By C.R.Russell

CYRIL RICHARD RUSSELL, born in Bitterne, Southampton in 1919, attended Bitterne C of E School, and on leaving at 14 years of age joined the Super- marine Aviation Works Ltd. in 1936, after two years of blind alley boy’s jobs. In September 1936 he was given an apprenticeship as a Sheet metalworker and remained with Supermarines until 1947 as a skilled tradesman. After this he spent his time in the aircraft industry within a variety of posts finishing with the Hawker Siddeley Aviation Co. at Hamble in 1972, when crippling arthritis forced him to resign, with a life tied to a wheelchair. Since then he has undergone many operations, and says that he is worth more in scrap metal value than anything else, with his accumulation of artificial joints. This book began as a self- imposed form of therapy to get his deformed hands active. Originally it was all written in longhand but since then he has taught himself to type and is at present engaged in writing an account of his other years and experiences in the aircraft industry after Supermarines and the Spitfire, as well as some novels of a more fictionalised nature, but which draw heavily on his own experiences and characters met. Married, with two sons and four grandchildren, he and his wife Pat now live in Dorset, close to both the Hampshire and Wiltshire borders. Front cover: Spitfires of No. 41 Squadron, from a painting by Barry Wallis.