The book, The Spitfire Story traces the life of this now legendary World War II era fighter aircraft from the original concept of designer Reginald Mitchell to the first flight and on through 12 years of continuous development.  The Supermarine Type-300, a single engine, single seat fighter armed with up to eight machine guns and powered by a Rolls-Royce inline Merlin engine, made its first flight on March 5th, 1936.  Only three short months later, a contract was signed for the first 310 aircraft.  By the time production ended in February 1948 approximately 20,400 aircraft had been manufactured in 22 different versions with the Mark 24 arbuably being one of the best piston-engine interceptor fighters ever built.  "The Spitfire Story" is all the more interesting in that the author had the help of many people directly engaged in the design, production and testing of the Spitfire including Jeffrey Quill, the former Chief Test Pilot for Supermarine.  The major sections of "The Spitfire Story" are as follows: 1) Foreword; 2) Preface; 3) List of Sources; 4) Introduction; 5) Chapter-1 A Weapon is Forged; 6) Chapter-2 K 5054: The First of the Many; 7) Chapter-3 A Problem of Production; 8) Chapter-4 The Mark I in Service; 9) Chapter-5 The Saga of the Speed Spitfire; 10) Chapter-6 High Speed Spies - the Mark I Reconnaissance Variants; 11) Chapter-7 More Problems of Production: the Mark II and Castle Bromwich; 12) Chapter-8 Phoenix from the Ashes; 13) Chapter-9 The Mark III - Squeezed Out of Production; 14) Chapter-10 Variant Much Varied: the Mark V; 15) Chapter-11 Spitfire under Pressure; the Mark VI; 16) Chapter-12 Successful Stop-gap: the Marks IX and XVI; 17) Chapter-13 Variations on a Theme: the Marks VII and VIII; 18) Chapter-14 Second Generation Spies: the Marks X, XI and XIII; 19) Chapter-15 The First Griffon Spitfires: the Marks IV, XII and XIII; 20) Chapter-16 Spitfires on Floats; 21) Chapter-17 Second Generation Griffon Spitfires: Marks XIV and 18; 22) Chapter-18 Mark 19: the Master Spy; 23) Chapter-19 Spitfires Made for Two; 24) Chapter-20 End of the Line: the Marks 21, 22, 23 and 24; 25) Chapter-21 The Spitfire Summed Up and 26) Index.  In addition to an informative narrative, "The Spitfire Story" includes the following features: 1) Approximately 288 black and white photographs; 2) About 10 black and white illustrations; 3) 1 four-view Supermarine Type 300 Spitfire black and white illustration and 4) 1 three dimensional Spitfire Mark XIVe cut-away illustration with component descriptions.  This book is 256 pages and is in very good condition.  The author is Alfred Price.  Edition published in 2003.