Plane wrong

You see, I don’t think he was right, that Tim Harford. But as he’s a journalist for the FT and BBC, I’d better set my case out.

In a talk about great leaps of genius versus smaller incremental tippy-toe steps, he mentioned the Spitfire as one example of mould-breaking innovation. What would have become of us, ran the subtext, if it hadn’t been for the inventor of the chariots of Spitfire? Thank goodness they had the cleverness and daring to come up with something out of the blue that could fly straight back into the blue and fight the Hun.

Well, no

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