So I did a split-arsed turn, and got on his tail - a couple of squirts with my thumb on the gun button, and it was all over for Jerry. Sometimes some humourless grump may point out, "but Chris, you weren't even born until five years after the war in Europe was over".
And once I told this story to an actual World War II fighter pilot. At least he thought it was funny - well, he did laugh.
But opportunities for fun aside, the real reason I wear this bit of bling is that I think it is beautiful. The shape of Reg Mitchell's Spitfire has to be the most, possibly the only, enduringly beautiful image to have emerged from what was a horrific time for the whole world.
Apart from the memories of the few gallant young men to whom so many owed so much.
I can see beauty in the shapes that many engineers produce. They say that inside every Italian engineer is an artist screaming to get out - and anyone who has lusted after an Italian sports car will know what I mean.
My own personal favourites are old Jaguars, with their nicely-rounded feminine forms, designed by Sir William Lyons.
It is said that he didn't start with a clay model when he designed, but would make the car out of steel, then cut and weld it until it "looked right".
Not a computer in sight; all from his mind directly into steel, perhaps via a pencil sketch.
And have you seen the Britton V1000 motor bike displayed at Te Papa? So beautiful in its pink and blue.
The late John Britton made that in his shed, then beat the world at Daytona. A true artist.
I have occasionally had this conversation with the girls and boys in the arts community, nearly always to be met with blank glazed eyes. The beauty to be found in things mechanical that is, not the "war story".
And I know what you're thinking - the usual connection between artists and glazed eyes, but no. I believe they are seeing a harbinger of coming conflict.
Blokes in sheds who throw down the gauntlet to the Auckland "arts" establishment - the people who find outhouses that bray like a donkey or piles of used paper wrappings to be the pinnacle of artistic endeavour.
All these blokes have to fight with, apart from their considerable talent, may be blood, toil, tears and oily fingernails, but they will fight them on the beaches, in the fields and the streets, and never, never surrender.
One day in the future, when people walk through museums and galleries filled with such objets d'art as XK120 Jaguars, old Rileys, Supermarine Spitfires, America's Cup yachts, steam locomotives and Rocket coffee machines, they may look back at this battle and say, "This was their finest hour."
+ Chris Northover is a former Wanganui lawyer who has worked in the fields of aviation, tourism, health and the environment - as well as designing electric cars and importing photo-voltaic panels
