NZFF

The Air Ministry submitted a list of possible names to Vickers-Armstrongs for the new aircraft, now known as the Type 300. One of these was the improbable Shrew. The name Spitfire was suggested by Sir Robert McLean, director of Vickers-Armstrongs at the time, who called his spirited elder daughter Annie Penrose "a little spitfire". The word dates from Elizabethan times and refers to a fiery, ferocious type of person; at the time it usually meant a girl or woman of that temperament. The name had previously been used unofficially for Mitchell's earlier F7/30 Type 224 design. Mitchell is reported to have said it was "just the sort of bloody silly name they would choose".[/quote]