![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stephensnelling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/TomNeil1.jpg\" "\\"TomNeil1\\"")
<\/a>Tom Neil, the young fighter ace, aged just 20, with his faithful ground crew.<\/p><\/div>\n
Now, he has filled the gap, so to speak, in his wartime career, by writing of his spell as a liaison officer with the 9th<\/sup> US Air Force in 1944-45, his courtship with Eileen, then a young WAAF officer, and his remarkable association with a certain, purloined Spitfire, which he had stripped of its camouflage so that it became the only silver model flown in RAF service.<\/p>\n The adventures and misadventures are recounted in characteristically light-hearted style by Tom in his splendid new book, The Silver Spitfire, and you can read what he had to say about it all in last week\u2019s EDP Weekend supplement.<\/p>\n In the course of our chat, we unsurprisingly strayed off course to talk about other aeronautical matters of interest. Well, of interest to me, at least. These included such things as the relative strengths and weaknesses of the P.51 Mustang, the P.47 Thunderbolt and, of course, the Spitfire.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing about the Spitfire,\u201d he said, \u201cis it\u2019s part of you. When you sit in it, it\u2019s like you\u2019ve got a glove on. Not so the Mustang. The Mustang is much bigger and in many respects nicer in the sense that, for example, the ailerons, the rudders and the elevators are all trimmable, which they aren\u2019t in a Spitfire. So, in many respects, the Mustang was nicer, but it was so much heavier\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Tom in the cockpit of his Hurricane during the Battle of Britain.<\/p><\/div>\n And so our conversation meandered on until we came to the subject of the Battle of Britain. \u201cThere\u2019s so much fiction written about the Battle of Britain,\u201d said Tom and then he was off, analysing the aircraft and the ineffectiveness of so much of the British armament. \u2018The Hurricane was useless\u2026 Obsolete even before the battle started. And the Spitfire wasn\u2019t that good, mainly because the pilot had to sit so low in the fuselage and the nose stretched out so far ahead of you, the length of a cricket pitch\u2026\u201d And so he continued till he reached the crucial and most fascinating point of all.<\/p>\n I paraphrase slightly. \u201cThe reasons that we won were a) because we fought over our own country. The statistics are that provided you are fighting an enemy force on a par with your own over your own territory, you will shoot down roughly two to their one. And while we got shot down fairly frequently, more often than not, we\u2019d crash-land or bail out and live to fight another day.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd b) because one thing we did wonderfully well was replace our lost aircraft. The aircraft weren\u2019t very good but, nevertheless, a squadron which had an establishment of 18 fighters, of which it might use 12, and often lose seven of them by the end of the day, would, the following day, be back up to full strength.<\/p>\n \u201cThe business of replenishing aircraft was mainly due to Beaverbrook, Aitken as he was then, who was in many respects Churchillian in nature. A man who believed in \u2018action this day\u2019. He didn\u2019t write letters to you, he got on the telephone and told you to get on do something and you did it, otherwise you lost your head.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, what with fighting over our own country and having a wonderful method of replacement, we managed to bridge the gap and cover up all the shortcomings.\u201d<\/p>\n Interesting stuff from a truly fascinating character who just so happens to be one of the most distinguished survivors of the gallant Few who took to the skies in that glorious summer of 1940.<\/p>\n The so-called Silver Spitfire after it had passed from Tom into Polish ownership.<\/p><\/div>\n Meanwhile, if it\u2019s a ripping yarn that you\u2019re after and a rip-roaring flying adventure with a difference, then look no further than The Silver Spitfire. It\u2019s published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, priced \u00a318.99, and proves beyond any question that fact is stranger than fiction.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve just been writing an extraordinary story about an extraordinary man on a day that\u2019s turned out be an extraordinary one for my family. My eldest daughter, Katie, has just given birth to a beautiful baby daughter called Pippin, or … Continue reading <\/a><\/a>