircraft capable of operating in different environments. For example, the Spitfire was a pioneer in the role of the unarmed, photo reconnaissance (P.R.) aircraft that relied on high speed and high altitude to avoid detection and attack.
Post-war the Spitfire was to continue to serve as a front line fighter and in secondary roles for several air forces well into the 1950s. The last offensive sorties made by RAF Spitfires were flown by 60 Squadron Mk XVIIIs over Malaya on 1 January 1951.
Early RAF service
Phoney War
The first Spitfire I to enter service with the RAF arrived at 19 Squadron, Duxford, on 4 August 1938 and over the next few weeks aircraft were delivered at the rate of one a week to 19 and 66 Squadrons (also based at Duxford). The next to be equipped with Spitfires was 41 Squadron at Catterick, followed by a succession of squadrons stationed at Hornchurch in Essex. The public's first sight of the Spitfire in RAF colours was on Empire Air Day, on 20 May 1939, during a display at Duxford in which the pilot "belly-landed" his aircraft, having forgotten to lower his undercarriage and was fined £5 by the Air Ministry. By the outbreak of the Second World War, there were 306 Spitfires in service with the RAF, 71 in reserve and 2,000 on order; 36 had been written off in accidents.
On 6 September 1939, in a "friendly-fire" incident known as the Battle of Barking Creek, two 56 Squadron Hawker Hurricanes were shot down by Spitfires of 74 Squadron over the river Medway, in Kent. One of the Hurricane pilots, P/O Montague Leslie Hulton-Harrop, was the first British pilot fatality of the Second World War. As a consequence the development and manufacture of IFF equipment for RAF aircraft became a high priority.
On 16 October 1939, the Spitfire first saw action against the Luftwaffe when three aircraft each from 602 Squadron and 603 Squadron intercepted nine Junkers Ju 88s of 1./KG30, led by Hauptmann Helmuth Pohle, over Rosyth attempting to attack the cruisers HMS Southampton and HMS Edinburgh in the Firth of Forth. Two Ju 88s were shot down and another heavily damaged.
Western Europe
The first Spitfire operation over Western Europe took place on 13 May 1940, during the Battle of the Netherlands. German airborne forces had been pinned down in the Battle of the Hague by the Dutch Army. RAF Fighter Command sent 66 Squadron Spitfires to escort Defiants from 264 Squadron to support the Dutch. They encountered Junkers Ju 87s from IV(St)./Lehrgeschwader 1 (LG 1), and shot down four of them. They were soon intercepted by Bf 109s from 5 Staffel Jagdgeschwader 26 (JG 26) that shot down five Defiants and one Spitfire for the loss of one Bf 109.
On 23 May 1940, Spitfires of 54 Squadron were the first to shoot down Bf 109s, over Calais Marck airfield, on the coast of northern France; the first of these is usually credited to either Flying Officer Alan Deere who shot down two (according to other sources, one destroyed plus one probable), or Flg. Off. "Johnny" Allen who shot down one.
During this period 67 Spitfires were lost over France, most of them in the attempt to prevent the Luftwaffe from bombing the evacuation beaches at Dunkirk. While the Spitfires of Fighter Command continued to be based in Britain, at the insistence of Air Vice Marshal Hugh Dowding, from late 1939 there were early photo-reconnaissance Spitfires of "No 2 Camouflage Unit" operating from Seclin in France, gathering photo-intelligence of German defences and cities. Throughout the Second World War, photo-reconnaissance Spitfires kept up a constant flow of photographic intelligence, in a role far removed from that of short-range interceptor fighter.
Spitfire night fighter
The documentation to specification F.10/35, which was framed around the Spitfire, was headed "Requirements for Single-engine Day and Night Fighter" and stipulated that the aircraft be equipped with "night flying equipment".