Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day comes a true story of Irish excellence, heroism and nostalgia: “The Shamrock Spitfire.”

Irish twins Dominic and Ian Higgins, 50, have managed to write, direct and edit a period film with ingenuity and a low budget. And it all began with a passion for that icon of WWII aerial battles, the Spitfire, the single-seat fighter aircraft that starred in the Battle of Britain.

After the brothers won attention with animated shorts on the web, “We were looking for a live action project to do and bring the team back together again,” Ian said. “We originally pitched the ‘Shamrock’ as a short film.

“The reason we discovered the story of Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane was that Dom is very much into Spitfires. He’s ex-military himself. He’s always had a thing for Spitfires. So we’ve been buying a lot of books, for birthday presents, Christmas presents.

“When we’re looking for a live-action project, we just thought, ‘There’s got to be a really good story in those books somewhere.’”

They discovered that Irishman Finucane was flying with Britain’s Royal Air Force – at a time when the Irish were staunchly anti-British.

“Yes, an Irishman flying with the RAF was what initially piqued our interest, but the more we got into Brendan, who he was as a man, the more we wanted to turn his story into a film.”

Finucane had a glorious record with the RAF; today he remains the youngest ever – at 21 – wing commander.

“There was a lot of conflict between him and his father when he announced that he wanted to join the RAF. But from Brendan’s point of view, he just wants to fly. It wasn’t about joining the RAF.”

To become less elitist, Britain had offered “short term apprentices for working class families. Brendan saw it as an opportunity to learn to fly and get paid for it. It’s as simple as that.”

The filmmakers discovered there was a symmetry in Finucane’s too short life — and also a sense of faith.

“Shamrock” begins with his mother telling a true bedtime story. “When Brendon was less than a year old, he was caught in a crossfire between the Black and Tans, the English and Irish rebels. A bullet missed his head by an inch. They all said it was a million to one chance.

“Ironically, what brought him down at the end was again a million to one chance. So there was a strange sense of fate woven through Brendan.  Once we had that, of course we wanted to tell the story.”

“The Shamrock Spitfire” is available on VOD, DVD, and digital release March 12