Yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of Prime Minister Chamberlain's return to London from Munich after the settlement about cessation of the Czech Sudetenland to Nazi Germany has been reached between Germany, France, Britain, and Italy.

It is at that day that the above photograph was taken at the Heston aerodrome, Chamberlain showing the paper containing the resolution to the press. Later that day, speaking to the crowd outside 10 Downing Street he said: "My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time." He received cheers and "hear hears" from the crowd.

The news headlines on the following day were full of praise and relief. The 2-hour alert, introduced on 26 September on most RAF stations, was recalled.

The peace for our time represents the apex of Neville Chamberlain's policy of Appeasement. The rights or wrongs of this have been the subject of debate ever since. The historian's assessment of Chamberlain has ranged from condemnation to the judgment that he had no alternative and acted in Britain's best interests.

The peace, as we know, proved to be so short-lived. The settlement gave Germany the Sudetenland under Hitler's promise to go no further. It took only six more months for Czechoslovakia to disappear completely, destroying whatever meaning the Munich Agreement ever had. And a mere another six months lead to the German invasion of Poland and the inevitable British declaration of war.

Seeing it from the perspective of the subsequent war, the Sudeten crisis marked a new epoch in the history of British rearmament and general war preparations. Despite Prime Minister's public declarations, the government was under no illusions. All armament programmes were rapidly reviewed and remedies sought to speed them up. Among them was the problem of production delays at Supermarine. At the time of the Munich conference only five Spitfires had been delivered from the Eastleigh factory. Although No. 19 Squadron at Duxford had four of them at their disposal, the testing phase was not complete and the unit was called to readiness on their old Gloster Gauntlets.

It is difficult today to understand the sense of seriousness of the Sudeten crisis as it appeared at the time to the public mind. Trenches were dug in the city parks. Gas masks distributed among families. Children evacuated from the cities. Ration cards prepared. Newspapers published articles on how to build an air raid shelter. All these attributes of war which we are used to connect with the images of the Battle of Britain manifested themselves for the first time right then, in September 1938. In the same year the Air Ministry was expecting a million casualties during the first month of the war, 3 million refugees and the majority of the capital destroyed.

Brett Hollman, the author of the Airminded blog, is into an unique project connected with the described events. His experiment on post-blogging the Sudeten crisis day by day has been seemingly succesful, and offers a day-by-day account of the events based on contemporary press articles and commentary. I can highly recommend this reading for anyone interested by history of the World War II.

Labels: history

Several user notified me recently about the HTTP error 403 appearing in some portions of the site. Some browsers would display a message saying “ You are not authorized to access this page”, or even suggest that a login is required.

This problem should have been solved now, please let me know if there are any remaining issues.

Reviewing the press from the recent weeks we have a few interesting Spitfire sales.

• Chinese businessman pays record price for WW II Spitfire
  A Chinese businessman paid what is believed to be a record USD 1.81 million (1.3 million Euro) for a World War II Spitfire Mk. XVI auctioned in New Zealand. [Zee News]
  
  More about this auction and the Spitfire sale can be read here and here.
  
• Spitfire pilots celebrate Duxford's 90th anniversary
  The Duxford airfield celebrated its 90th anniversary last week. [Telegraph]

Sadly, we also have another obituary. Roy William Hook, D-Day veteran and former Spitfire pilot died on August 18 at the age of 88. Roy flew Spitfires with No. 167 Squadron staring in 1942. He then went on with his unit to the continent, fyling with the 2nd TAF.

Labels: history, warbirds, webmaster

Steve Darlow, military aviation author and the editor of the Fighting High online magazine has advised me that the third Issue of his publication is now avaliable for download (as PDF file) via the following link. Among other interesting reading, this issue is including a few bits concerning Spitfires.

www.stevedarlow.co.uk/fightinghigh.htm

Labels: history

Here is the tonight's update.

• A new addition in the Art & Memorabilia gallery is the latest drawing by Pavel Rampír from the Czech Republic. This one shows the Last The Last Flight of W/O Arnost Mrtvy of No. 313 (Czech) Squadron.
  

Labels: site updates

Without further delay, here's the first update after the vacation break.

• A new set of images has been added in the Gallery section. It is a seletion of images from the 2008 Flying Legends show which took place last month in Duxford. Enjoy.

Labels: site updates, warbirds

A short note today to inform you that I'm away on holidays with my family an therefore will be able to commence updates on this site only after 18th August. Right now we're enjoying the sun and wind in Mallorca. No Spitfires here for sure, but no vacation would be complete without at least one new aviation impression. We spent a day at the beach along the beautiful bay of Pollensa watching the impressive Spanish Canadair CL-215 amphibians practicing take-offs and landings on water. When observed in the air, these aircraft have something attractively old-fashioned about them and it is perhaps a pity that so few of their kind can be seen around in Europe.

Holiday reading includes memories by Jeffrey Quill: Spitfire - A Test Pilot's Story. A well-written and significant book for anyone studying the history of the Spitfire, both from its development and operational perspective. For whatever reason I acquired my copy only in June of this year. I will return with full review later.

Labels: webmaster

I'm glad today to announce the start of yet another section of the Spitfire Site: Product News and Reviews. An appropriate navigation link has been added to the menu at the left.

Anyone interested in World War II aviation will know just how many books, films, collectibles, art and hobby products related to the Spitfire are being offered all the time. By providing a section for product announcements and reviews, I hope in time that some useful guidance can be provided to our visitors. I'd also like to welcome and encourage contribution from our readers in form of own reviews and tips.

• I'm particularly glad that my first full review is of a book which no doubt breaks some new ground in our collective state of knowledge about the Spitfire. Read more about Spitfire Mk. IX & XVI Engineered by Paul H. Monforton.
  

Labels: reviews, site updates

Another update has been posted online tonight.

• New in the Scale Modelling section is a new 1/48 Spitfire Mk. Vb built from the immortal Tamiya kit. This one is modelled by Ken Gowans.
  

Labels: modelling, site updates

Sadly we've experienced some obscure technical problems which caused the front page of the site to disappear for about 48 hours. With the helping hand of the technical support I was finally able to pinpoint the source of the problem yesterday and fix it. I hope that it will not come back.

Here's an update which was just about to be announced before the outage:

• A new addition to the Modelling section is Fabrice Fanton's Spitfire HF Mk. VI Conversion in 1/48 Scale - using Tamiya Spitfire and Pavla resin set.
  

Labels: modelling, site updates

Without further delay, here's another photo gallery for today:

• 2008 Airshow Season Underway. An inspirational collection of Spitfire images from various UK shows. Photography by Andrew G Leonard.
  

Labels: site updates, warbirds