Supermarine Spitfire
The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft that was used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. It was the only British fighter produced continuously throughout the war. The Spitfire remains popular among enthusiasts. Approximately 60 remain airworthy as of 2025, and many more are static exhibits in aviation museums throughout the world. Five airworthy aircraft are also part of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, which is a squadron in the RAF. The BBMF is used at air shows.
The Spitfire was a short-range, high-performance interceptor aircraft designed by R. J. Mitchell, chief designer at Supermarine Aviation Works, which operated as a subsidiary of Vickers-Armstrong from 1928. Mitchell modified the Spitfire's distinctive elliptical wing with innovative sunken rivets to have the thinnest possible cross-section, achieving a potential top speed greater than that of several contemporary fighter aircraft, including the Hawker Hurricane. Mitchell continued to refine the design until his death from cancer in 1937, whereupon his colleague Joseph Smith took over as chief designer.
Smith oversaw the Spitfire's development through many variants, from the Mk 1 to the Rolls-Royce Griffon-engined Mk 24, using several wing configurations and guns. The original airframe was designed to be powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine producing 1,030 hp. It was strong enough and adaptable enough to use increasingly powerful Merlins, and in later marks, Rolls-Royce Griffon engines producing up to 2,340 hp. As a result, the Spitfire's performance and capabilities improved over the course of its service life.
During the Battle of Britain, the more numerous Hurricane flew more sorties resisting the Luftwaffe, but the Spitfire captured the public's imagination, in part because the Spitfire was generally a better fighter aircraft than the Hurricane. Spitfire units had a lower attrition rate and a higher victory-to-loss ratio than Hurricanes, most likely due to the Spitfire's higher performance. During the battle, Spitfires generally engaged Luftwaffe fighters—mainly Messerschmitt Bf 109E–series aircraft, which were a close match for them.
After the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire superseded the Hurricane as the principal aircraft of RAF Fighter Command, and it was used in the European, Mediterranean, Pacific, and South-East Asian theatres.
Much loved by its pilots, the Spitfire operated in several roles, including interceptor, photo-reconnaissance, fighter-bomber, and trainer, and it continued to do so until the 1950s. The Seafire was an aircraft carrier–based adaptation of the Spitfire, used in the Fleet Air Arm from 1942 until the mid-1950s.
Development and production
Origins
In 1931, the Air Ministry released specification F7/30, calling for a modern fighter capable of a flying speed of to replace the Gloster Gauntlet biplane. R. J. Mitchell designed the Supermarine Type 224 to fill this role in competition with the Blackburn F.3 and Westland F.7/30 and privately funded designs from Gloster. The 224 was an open-cockpit monoplane with bulky gull wings and a large, fixed, spatted undercarriage powered by the, evaporatively cooled Rolls-Royce Goshawk engine. It made its first flight in February 1934. Of the seven designs tendered to F7/30, the Gloster Gladiator biplane was accepted for service.The Type 224 was a big disappointment to Mitchell and his design team, who immediately embarked on a series of "cleaned-up" designs, using their experience with the Schneider Trophy seaplanes as a starting point. This led to the Type 300, with retractable undercarriage and a wingspan reduced by. This design was submitted to the Air Ministry in July 1934, but was not accepted. It then went through a series of changes, including the incorporation of an enclosed cockpit, oxygen-breathing apparatus, smaller and thinner wings, and the newly developed, more powerful Rolls-Royce PV XII V-12 engine, which was later named the "Merlin". In November 1934, Mitchell, with the backing of Supermarine's owner Vickers-Armstrong, started detailed design work on this refined version of the Type 300.
On 1 December 1934, the Air Ministry issued contract AM 361140/34, providing £10,000 for the construction of Mitchell's improved Type 300 design. In April 1935 Ralph Sorley spoke to Mitchell about the new specification F10/35 which called for armament of at least six and preferably eight guns while at the same time removing bomb carry requirement and reducing fuel capacity. Mitchell foresaw no problem adding the guns and welcomed the reduction which would reduce weight. A specification for an eight-gun fighter, F5/34 had come from a recommendation by Squadron Leader Ralph Sorley of the Operational Requirements section at the Air Ministry. In the redesign the change was made from Vickers machine guns to.303 in, and the fuel tankage dropped to 75 gallons from 94.
On 5 March 1936, the prototype, fitted with a fine-pitch propeller to give more power for take-off, took off on its first flight from Eastleigh Aerodrome. At the controls was Captain Joseph "Mutt" Summers, chief test pilot for Vickers, who is quoted as saying, "don't touch anything" on landing. This eight-minute flight came four months after the maiden flight of the contemporary Hurricane.
K5054 was fitted with a new propeller, and Summers flew the aircraft on 10 March 1936; during this flight, the undercarriage was retracted for the first time. After the fourth flight, a new engine was fitted, and Summers left the test flying to his assistants, Jeffrey Quill and George Pickering. They soon discovered that the Spitfire was a very capable aircraft, but not perfect. The rudder was oversensitive, and the top speed was just 330 mph, little faster than Sydney Camm's new Merlin-powered Hurricane. A new and better-shaped, two-bladed, wooden propeller allowed the Spitfire to reach 348 mph in level flight in mid-May, when Summers flew K5054 to RAF Martlesham Heath and handed the aircraft over to Squadron Leader Anderson of the Aeroplane & Armament Experimental Establishment. Here, Flight Lieutenant Humphrey Edwardes-Jones took over the prototype for the RAF. He had been given orders to fly the aircraft and then to make his report to the Air Ministry on landing. Edwardes-Jones' report was positive; his only request was that the Spitfire be equipped with an undercarriage position indicator. A week later, on 3 June 1936, the Air Ministry placed an order for 310 Spitfires, at a cost of £1,395,000. before the A&AEE had issued any formal report. Interim reports were later issued on a piecemeal basis.
Initial production
The British public first saw the Spitfire at the RAF Hendon air display on Saturday 27 June 1936. Although full-scale production was supposed to begin immediately, numerous problems could not be overcome for some time, and the first production Spitfire, K9787, did not roll off the Woolston, Southampton assembly line until mid-1938.In February 1936, the director of Vickers-Armstrong's, Sir Robert MacLean guaranteed production of five aircraft a week, beginning 15 months after an order was placed. On 3 June 1936, the Air Ministry placed an order for 310 aircraft. Full-scale production of the Spitfire began at Supermarine's facility in Woolston, but the order clearly could not be completed in the 15 months promised. Supermarine was a small company, already busy building Walrus and Stranraer flying boats, and Vickers was busy building Wellington bombers. The initial solution was to subcontract the work. Although outside contractors were supposed to be involved in manufacturing many important Spitfire components, especially the wings, Vickers-Armstrong's was reluctant to see the Spitfire being manufactured by outside concerns, and was slow to release the necessary blueprints and subcomponents.
As a result of the delays in getting the Spitfire into full production, the Air Ministry put forward a plan that its production be stopped after the initial order for 310, after which Supermarine would build Bristol Beaufighters. The managements of Supermarine and Vickers were able to convince the Air Ministry that production problems could be overcome, and a further order was placed for 200 Spitfires on 24 March 1938. The two orders covered the K, L, and N prefix serial numbers.
The first production Spitfire came off the assembly line in mid-1938 and was flown by Jeffrey Quill on 15 May 1938, almost 24 months after the initial order. The final cost of the first 310 aircraft, after delays and increased programme costs, came to £1,870,242 or £1,533 more per aircraft than originally estimated. A production aircraft cost about £9,500. The most expensive components were the hand-fabricated and finished fuselage at roughly £2,500, then the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine at £2,000, followed by the wings at £1,800 a pair, guns and undercarriage, both at £800 each, and the propeller at £350.
Manufacturing at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham
In 1935, the Air Ministry approached Morris Motors Limited to ask how quickly their Cowley plant could be turned to aircraft production. In 1936, this informal request for major manufacturing facilities was replaced by a formal scheme, known as the shadow factory plan, to boost British aircraft production capacity under the leadership of Herbert Austin. He was given the task of building nine new factories, and to supplement the British car-manufacturing industry by either adding to overall capacity or increasing the potential for reorganisation to produce aircraft and their engines.In 1938, construction began on the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory, next to the aerodrome, and the installation of the most modern machine tools then available began two months after work started on the site. Although Morris Motors, under Lord Nuffield, who was an expert in mass motor-vehicle construction, managed and equipped the factory, it was funded by the government. By the beginning of 1939, the factory's original estimated cost of £2,000,000 had more than doubled, and even as the first Spitfires were being built in June 1940, the factory was still incomplete, and suffering from personnel problems. The Spitfire's stressed-skin construction required precision engineering skills and techniques that were beyond the capabilities of the local labour force, and some time was required to retrain them. Difficulties arose with management, who ignored Supermarine's tooling and drawings in favour of their own, and the workforce continually threatened strikes or "slow downs" until their demands for higher wages were met.
In spite of promises that the factory would be producing 60 per week starting in April, by May 1940, Castle Bromwich had not yet built its first Spitfire. On 17 May, Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook telephoned Lord Nuffield and manoeuvred him into handing over control of the Castle Bromwich plant to his ministry. Beaverbrook immediately sent in experienced management staff and workers from Supermarine, and gave control of the factory to Vickers-Armstrong's. Although resolving the problems took time, in June 1940, 10 Mk IIs were built; 23 rolled out in July, 37 in August, and 56 in September. By the time production ended at Castle Bromwich in June 1945, a total of 12,129 Spitfires, comprising 921 Mk IIs, 4,489 Mk Vs, 5,665 Mk IXs, and 1,054 Mk XVIs had been built.