Werner Mölders test-flew a captured Spitfire Mk I at the Luftwaffe's Rechlin test centre in the summer of 1940, and what he wrote in his report contradicted everything Hermann Goering was telling Germany about the Battle of Britain.
The man who had designed the Schwarm, the four-aircraft "finger-four" formation that every fighter air force on earth would eventually adopt, climbed into the British fighter his own pilots were dying against. He flew it honestly. He wrote it down honestly. He sent the report to Ernst Udet in Berlin.
And the men running the German air force quietly walked away from it.
This is the full story of R.J. Mitchell's elliptical-winged Spitfire, the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, and the captured-aircraft trial that should have changed Luftwaffe doctrine in the summer of 1940 but didn't. We trace Mitchell from his Stoke-on-Trent apprenticeship and Schneider Trophy seaplanes to his cancer diagnosis in 1933 and his death in 1937, before the Spitfire ever fired a shot in anger. We follow Beverley Shenstone, the Canadian aerodynamicist who had studied under Prandtl and Lippisch in Germany, drawing the wing that would humble Goering's Luftwaffe. We cover the Merlin engine, 100-octane fuel from Aruba, Miss Shilling's orifice, and the Castle Bromwich factory that built 12,129 Spitfires from a building that had produced zero airframes by May 1940.
On the German side: Werner Mölders himself, the first pilot in history to reach 100 confirmed kills; Theo Osterkamp and his warning that "we now fight the Lords"; Adolf Galland's famous Channel-coast exchange with Goering; and Ernst Udet's suicide note left in red pencil on his bedroom wall in November 1941. The RAF voices include Sailor Malan and his Ten Rules of Air Fighting, Douglas Bader, Bob Stanford Tuck, Sergeant George "Grumpy" Unwin of 19 Squadron, and Brian Lane, who commanded the first Spitfire unit in the Royal Air Force.
— TOPICS COVERED —
→ Werner Mölders and the captured Spitfire test flight at Rechlin in 1940
→ The Mölders report and Luftwaffe institutional refusal to listen
→ The Schwarm "finger-four" formation and German fighter doctrine
→ R.J. Mitchell, the Type 224 failure, and the Supermarine Type 300
→ Beverley Shenstone and the elliptical wing
→ The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine and the 100-octane fuel advantage
→ Castle Bromwich, Lord Beaverbrook, and the 12,129 production figure
→ Spitfire Mk I versus Bf 109E technical comparison
→ The Hurricane's role in the Battle of Britain
→ Goering at Karinhall, Galland's "outfit of Spitfires" remark
→ The deaths of Ernst Udet and Werner Mölders in November 1941
— MAJOR RESEARCH SOURCES —
→ Alfred Price, Spitfire: A Documentary History
→ Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy
→ Adolf Galland, The First and the Last
→ Kurt Braatz, Werner Mölders: Die Biographie
→ Williamson Murray, Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe
→ Peter Caygill, Flying to the Limit
→ Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich
→ Donald Caldwell, JG 26: Top Guns of the Luftwaffe
→ The Imperial War Museum and RAF Museum archives
→ London Gazette citation records and Air Historical Branch papers
— FURTHER READING —
→ Jeffrey Quill, Spitfire: A Test Pilot's Story
→ Stanley Hooker, Not Much of an Engineer
→ Brian Lane, Spitfire (originally published as B.J. Ellan)
→ Gordon Mitchell, R.J. Mitchell: Schooldays to Spitfire
→ Leo McKinstry, Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend
→ Lance Cole, Secrets of the Spitfire
→ Patrick Bishop, Fighter Boys
→ James Holland, The Battle of Britain
→ Sönke Neitzel, Tapping Hitler's Generals
→ Larry Forrester, Fly for Your Life (the Stanford Tuck biography)
If your father, grandfather, or uncle served with RAF Fighter Command, Supermarine, Rolls-Royce, the Auxiliary Air Force, or any of the squadrons or factories named in this video, please tell us about them in the comments. These stories survive only when the families who carry them choose to share the names.
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