Spitfire

Lady Esther presents the Screen Guild Players. The Screen Guild Play Tonight. Spitfire.

The Starring Players. This is Basil Rathbone. This is Heather Angel. And this is Reginald Gardner. Tonight Lady Esther presents the Screen Guild Players in Spitfire. The last film to be made by Leslie Howard. It stars Basil Rathbone as RJ Mitchell, Heather Angel as his wife Diana, and Reginald Gardner as Flight Commander Jeffrey Crisp. Winston Churchill said,

never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many, to so few. Our play tonight is based on the life of the first of those few. RJ Mitchell, the designer of the Spitfire Fighter Plane, which enabled a comparative handful of English boys to repel the Nazi hordes during the terrible blitzes of 1940. Our

Our story begins outside of fighter squadron dispersal huts, where flight commander Jeffrey Christ, RJ Mitchell's lifelong friend and test pilot, is telling his flyers about the plane they fly and Mitch, the man who brought it into being.

Two years after his plane had won the Schneider Cup trophy for England, permanently, Mitch seemed unable to interest himself in anything but his garden. You see boys, there were no more races to win, no more record-breaking planes to build, Mitch himself was tired, worn out by the constant battle he had fought to get his ideas across.

So Mitch's wife, Diana, and I, conspired to take him on a holiday in Germany. There at the Richtofen Club in Berlin, Mitch found a new purpose in life. We will drink the health of our honored guests.

Hermitus, name and work are well known in our country, and her crisp, whom we already met in the last war, is a pilot of great distinction. Thank you very much. And my wife and Mr. Crisp say thank you too. I'd heard a lot about what you were doing in Germany and I must say I'm very impressed by what I've seen.