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Aviation History
1953
1953 - 1323.PDF
The Swift FA at Supermarine's Chilbolton airfield, in Hampshire, prior to its departure for Libya on September 22nd to attack the world's speed record. SIRES OF THE SWIFT PART III. MACHINES AND MEN By Jeffrey Quill, O.B.E., A.F.C. I T was suggested that I should write something about some of the more interesting aeroplanes with which I was concerned during the eleven-odd years that I flew for Supermarines. I find this difficult because, ever since I learnt to fly twenty-two years ago, I have found nearly every aeroplane of absorbing interest. However, it is clear that I must start with the prototype Spit fire, K.5054. I first flew this machine on March 26th, 1936, quite soon after its first flight which had been made by J. Summers. It is entered in my log simply as "Supermarine Fighter K.5054." I was 24 years old and had done about 1,300 hours flying; and from that day onwards I, with my friend the late George Pickering, did the bulk of the development testing on this machine, apart from what was done at Martlesham. In those days Bulldogs were still in service in the R.A.F., the Gaunt let was their newest fighter; the Gladiator was perhaps just about to go into service and there were still Virginias flying about. The prototype Hurricane had been flying at Brooklands since the previous November. A monoplane fighter was something of a novelty anyway, but a fighter with the performance of K.5054 was a good deal more than that in those days. The Hurricane was the only aeroplane in the world which approached anywhere near it, for the Americans didn't seem to take fighter development very seriously and the German Me 109 was powered with an engine of, speaking from memory, only about 600 b.h.p. as against the 1,100 b.h.p. of the Merlin III. Apart from anything else, therefore, flying the Spitfire was the greatest possible fun and I have seldom enjoyed anything so much as the two years during which we flew K.5054 whilst awaiting the emergence of the first production machine in May, 1938. The impression has once or twice been given that the Spitfire was "right, from the word go." This is not strictly correct. We had our full share of troubles, headaches and frights during that period and it was all full of interest. I personally was keenly aware of the privilege of working for R. J. Mitchell. But it would need a book to record all this. One point of interest is that K.5054 was, I mink, one of the first aeroplanes to be fitted with an anti-spin parachute. It had shown up badly in the spinning calculations at R.A.E. and there was thus a certain amount of gloom about the prospects for the actual spinning tests. The cable of the anti-spin parachute was attached to the fuselage_ just forward of the fin; it was then led along the outside of the fuselage, secured by sticky tape, and the parachute itself stowed in the cockpit. . The idea was that, if in trouble, one opened the canopy, seized a handful of parachute and flung it over the side—preferably the appropriate side. I well remember the first spin, entered at 20,000 feet from a strangely silent stall with the big two-bladed wooden airscrew ticking over very, very slowly. But eight years elapsed before I actually had to use an anti-spin parachute (in a Seafire with an experimental rudder), arid it broke my leg—but that is another story. The only difficulty we had with the proto type was persuading the R.A.E. that the spin recovery characteris tics were, in fact, perfect. It seemed they had no business to be, but they were. . ., _ . , „ c In 1936 Supermarine was still primarily a flying-boat farm. George Pickering was the flying-boat pilot and one of the very best I had practically never seen a flying-boat and I was lucky to have him to teach me to fly them. Like the true expert that he was he made no mystery about it, and very soon I was happily splashing about in Walruses, Stranraers and an occasional Scapa. The Walrus was one of the most remarkable aeroplanes ever built. There are those who have flown them and those who have not, and it is idle for the former to try to explain matters to the latter. The Walrus did an incredible variety of jobs and could operate in very heavy seas. In the air they clattered along in the course of their various duties, swinging gently from side to side with a pendulous motion and keeping up a steady directional oscillation. If the Walrus' flight characteristics were measured and recorded by modern methods the man who wrote AP.970 would probably have a heart attack. It was perhaps one of the best and most useful aeroplanes ever produced. The main story of the development of the Spitfire during its eleven years of production life has been told elsewhere. From the flight development point of view the problem was primarily a race to maintain and improve the handling characteristics in the face of rapidly increasing speed, all-up weight, power, airscrew solidity and operating altitudes, not to mention diversity of operational roles and ever increasing quantities and sizes of "external stores." All modifications and alterations made in the interests of handling had to be such as could be developed quickly and incorporated in the production line without slowing the ever-increasing tempo of production. More often dian not the obvious aerodynamic answer had to be abandoned because it meant too radical a change to be practical from die production/time viewpoint, and some sort of aero dynamic "fiddle" adopted instead. On the whole, the inevitable conflict of interest between "design" and "production" was resolved by Supermarines as well and as successfully, I think, as was humanly possible. But it meant some give-and-take on all sides and some of the "give" inevitably had to be on the "handling" side. It was none-the-less galling, on occasions, to encounter people whose sole pre-occupation in life was the study of flight characteristics and to be told something like "what you want to do with the Spitfire Mark so-and-so is to double the tailplane area." As if we didn't know. I always thought the best of the Spitfires for handling were the later Mark VIIIs with standard wing tips and Merlin 66 engine, and perhaps the worst was the Mark 21. However this latter machine had an outstanding performance as a combat aeroplane, having an unrivalled combination of speed, climb and turnirfg circle. But by that stage of the war the emphasis was on air-to-ground fighter operations, and air-to-air combat perform ance, such as possessed by the Spitfire 21, had less significance then than it had in, say, 1940, '41 and '42. This, incidentally, is a point frequently overlooked. The basis of air superiority in any theatre in daylight is the possession of fighters which can out- climb, out-turn, outstrip and out-dive the fighters of the enemy, as well as their bombers. Only then (or in the case of the virtual collapse of enemy air opposition due to internal reasons) can a tactical air force operate with reasonable impunity against ground targets. At the beginning of any war such a collapse cannot be expected; therefore control of the air must be fought for in the air and fighters must possess real combat performance, at almost any cost. However, there were only a comparatively few Mark 21's pro duced and the handling was put right on the Marks 22 and 24 with very little sacrifice of performance. But to return to the original theme. The Spitfire floatplane
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