In April 1944, test pilot Anthony Martindale dove a Spitfire to Mach 0.92, lost the entire propeller and reduction gear, blacked out under 11 Gs, and woke up in a bent but intact airframe that he glided 20 miles to a safe landing. Drawing on declassified RAF combat reports, Supermarine schematics, diaries, and pilot memoirs, this episode tells the life story of the aircraft that brought him home and asks how a design born from failure became so adaptable it refused to go obsolete.

We begin with R.J. Mitchell's flawed Type 224, which lost out to a biplane, and the rethink that paired an enclosed cockpit and retractable gear with the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. We cover the name Mitchell hated, the March 1936 prototype flight, and the two-year production delay caused by stressed-skin construction, flush riveting, and the Castle Bromwich shadow ...