A web log, an æthereal scrap-book if you will, with a somewhat vintage flavour. News items, occurrences, experiences, thoughts and opinions related to Victoriana through to Fifties Americana can all be found here.
Another favourite subject of mine now; an aircraft from a different war, which has featured on these pages many times before - the Supermarine Spitfire.
In this case it is the fascinating and largely untold story of the secret production lines set up in and around the city of Salisbury in Wiltshire following the bombing of the Supermarine's main factory in Southampton at the height of the Battle of Britain. While that facility recovered from the attentions of the Luftwaffe, nearly a dozen top secret production sites were being hurriedly established in such unlikely locations as motor garages, bus depots, sheds, back gardens - even hotels and bedrooms for a variety of smaller parts. These small-scale assembly lines were nevertheless able take the pressure off the remaining factory in Castle Bromwich in the Midlands and went on to produce over 10,000 Spitfires, a frankly amazing achievement made all the more so by the fact that the majority of the workers were unskilled locals - young women, boys and older men overseen by just a few skilled engineers.
This astounding feat has only really come to light in the last four years - having remained mostly forgotten in the intervening eight decades - thanks to the hard work of a local charity and historians, following the creation of a documentary by a Salisbury-based filmmaker. Featuring interviews with surviving members of the workforce (whose admirably stoic reticence in respecting the secrecy surrounding the work - much like the Bletchley Park codebreakers - meant that even their own family members were unaware of their involvement until the documentary came out) the Secret Spitfires film was a welcome and long-overdue acknowledgement of the incredible efforts and sacrifices made by the people of Salisbury during some of the darkest days of the Second World War.
Inspired by this documentary local residents set up a charity in June 2019 with the aim of creating a lasting memorial to these sterling workers and their hidden accomplishments in the form of a replica Spitfire to be placed at one of the shadow factory's sites, now part of Salisbury Rugby Club. I'm delighted to see that in the intervening year enough money was raised to make it a reality and last month the full-scale fibreglass Spit was completed at the specialist manufacturers in Norfolk. It now awaits its final erection on the site in Castle Street, Salisbury, (when Covid permits) which will also serve as the terminus of a splendid-sounding tourist trail complete with blue plaques at other known locations of the factories in the city area.
Once again this is a welcome example of civic pride and recognition of an important aspect of local [WW2] history and one I am very pleased has come to fruition. It certainly sounds as though it will prove of great interest to both the people of Salisbury, for whom this stirring story of their townsfolks' role in the war effort will be a new and exciting one to them, as well as students of Second World War history (myself included) and I congratulate everyone involved in seeing it through successfully.
Staying with the 1930s aviation theme in this post we move from one end of the aeronautical speed spectrum to the other as we return to one of my most favourite aircraft of the period - the Supermarine Schneider Trophy racing aeroplanes.
I wrote about the Schneider Trophy in previous posts on the anniversaries of the final 1931 race and the Spitfire's 1936 maiden flight, as well as a detailed article for In Retrospect magazine. I had intended to save this post specially for when I was to be at the mercy of the quacks again but that is still up in the air and as the original articles below date back to the beginning of the year I felt that, with the advent of this latest welcome news, it was about time I got down to blogging about this excellent project.
As these articles explain, something else that hopefully will soon be up in the air (and which I am looking far more forward to!) is a full-size replica of the 1927 Schneider Trophy-winning British entry, the Supermarine S.5, thanks to the efforts of a team of aeronautical engineers and Schneider Trophy enthusiasts. Leading the project is professional pilot Will Hosie, whose interest in the famous speed contest and the S.5 in particular is obviously a personal one seeing as his late father Bill once owned an earlier replica of that aircraft in the 1980s (and in which Bill Hosie sadly lost his life following a catastrophic crash off the coast of Falmouth, Cornwall, in May 1987). This first replica - also full-size - first flew in 1975 and was badly damaged in a take-off crash seven years later in 1982, at which point it passed into the ownership of the Hosie family.
Now the son Will Hosie and his team look well on the way to creating a new S.5 replica, with enough funding having come in for work to have begun on building the floats and drawings in place for the rest. While there is still a long way to go, both in terms of construction and financing, the proposed timescale - first flight in 2023 - seems eminently achievable whilst the call for investors and sponsors is a sensible one and with any luck will inspire a good many well-placed individuals and organisations to get on board. One hopes that certain museums, historical trusts et cetera will take an interest which could in turn filter down into schools and local workshops as has been seen with other similar projects. The aim of displaying the finished aircraft at a total of 20 events (10 airshows and 10 static displays) around the world in time for the 100th anniversary of the 1927 Schneider Trophy is again an entirely laudable and realistic goal. It is moreover extremely important that the story of the Schneider Trophy and the S.5's place within it is kept alive and propagated for future generations, both for the thrilling contest it was and its place in the history of the development of the Spitfire. To be able to see once again an example of these incredible pieces of engineering in the air will be an amazing treat, especially since so few of the original Supermarine S-series seaplanes survived (and none in flying condition).
The S.4 of 1925 was the first of Mitchell's revolutionary, streamlined monoplane designs to see the light of day. Being such a radical departure from previous efforts only one example was produced, taking its place alongside a pair of less advanced Gloster III biplanes for the 1925 race in Baltimore, U.S.A. (having first raised the British and world seaplane speed records to 226 miles per hour during a test run at Southampton in September 1925). Unfortunately during a subsequent test run at Baltimore's Bay Shore Park the pilot, Henri Biard, lost control at 200 feet after encountering heavy wing vibration and sideslipped into the water, wrecking the all-wood S.4 but managing to walk away with only two broken ribs.
Two years later and Mitchell and his team had taken what they'd learnt from the S.4 and created the S.5, three examples of which - serial numbers N219, N220 and N221 - were produced for the 1927 contest, which was to take place in Venice, Italy. Only two - N219 and N220 - would take part in the race, with N220 flown by Flt. Lt. Sidney Webster winning at an average speed of 281.65mph and N219 piloted by Flt. Lt. O. E. Worsley coming second at an average of 273.07mph. The two S.5's had wrested the Schneider Trophy from Italy and the next contest would take place at Calshot, Southampton, in 1929.
A year later in 1928, as part of the preparations for the 1929 race, Flt. Lt. Samuel 'Kink' Kinkead was selected to make an attempt on the world air speed record that had been set by the Italians during the '27 race. On the 12th March 1928, flying the reserve N221, Kinkead was suddenly seen to nosedive at high speed straight into the Solent. The aircraft was totally destroyed and 'Kink' was killed instantly. Although the wreckage and the body were both recovered the cause of the crash has never been satisfactorily explained.
Distraught but undaunted the remaining members of the RAF High Speed Flight pushed ahead in readiness for the 1929 contest. Mitchell and Supermarine produced the S.6, an advancement over the S.5 with its all-metal construction and new Rolls-Royce R engine, and two of these - N247 and N248 - were built for the race.
S.6 N247, piloted by Flt. Lt. Richard Waghorn, went on to win the 1929 event at an average speed of 328.63mph, with S.5 N219 finishing a creditable third in the hands of Flt. Lt. d'Arcy Greig (whose autobiography My Flying Years I can heartily recommend) and Britain was only one contest away from claiming the Schneider Trophy in perpetuity.
For the 1931 event, due to time constraints as a result of financial difficulties and a lack of political will, the two S.6s from the 1929 contest were redesigned with new floats, extra radiators and revised control surfaces and designated S.6A, while Mitchell worked on shoehorning in a more powerful version of the Rolls-Royce R engine into the existing airframe design which resulted in the building of two further examples, to be called the S.6B.
Despite there being no competition for the 1931 race (all other nations having withdrawn for various reasons) the High Speed Flight were determined to put on a show for the capacity crowd lining the banks of the Solent and ensure that the world speed record - and thus the Schneider Trophy - would be held by Britain. As such they threw everything they had into the contest - the two new S.6Bs S1595 and S1596, the S.6As N247 and N248, plus the surviving S.5s N219 and N220. The S.5s by this time were used only for practice runs, with the plan being that S.6B S1595 would be the aircraft to fly the race and make the record attempt while the two older S.6As would be kept in reserve. While training for the race was still underway S.6A N247 crashed on takeoff, killing the pilot Lt. G. L. Brinton, RN, leaving only N248 as the sole surviving S.6A. Despite this setback the race went off as planned, Flt. Lt. John Boothman taking S.6B S1595 to a record-breaking 340.08mph on the 13th September as part of the final 1931 contest. The other S.6B S1596 capsized and sank with Flt. Lt. George Stainforth at the controls during practice for the world speed record but both pilot and aircraft survived and two weeks later Stainforth, in S.6B S1595, raised the WSR yet again to 407.5mph.
Thus of the eight S-series seaplanes designed and built by R. J. Mitchell and Supermarine over the course of 6 years, by the end of 1931 three had been lost to accidents leaving only two S.5s, a single S.6A and both the S.6Bs extant. Designed from the outset as high-performance racing aeroplanes intended for a specific, continually evolving contest their long-term survival was always going to be in question. The highly-stressed Napier Lion and Rolls-Royce R engines required a complete strip-down and overhaul after every single run (literally a matter of hours) and the strains put on the airframe by the incredible speeds and high-g turns of the courses meant that keeping any of them in an airworthy condition beyond the absolute limit of their use would have been an extreme engineering and economic challenge.
As such only two Supermarine aircraft from that fantastic era of seaplane racing survive to this day, the fate of the others (including both the S.5s) being lost to the mists of time. The winning S.6B S1595 was retired immediately after the 1931 race and donated to the London Science Museum, where it remains today in unrestored condition. S.6A N248 was displayed at Southampton Royal Pier well into the 1960s (where it was actually misidentified as S.6B S1596) before being moved to the Solent Sky museum (previously the Southampton Hall of Aviation) in Southampton, where it has since been restored and now sits proudly among the exhibits - often being wheeled out for special events such as the Goodwood Revival.
While normally one would be sad to see these two survivors hanging in museums rather than soaring through the sky as their maker intended, for the reasons mentioned above - not to mention their incredible rarity value - this is one instance where I am happy to just see them on static display. It is for this reason as much as any that Mr Hosie's project is so important and, while it may not be able to create quite the same thrill of speed and excitement of the original 12-cylinder-engined thoroughbreds, it will be wonderful to see a representation of these marvellous aircraft take to the skies after almost 100 years and hopefully introduce a whole new generation to this exciting chapter in British aviation history. I will be following the progress of this project extremely closely and very much look forward to seeing it come to fruition, when we will once again see an S.5 in the air and on the water.
Spitfire flight over Southampton marks 80th anniversary Can it really have been five years since I last wrote about the anniversary of the Supermarine Spitfire's first flight?! Well, here we are again, and now even more unbelievably this beautiful and historic aircraft - perhaps the greatest aeroplane ever built - is an incredible 80 years old. To celebrate this remarkable milestone two Spitfires have once again performed flypasts over the Solent on the Hampshire coastline, taking in all the sites that played a part in this fantastic machine's conception - the former Supermarine factory in Southampton where the Spitfire was designed and built, Southampton Aerodrome from which the prototype K5054 took off on that March day eight decades ago, and the grave of its creator, R.J. Mitchell.
It would be going over old ground for me to tell (briefly) the story of the Spitfire's conception, so suffice it to say it's good to see this anniversary marked and the reverence in which this aircraft is still held. One would have hoped for slightly more in the way of celebration perhaps, but maybe we'll have to wait for the 90th or 100th anniversaries to see something really special. With luck we'll see these and many more; let's hope that the 50-odd airworthy examples will continue to be so for decades to come - the ultimate testament to this glorious piece of aviation design.
While work continues to locate and unearth the potential squadron of Spitfires
buried in Burma, another example has rejoined the airworthy ranks thanks to the tireless (and less reported) efforts of a group of volunteers.
Spitfire TE311 is of a similar vintage to those supposedly languishing beneath the Burmese jungle, being also a late model Griffon-engined MkXVI. Built in 1945, however, it was just too late to see action and spent the following nine years as a training/display aircraft before being largely forgotten about.
Now after several years of hard work on the part of some RAF engineers and enthusiasts and with funds raised by the Lincolnshire Lancaster Association (try saying that five times through quick!) TE311 returned to the skies yesterday for what by all accounts was a very successful flight - as you can see!
It bodes well for the however-many Spitfires waiting to be discovered half a world away that there are still so many enthusiasts and experts willing to lend their time in the restoration of one of these marvellous machines. Even if the Burma Spits are found to be in poor condition chances are at least some of them will be salvageable and it is people like these who will hopefully perform the same magic that was worked on TE311.
Both they and the wider public will soon get many chances to see first-hand the fruits of their labours as this newly-restored aeroplane is now on its way to join a very special outfit - no less than the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, where it will become the display's sixth operational Spitfire.
What with the Burma Spitfires and now this MkXIV returning to the skies where she belongs 2012 looks to have been a vintage year for the venerable Spit. Whether singly or by the dozen the increase in the aircraft's population is always welcome and proof of this beautiful machine's enduring popularity and longevity, which has been thoroughly well-earned.
Back in April I did a post about the revelation that twenty-odd Supermarine Spitfires were believed to be lying buried beneath a jungle in Burma, probably still mint and unbuilt in their packing cases having only just been unloaded from the boat that brought them from England, amid fears of a Japanese counter offensive.
Supermarine Spitfire XIV, 1944
The proof of their existence and the attempt to pinpoint them with a view to bringing some if not all back to the UK - decades of work for Lincolnshire man David Cundall - was given a huge fillip by the recent changes in the Burmese government, helped along by a visit from and discussions with British Prime Minister David Cameron. A tentative agreement was made to allow Mr Cundall to begin preparations to unearth the Spits.
Now it appears that those preparations are very nearly complete as the final bit of paperwork is signed and work could be under way before the end of the month! Even more welcome is the news that the initial number of 20 airframes is now thought to be on the conservative side and that there may in fact be as many as sixty aeroplanes hidden under the Burma soil! That's very nearly twice as many as currently exist (in airworthy condition) worldwide!
Supermarine Spitfire FR Mk XIV, 1944
The general consensus is that these buried Spitfires are the Mark XIV example with the later Rolls-Royce Griffon engine, of the type which was beginning to make its way to the Far East theatre by 1945, rather than the earlier Merlin-engined Mark VIII that had been the more prevalent version up until that point. If so it will be all the better as there are currently fewer extant Griffon-engined Spits then there are Merlins, so if these aircraft do exist it will do the Griffon population a lot of good!
One hopes against hope that Mr Cundall and his team are at least partially successful and do find something, even if it is fewer than 20 (never mind sixty) Spitfires - and even if they are in poor condition (one reads stories about time capsules buried for several decades in supposedly watertight containers being dug up at a later date with the contents in various states of disintegration, so there's always a chance of that happening with airframes sitting beneath tropical ground for 70 years greased paper or no greased paper) - otherwise it will all be a dreadful disappointment for everyone. I'm sure there must be a high level of certainty for the scheme to have got this far, though, and I can't wait to see the results!
Supermarine Spitfire F Mk XIV, May 1945
Even so the whole thing still sounds almost too good to be true and I shan't honestly be able to believe it until the first one comes out of the ground. This has all the potential to be an unprecedented discovery not only in historical aviation terms but in the history of both Britain and Burma. The idea to split the recovered airframes between the two countries sounds eminently fair and with maybe as many as 60 there would certainly be enough to go around!
I will be watching the progress of this with much interest with the hope that the full scale of this discovery can be realised. Sixty more Spitfires in the world? Yes please with knobs on!
Many good things look to be coming out of the recent political shift taking place in Burma and the diplomatic visit from the Prime Minister a few days ago. One of the more minor results - small in the grand scheme of things but of great interest to the likes of you and me - is the potential repatriation of no less than 20 Supermarine Spitfires that were buried in the Burmese jungle at the end of the Second World War.
That's right - a whole squadron-worth of Spitfires that were shipped out to the RAF in the Far East early in 1945 currently lie under several feet of Burmese soil at the disused airfield from where they would have flown in the last months of the war. Except they never did. They never even made it out of their crates to be reassembled and military aviation historians who are helping to investigate the possibility of their recovery believe that they will be waxed, greased, wrapped and therefore perhaps in the same condition as when they came off the boat in 1945. If true, it will certainly make restoration that much easier!
These twenty Spits - almost half as many as are currently airworthy worldwide - never saw action as it was feared, even as late as July 1945, that a Japanese invasion of Burma was being planned. Rather than let valuable war materiél fall into enemy hands it was decided to bury them as they were. A matter of weeks later the atomic bombs ended the war and the aeroplanes have remained undisturbed ever since.
The thought of increasing the number of flyable Spits by almost 50% sounds almost too good to be true - all the more so given the time-capsulesque nature of this discovery. By the sounds of it things seem to be moving fast, though, and these twenty lost Spitfires - probably Mark VIIIs, which were among the most numerous variants in the Pacific theatre at the time - could be back in the country and undergoing well-deserved restoration very soon.
I touched upon the Schneider Trophy air races of the 1920s and early Thirties back in March when the Spitfire, the ultimate descendant of the Supermarine S-series seaplanes that took part in them, celebrated it's 75th anniversary.
Yesterday, however, marked the 80th anniversary of the last Schneider Trophy race which was held at Southampton Water in Hampshire and was won for the third time in succession by Great Britain. This feat allowed the British team to keep the trophy for all time and signalled the end of the competition. The Supermarine S.6B that won did so at a record-breaking speed of 379mph, later raising it again to 407mph and as has been said setting the template for the famous Spitfire fighter. The original Schneider Trophy and the S.6B now both reside in the London Science Museum.
As many as half a million people crowded on to the beaches around the Solent to watch the 1931 race and what that must have been like one can only imagine. That the idea behind the Schneider Trophy - of advancing the field of aeronautical engineering - was so widely embraced not only by the aircraft manufacturers but also by the general population of no less than 4 nations (Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States all took part) shows how much aviation enthralled people during that period. I've featured it before but footage of the 1929 event bears reshowing; the roar of the Rolls-Royce and Napier engines, the sheer speed of the aircraft and the hundreds of thousands of spectators cheering them on is something that sadly may never be recaptured.
Today, as the accompanying article explains, two modern seaplanes (and the death of the seaplane has been greatly exaggerated, by the way!) have flown the same course as in 1931 by way of commemoration. It seems a small act in comparison to the majesty of the original races and the important part they played in eventually ensuring the continued existence of this country, but at least they are being remembered in some fashion. We may never be able to recreate the evocative images and thrills associated with the Schneider Trophy races but this certainly gives us a chance to look back and marvel at those magnificent men (pilots and designers) and their flying machines who went before.
Today marks a special date in the history of aviation and, ultimately, the history of this country. On the 5th of March 1936 at Eastleigh Aerodrome, Hampshire (now Southampton Airport) a single-engined, low-wing monoplane fighter prototype flew for the first time. That aeroplane, designated Type 300, became the Supermarine Spitfire - designer R. J. Mitchell's magnum opus and the aircraft that went on to define and ultimately help win the Second World War in the air.
The Spitfire can trace its roots back to the successful Supermarine S.5 and S.6/S.6B seaplanes that won the Schneider Trophy in 1927, 1929 and 1931. Here were the first examples of Mitchell's streamlined, one-piece designs complete with (from the S.6 onwards) Rolls-Royce engines, which would eventually lead to the Spitfire. Together with the RAF's first low-wing monoplane fighter the Hawker Hurricane, which pre-dated it by a matter of 5 months, the Spitfire became the backbone of Fighter Command in World War Two and has forever cemented itself in our nation's consciousness.
As part of the celebrations the "Grace" Spitfire performed a flypast over Southampton, where Supermarine was based, and a statue has been commissioned as a permanent memorial.
But the most fitting tribute to this enduring aircraft are the 44 or so (out of total 22,500 manufactured) that still fly and perform at airshows around the world. Perhaps more than any other aeroplane it has earned an abiding glamour that will, with luck, ensure it remains at the forefront of our cultural heritage for another 75 years. In the meantime, Happy Birthday Spitfire!
A lesser-known talent of noted aeroplane designer R. J. Mitchell is reported here, but perhaps it should not come as too much of a surprise that the man who came up with what many say is the greatest fighter aircraft (not to mention myriad other successful designs) should have been pretty handy behind the stick himself.
Nevertheless the rarity of such an item connected to Mitchell coming to light after all these years is certainly worthy of comment and I'm pleased to see it find its way into a museum where it can be properly appreciated and help to further people's awareness of this amazing man and his extraordinary achievements. As the article mentions his life was sadly cut short due to cancer and beyond his work at Supermarine very little is known about him as he obviously valued his privacy. However he seems to have been a man who was intent on adding to his knowledge and experience, even in the face of a fatal illness, almost right up to the end of his life and it wouldn't surprise me if this isn't the last piece of R. J. Mitchell memorabilia that comes to light.
