Released in time for the 80th anniversary of the D Day landings, the Spitfire N3200 pen is the first in a new collaboration for Retro 51 with the Imperial War Museums
The first release in the Imperial War Museums (IWM) collection is the Spitfire N3200 Tornado rollerball to commemorate the Spitfire N3200. Built in 1939, the Spitfire N3200 was a Supermarine Spitfire mark 1a, issued to No. 19 Squadron at RAF Duxford in April 1940. During the Dunkirk emergency evacuation, squadron leader Geoffrey Stephenson piloted Spitfire N3200 on its first and only mission during Operation Dynamo, shooting down a Stuka before being shot down himself.
He crash-landed on a beach near Calais and was captured, remaining a prisoner until the end of the war. The Spitfire sank under the sand and was recovered in 1986 after strong currents revealed it 45 years later. Dr Thomas Kaplan and Simon Marsh acquired it in 2000 and restored it, donating it to the Imperial War Museum in 2015.
The Spitfire N3200 pen has been acid-etched with rivets and panels and then painted in the matching camouflage pattern. The plane’s tail numbers have been printed alongside the British roundel, and the top disc is printed with Britain’s tri-colour fin flash. This Spitfire pen is complete with black-nickel accents that have the IWM logo on the top ring alongside the pen’s serial number engraving. Each Tornado is packaged in commemorative packaging with foil stamp graphics representing the plane.
