City prepares unique toast to the spirit of The Few

Supermarine Spitfire

A Birmingham restaurant and bar has been chosen as one of a select number to take part in a special event as part of Armed Forces Day – and commemorate one of the city’s most famous machines.

Marco Pierre White’s 25-storey restaurant, atop The Cube, will join the London Eye and Liverpool’s 34-storey Panoramic 34 Restaurant in toasting the RAF and in particular, the aeroplane so synonymous with the Battle of Britain, the Supermarine Spitfire.

The fighter’s links to Birmingham are well known. It was produced in large numbers at a factory in Castle Bromwich which is now the home of Jaguar.

But this isn’t its only link with the Midlands, the aeroplane having originally been designed by Stoke-born R J Mitchell as a development of the famous Schneider Trophy winning Supermarine S. 6 seaplane.

Tomorrow’s toast will be presented in the presence of armed forces personnel including representatives from Number 72 Squadron – a Battle of Britain Spitfire Squadron – and will ‘domino’ from Liverpool, through to Birmingham and concluding in London.

The event is being supported by Spitfire Heritage Gin, which supports The Spitfire Heritage Trust.

Marco Pierre White Birmingham food and beverage director, Julian Hook said: “We are extremely proud to be a part of this event.  From our terrace we are able to see some important civic buildings in the city of Birmingham which survived the war. We are also, on a fine day, able to see as far as Liverpool where the first of the toasts will be taking place, so this is a great link we will have with the event.

“The afternoon will celebrate our armed forces, serving and retired, across all of the services, and we look forward to toasting them with a quintessentially British tipple.”

Liverpool, host city for this year’s Armed Forces Day, took more bombs per head of population during World War II and was a priority target for the Luftwaffe, in much the same way as Coventry and Birmingham were.

Special guests at the London finale include immediate family members of the Supermarine Spitfire’s test pilot, Captain Joseph ‘Mutt’ Summers who made the first flight in the new aircraft in March 1936, when he was chief test pilot for Supermarine and Vickers.

Also in the cabin at the Eye for the final toast will be Joy Lofthouse. Now in her 90s, she is one of the last remaining ATA ‘girls’ – the women pilots who flew Spitfires unarmed and unescorted to airfields around the country, despite the ever-present threat of enemy planes.

Joy will be accompanied by David Spencer Evans, chairman of The Spitfire Trust and Ian Hewitt, co-owner of Spitfire Heritage Gin and founder of The Spitfire Heritage Trust.

Number 72 Squadron is also set to commemorate a notable anniversary as Monday (June 27) marks its centenary.  It will mark the occasion with a flypast over every wartime airbase to have been home for the squadron.

The celebrations will be attended by Battle of Britain pilots and ground crew are unable to attend their nearest base, over their homes.

The squadron became a dedicated Spitfire Squadron in 1940, thanks to the people of a tiny African country, Lesotho, who raised more money per head of population than any other country in the Commonwealth – enough to build 24 Spitfires, a whole squadron, in time for the Battle of Britain.

The Spitfire Heritage Trust and Spitfire Heritage Gin paid tribute to Lesotho late last year, shipping out a full-size Spitfire replica to present to the country’s Royal Family and go on display in the capital’s square on Remembrance Day.

Click here to sign up to receive our new South West business news...
Close