This coming weekend the spitfire will celebrates the 75th Anniversary of its first flight at Southampton Airport, this is a great piece of British engineering. RJ Mitchell was the designer and it was built by various companies around the south, in fact I started my career at Vickers Medical in Basingstoke where they made baby incubators, the incubator canopies where made of perspex and during the war they manufactured the canopies for the Spitfires. The Final development and assembly of the first spitfire was done at Hursley park where IBM have their labs. It can show you how events and missions can link very unrelated organisations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._J._Mitchell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine
The Spitfire has a Rolls Royce Merlin engine (27 litre V12 engine) which a very distinctive tone, a few years ago there was a flight past of 5 spitfires in formation, the sound of the engine was outstanding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Merlin
