Aviation History > Miscellaneous Aviation History

Chatham Spitfire Fund

(1/1)

Dave Smith:
As far as I can remember, when Wings for Victory week took place in Shepperton,Middx., where I was evacuated to in 1940/1/2, a Spitfire was £10,000 & its (Merlin) engine £2,500. I'm pretty sure we bought 6d National Savings stamps toward these targets. That was my weekly pocket money, which I don't think I would have "given"!

Cosmo Smallpiece:
It looks like the Spitfire fund gave a theoretical round figure of £5000 for a spitfire. Wikipedia and other sources break the costs down and come up with a figure around £9,500.

mmitch:
I believe that they priced a Spitfire as an airframe. The engine, radio and oxygen equipment were RAF items supplied from elsewhere. Some aircraft were delivered to squadron without radio or oxygen as some Air auxiliary pilots have written.
mmitch.

castle261:
That makes a Spitfire worth - £5,000 -  just under £3,333.66 of the amount required. I remember the fund - not the Castle Road part. We never used
Castle road, as our school the other way, Glencoe Road.

johnfilmer:
Not only was there a publicity driven collection of metals "to build Spitfires", but public donations of money were often centred about towns, Chatham was an example. With the planes often named for their donors.

I have 15 receipts given to my Aunt, Winnie Smitherman, in respect of money collected around Castle Road, where she lived. The first is dated 5th September 1940, and then weekly until 12th December, with a single 1941 collection on 2nd February. I do not know if more was collected, this is the only evidence that I have.
The total of these receipts was £43 4s 2d. There was an interesting few moments adding them up, it's 50years since I did that form of addition, and rusty doesn't describe it! Win was a cashier (at the Co-op?) so like my paternal grandfather would have breezed through such addition. Watching my 80year old grandfather simply run a pencil down the side of the three columns then write the total at the bottom was a party trick that I marvelled at as a teenager.
The newspaper cutting was in with the receipts, I would have been proud to have got such a public mention.

Navigation

[0] Message Index