How important was the Spitfire to the overall war effort?

The Spitfire didn't win the Battle of Britain, but the battle would have been lost without the Spitfire, and had the battle been lost then we would have lost the war.

What was so special about the Spitfire compared to other combat planes?

So many factors! It had the performance, the manoeuvrability, the gun platform and the agility to cope with any other aircraft, providing it had a good pilot to handle it.

What is your fondest memory of a Spitfire?

I don't know whether I could call them fond memories. I love the Spitfire, I flew more than any other pilot, of course, being chief test pilot, and I think there were 37,000 sorties carried out at Castle Bromwich. There were a large number of marks of different Spitfire and I can't say which was my favourite. It depended what you were using it for, aerobatics or combat or whatever, but the Spitfire was in a class of its own and I don't think anything will ever equal it for the job it had to do at the time. In fact, as you well know, it's become immortal.

What did your wife think about your job at Castle Bromwich?

Well, having been with me since I won the King's Cup [in 1938, aged 25, Alex won the prestigious King's Cup air race: 20 laps of a triangular 50-mile course] and broke all the Cape Records, which were far more difficult than test flying. She didn't like it and, of course, she had to suffer a number of crashes. I think she was a braver woman than the pilots themselves.

What was your most worrying moment while testing the Spitfires?

I think there were two. One was when I was thrown out in a test dive. When I came to in the air the parachute was open but it was torn in half and held together by one single, solitary thread on the perimeter of the parachute. Had that broken then of course the parachute would have plummeted like a roman candle into the ground.

I think the next one was when we had skew gear problems, of which there were 14 and I had 11 of them. It was a failure that was related pure and simply to the Merlin [engine] and it went through a phase when these failures were taking place.

I had one over Willenhall, near Wolverhampton. The engine cut at 800ft. I couldn't land because of houses and churches and schools and factories and pylons and in trying to get behind a row of houses into the cabbage patches, my wing caught an oak tree and the starboard wing came off and that pushed me into the side of a house, which left the engine and the prop on the kitchen table. The aircraft then tore its way through and tore the port wing off until the fuselage struck a concrete post. It tore the cockpit completely in half, leaving me in a little tiny section.

Were there ever times when you thought, "I've had enough of this"?

You didn't think of it in that light. You had a job to do and it's no more than a man in the front line. He's given a rifle to do a job, and you've got to do it.

In your book* you mention bringing Birmingham city centre to a standstill by rolling the Spitfire as you flew along Broad Street. Roughly how high were you from the people below?

I'd have been doing it at about 50ft, I suppose. But you see I'm not proud of that incident. It was brought about because of the stupid instructions from both the Lord Mayor of Birmingham and the managing director of the factory for whom I worked.

Alex Henshaw MBE died in February 2007.

Find out more about Spitfire test pilots here.

* Sigh For A Merlin: Testing The Spitfire by Alex Henshaw (Crecy Publishing). Royalties go to the RAF Benevolent Fund.