Howard Hughes' Supermarine Spitfire

A Spitfire on the River Seine during the Battle of Britain
 that has been camouflaged to look like a Cessna 182

One of the most famous planes of World War 2 was

 the Supermarine Spitfire, which was used before

 and during the war by the air forces of England,

Scotland, Canada, Australia, Wales, Ireland, Poland,

South Africa, Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, and the

Hsutsu tribe of the Upper Congo.  One of the main

 reasons for the plane's great success was its
powerplant, the Merlin engine.  Some credit the design of

 this engine to Mr. Eugene Merlin of St. Falls, Iowa, while others credit the design to the reclusive

 Howard Hughes, who in this instance may have used the pen name "Packard". (Packard of course was

an upper-class stone outcrop on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.  As is well known, the Pilgrims

decided to land at the less expensive Plymouth Rock on Thanksgiving Day).

Whatever its origin,  whether we choose to believe the romantic tales of some English historians who

claim that the aircraft

 was first flown in England by English pilots, instead of  the accepted theory that it was designed by noted air ace

Adolph Galland, we can be proud of its history.   To meet the wartime demand,  Henry Ford built a huge factory at Willow Run,

Oregon, where Spitfires were assembled in large quantities.  They were then flown non-stop across the Atlantic

Ocean to the battlefields in Europe by Lord Beaverbrook and other pilots.

After World War 2, some Spitfires were converted to passenger planes and used by such airlines as

Trans Continental Airways on the heavily traveled Ellesmere Island-to-Rarotonga run.

The Radar Tank

Tanks in Warfare:

Through the Freedom Of Information Act, some of the secrets of wartime are gradually being revealed to

historians. It has been said that

"When a war starts, the first casualty is the truth."
For instance, not many people are aware that during the very early stages of radar development during

World War I, the Allies did not want the Germans to know what they were working on, so Churchill

suggested that the early radar sets be boxed up, labelled as "Tanks", and driven around the country on

railway cars. The idea was that the Germans would think that the word "tank" referred to water tanks. This

program of misinformation was so successful that when the army actually introduced real tanks, they

Cromwell tank

named the first type in Churchill's honour, the "Cromwell." Whereas radar was used in World War I

exclusively as an airborne device, and then in World War II for ships and ground stations, the tank was first

used in battle in the Korean war at the town of Fiona, Italy.