There are lots of stories about the Spitfire.

You probably know some of them already.

There's the story of a groundbreaking plane that's both deadly and beautiful these wonderful curves and what they ended up doing is designing something which looks stunning.

There's the death or glory story. The Flying Ace is cheating death in the skies of Britain. I'm looking round now.

You can see a machine gun power,

and you can't see our set fires.

Oh, here's one coming down now.

Somebody's here the German and he's coming down the long street

and he's going slap into the sea and there he goes, man.

There's the story of the furious arms race between Britain and Germany,

the Spitfires vying with the Messers and Focke-Wulf's, as aeronautical engineers from both nations

try to outdo one another in speed, maneuverability, altitude and deadly precision.

We were very, very finicky with the Spitfire.

We knew it had to be better than anything the Germans did,

so we had to make sure it was the best fighter.

And the story of a small plane built of aluminium, steel, fabric and wood that supposedly turned the tide of the Second World War.

Believe me the spitfire has got what it takes.

You might know those stories, but there's another one you probably don't know.

The story of how the Spitfire was built during the Second World War and the men and women who built it.

Of the factory that made the Spitfires at the height of the Battle of Britain and beyond,

a factory that got bombed and an ingenious set of extraordinary people who went right on making spitfires anyway.

I'm Victoria's Hamer. I'm an historian of British and German aviation at the University of Hull

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