© IWM
For many British people, the silver underbelly of a Supermarine Spitfire is lodged in their childhood memories: the plane climbs upwards, its yellow-tipped wings tilted towards the heavens. But this particular Spitfire is frozen in flight, its nose pointing to the ceiling of London’s Imperial War Museum, through which 100,000 children—brought by schools, parents and grandparents—troop each year.