WHY is it that I feel no excitement about the creation of a Spitfire squadron as described in Thursday’s Oxford Mail?

Is it because these planes are not replicas of the original but American scale models?

And are there enough Rolls-Royce engines to fit to all of them, because, without the distinctive sound of Merlin or Griffon engines, these would be but a shadow of the real thing?

And why this obsession with the Spitfire, leaving the poor old Hurricane out in the cold — is it the name Spitfire that fires the imagination or is it seen to be prettier?

Had it not been that Sydney Camm, the chief designer for Hawkers, put pressure on the Government into letting him build the Hurricane I suspect that this country would have been in a very perilous position at the start of the Second World War.

The Hurricane, which went into service in 1937, was still in service and doing a great job a decade later, could hardly be described as of minor importance since there were some 14,000 built in Britain and Canada, of which, around 3,000 went to Russia.

One writer summed up the Hurricane as follows: “Undoubtedly one of the great fighter aircraft of World War II, it is difficult to highlight the capabilities of this remarkable aircraft without using a host of tired adjectives or clichés.”

In the Battle of Britain, Hurricanes destroyed more aircraft than all other defences, air and ground, combined.

And, while on the subject of great aircraft, why is it that the De Havilland Mosquito seems to receive less praise than it deserves?

This aeroplane was a great British triumph, which went unmatched by anything produced by any other nation in the Second World War – a ground-breaking machine which looked very much to the future and, what is more, you could hardly call the Mosquito anything but beautiful.

DERRICK HOLT, Fortnam Close, Headington, Oxford