SPITFIRE

THE FEW AND THE FEWERNever in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few, said Winston Churchill. He was of course, speaking of the fighter pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain of World War II, which officially began on 10th July and, in essence, finished on 31st October 1940. No one would argue with the wisdom and the sentiments of those words, there is no doubt that battle was the turning point of the war as far as Britain was concerned in those early years. It was a crucial battle and it was fought with valour and gallantry.

Initially the Germans had made available some 1,300 bombers and dive-bombers and 1,200 fighters, which they based in an arc around England from Norway to the Cherbourg Peninsula in northern coastal France. In response, the British dispersed some 600 fighters to defend the country.

The British had the advantage of the most advanced and operationally adapted early warning radar system, which gave Fighter Command adequate notice to direct their fighter squadrons to the best advantage to repel the Luftwaffe bombing raids.

By August 1940 the Luftwaffe were launching bombing raids involving up to 1.500 aircraft a day, directing them against British airfields and radar stations.

The Luftwaffe bombers had relentlessly pounded Fighter Commands southern bases that formed a defensive shield around London, but in consequence, had themselves suffered serious losses of bombers and fighters. The British pilots had fought themselves almost to complete exhaustion.Whilst the German losses were considerably higher, Fighter Command losses were worrying. In the space of the fortnight from 24th August to 6th September, the RAF lost 103 pilots killed and 128 badly wounded which represented almost a quarter of available trained pilots. By the 3rd September, for the first time in the battle, Luftwaffe crews were returning to base reporting that they had encountered no opposition. Fighter Commands collapse looked imminent but a navigational error on 24th August by a few German bombers, brought about a dramatic change in German policy. The bombers had dropped some bombs on London and on the following night RAF Bomber Command retaliated by attacking Berlin. Hitler pressed Herman Goring into switching the main bombing offensive away from the airfields to London. General Hugo Sperrle opposed this believing that if the airfield attacks were continued for a few more days the Luftwaffe would achieve air superiority over the south of England, thus opening up the probability of an invasion. However, another Luftflotte commander, General Albert Kesselring thought that the RAF were about to relocate their fighters to safer bases to the north and west of London. His belief was that an assault on London would force the RAF to throw its last fighter reserves into the defence of the capital. Goring authorised the assault on London. This gave some respite to the RAF and they were able to recuperate. The main assault on London began at 3 p.m. on 7th September and lasted throughout the night. Six hundred and twenty five bombers pounded the London docks, escorted in daylight hours by 617 fighters. Four hundred and forty eight civilians were killed. That day the Luftwaffe lost 38 aircraft against 23 fighters of the RAF. The attacks continued and on the 11th September, for the first time in the battle, the RAF lost more aircraft than the Luftwaffe, losing 27 against 22. The attacks continued, then on the 15th September, the Luftwaffe sent 200 bombers against London in two waves. When the first wave attacked, the RAF had no more fighter squadrons in reserve. If the second wave had come immediately, the Hurricane and Spitfires would have been caught on the ground refuelling and rearming thus allowing the enemy to bomb unchallenged. As it was, the second wave attacked two hours later by which time the fighter squadrons were ready. One hundred and forty eight bombers got through to bomb London, but 56 were shot down and many more badly damaged. 15th September was to become Battle of Britain day, but to the Luftwaffe, 15th September was Black Sunday. Fighter Command lost 29 aircraft of which 22 were Hurricanes, but it was the day when the Luftwaffe lost air supremacy. The next day Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion, (the invasion of England), indefinitelyTowards the end of September dense cloud cover stretched over the British Isles and the Luftwaffes tactics underwent complete change. The large daylight formations were abandoned; instead, the Luftwaffe began to send over small groups of aircraft; they had clearly failed to achieve their objectives in daylight. From the beginning of November, the Luftwaffe began to step up its night attacks on London and other targets. The Battle of Britain had ended in victory for Fighter Command, although the ordeal of Britains cities was only just beginning.Of the 742 Spitfires delivered to the RAF between 1st July and 31st October 1940, 361 were lost and 352 damaged. Of the 1500 Hurricanes delivered in the same period, 565 were lost and 455 damaged. Five hundred and thirty seven young pilots lost their lives; such was the price of victory. The two fighter aircraft in which they flew, the Hurricane and the Spitfire, both became immortal in the heart of the British nation, but the photogenic Spitfire became the legend. The fact that the elegant, stressed metal-skinned Spitfire - which is generally regarded as the RAF fighter central to the Battle of Britain in 1940 - actually shot down far fewer German Luftwaffe aeroplanes than the sturdy, steel-tube and linen fabric covered Hurricane, is due to there being more Hurricane squadrons, and the type was better able to sustain battle damage. The Hurricane could be repaired and returned to operations in less time than the Spitfire.The Hurricane was armed with eight .303 calibre machine guns in its wings. In that version the British pilots shot down more than 1,500 Luftwaffe aircraft in their first year of war. All other British aircraft together barely exceeded that amount. By the end of the Battle of Britain, the RAF had lost more than 900 aircraft but had shot down more than 1,700 German aircraft.Never was so much owed to so few were indeed appropriate words, Churchill was of course lauding the pilots of those aircraft. Brave and courageous men these were, but should praise and gratitude end there?The Air MachinesIn October 1931, the Air Ministry issued specification F7/30, which called for a single-seat monoplane day and night fighter with a speed of at least 195 mph, exceptional manoeuvrability, long endurance, low landing speed, high initial rate of climb and excellent all round view. It was to be armed with four 0.303in. Vickers guns and R/T equipment was to be fitted. F7/30 attempted to sweep aside the inadequacies of the contemporary generations of biplane fighters. Supermarine, Westland, Blackburn, Bristol and Gloster all tendered designs.Supermarine developed an all-metal monoplane, designated the Type 224, with a thick inverted gull wing and short cantilever fixed undercarriage. With the aid of wind tunnel testing and the knowledge that Reginald Mitchell had derived from his earlier Schneider race winning floatplanes, (the S4, S5, and S6B), the aircraft was built and flew on 19th February 1934. It was not a success, and neither were the designs from Supermarines competitors. The Air Ministry was left with no alternatives but to adopt the Gloster gladiator, another biplane. Mitchell continued modifications to the 224.In July 1934, the British Government released the first of its Extension Schemes designed to cope with the rise of Hitler in Germany and his avowed intention to re-arm and re-equip the Luftwaffe.In December 1934, the Air Ministry issued specification F37/34 for Mitchells redesigned prototype, designated by the company as the type 300 and later to become the Spitfire. Just prior to that, the Air Ministry issued another specification, F36/34, which covered a monoplane fighter under design by Sydney Camm, (later knighted), of Hawker, that aircraft was to become the Hurricane.The Hurricane was quickly designed and produced with the prototype taking to the air in December 1935. Seven months later, in June 1936, the Hurricane was the first monoplane to enter into service with the RAF. The Air Ministry put a great deal of pressure on the two manufacturers in view of the fact that Hitler had renounced the Treaty of Versailles, had introduced conscription and had unveiled the new Luftwaffe. During 1936, the Spanish Civil War began which became a test period for Europes military aircraft, none more than Willy Messerschmitts Bf109, later to be designated Me109By comparison the first flight of the Type 300 took place on 5th March 1936, two years before the first production Mk 1 Spitfire flew on 14th May 1938.The Hurricane was less agile and had a slightly lower performance than the Spitfire had but nevertheless, it was a rugged aircraft able to take and sustain more punishment than the Spitfire. The Hurricane - as had the Spitfire - began as a private venture until the Air Ministry formally recognised its potential and issued specification F36/34 to commission it. Sydney Camm and his production team worked quickly to produce the aircraft that would fill the gap between the old generation British fighter biplanes and the new generation German fighters. Within a year of the specification being issued the Hurricane prototype was airborne; it entered service seven months later in June 1936. Fighter Command was now better equipped and prepared in the event of conflict.The Hurricane was not only the first monoplane to enter military service, it also outnumbered the Spitfire by two to one at the time of the Battle of Britain in World War II. Throughout its history, it saw service as a night fighter in the Far East, a convoy protector at sea and served as the Sea Hurricane on aircraft carriers. Hurricanes served with air forces around the world and were produced in Canada in large numbers, fitted with American built Merlin engines. They also served in Russia the form of a modified two-seater tandem-cockpit ground attack aircraft. Over 14,000 Hurricanes were built, but the type soon disappeared from RAF service at the end of the war.The Hurricane design did not give it the versatility of structural changes and that limited its capabilities as war technology progressed. However, considering the technology available at the time of its design, Sydney Camm produced a first-class fighting machine which attained glory of the highest valour in the Battle of Britain, without which, the story of World War II may well have had a different ending. Possibly because production of the Hurricane had concentrated on meeting the targets for in-service availability with the potential war threat from Germany, the Spitfire was able to spend more time under development. This was illustrated by the two-year period from 1936 to 1938 where only one model of the aircraft, the prototype, was built. Such was the extent of the design changes, necessitated by the relatively new technology of an all-metal, monocoque fighter aeroplane. It is also likely that the development of Willy Messerschmitts all metal Bf109, which first flew in 1935, had some influence on the intense modification programme of the Spitfire.

The main development in RAF single-seat fighters evolved around the Spitfire which proved itself capable of remarkable improvements in performance, and, in many versions, it remained in large-scale production through to and beyond the wars end. The Spitfire II with a 1,175hp Rolls Royce Merlin VII went into service in August 1940 and was succeeded in February 1941 by the Spitfire V with a Merlin 45 of 1,440hp. The Mark V became available just as the Luftwaffe was putting the improved performance Me109F into service. A lot of the Spitfires design flexibility was down to the unique elliptical wing, but in addition, the all-metal structure allowed the entire airframe to carry the additional stress loads of the higher-powered Merlin versions as they developed.Whilst the original concept of the Spitfire was fashioned by Reginald Mitchell who was reaping the benefits of his experience with the high-speed Schneider Trophy winning racer monoplanes, he cannot take all the credit for the initial design concept. A close look at the German Heinkel He 70 of 1932 will show a remarkable similarity to the Spitfire. The He 70 was an elegantly designed monoplane of all-metal monocoque construction with an elliptical wing. Even though disadvantaged with a lowly rated 640hp engine, the craft still flew at 280mph. Nevertheless, for Mitchell to turn the concept into the basis of, perhaps, the worlds most famous fighter aeroplane is something of an achievement. His Chief Draughtsman, Joseph Smith, was responsible for the design of the entire airframe structure, which permitted the Spitfire to advance and keep abreast of the Luftwaffe developments.Yet airframes alone do not an aircraft make. No matter how good and how sleek is the design, without a suitable engine that will generate sufficient power, that airframe is all but worthless.

Both Rolls Royce Merlin and the Daimler Benz DB605A, essentially the two engines of the early war, centred on the V12 cylinder concept, previously fitted to expensive cars such as Rolls Royce, Packard, Cadillac and Mercedes Benz to improve the comfort of the ride generating less vibration than conventional in-line cylinder arrangements. This configuration allowed the engines and the mountings to be lighter and more reliable. However, there was a major difference in the design philosophy of those engines. Whilst the DB605A engine had a capacity of 35.7 litres, the Merlin was a mere 26 litres. The reason that the Merlin was directly comparable on power lay in its much greater reliance on supercharging, a technology in which Rolls Royce had become supreme. With this technology, Rolls Royce was able to continue to improve the performance of the Merlin throughout the war, taking it from approximately 1,000hp to 2,300hp without changing the basic geometrical form of the engine itself.By comparison, the Americans only had the Alison to compete but they had not developed the technology of superchargers or fuel injection. It was not until the Mustang had the Merlin fitted, that it too became impressive and the excellent aircraft that it was.

The Design Engineers

Reginald Mitchell joined Supermarine in 1916 at the age of 21 years, as assistant to Herbert Scott-Paine, the Chief Engineer and Designer. In 1919, Mitchell was made Chief Designer; quite an accomplishment for a 25 year old. In 1933, aged 42, Mitchell contracted cancer and succumbed to this in Vienna on 11th June 1937. He never saw his most famous creation enter service, but he at least died in the knowledge that it had been ordered for the RAF. The first production Spitfire flew on 14th May 1938.In his early years with Supermarine, Mitchell achieved a great deal both for his company and for his country. He had designed and developed the Supermarine S series of monoplane floatplanes, the S.4, S.5 and S6B which won the Schneider Trophy on three consecutive occasions, albeit the latter by default, but thereby winning the trophy outright for Great Britain in 1931. Two weeks after this, the S.6B set a new World Speed Record of 407mph.His first venture into a monoplane fighter was with the Type 224. Although this aircraft was a failure, it did at least provide Mitchell with valuable technical data for the ensuing Type 300, which began on the drawing board in 1934.

In 1921, Joseph Smith had joined Supermarine at the age of 23, and appointed as Chief Draughtsman in 1926. Smith was intimately involved with the Type 300 from the start. He took Mitchells designs and translated them into finished drawings. He was entirely responsible for the wing structure design and it speaks volumes for Smith that the design was so flexible that it lent itself to numerous modifications to suit the purpose of the time and the variations in roles the Spitfire would play throughout the duration of the war. In fact, Smith took the prototype aircraft from its raw initial stages and developed it through the numerous marks and models to the sleek mark 24, which had more than doubled in its performance statistics. All of this he achieved under the pressures of war, but it can be said, that the sleek and beautiful lines were never completely changed from Mitchells Type 300. At the death of Mitchell, Smith took over as Chief Engineer.Sir Sydney Camms work with Hawker spanned a 40-year period from his first biplane of the late 1920s to the superb VTOL Harrier and included the likes of the Hurricane, Fury, Sea Fury, Typhoon, Tempest and the Hunter. In 1929, the Air Ministry issued specifications for a very fast light bomber. When Sydney Camms Hart biplane, in response, first went into service, it had a top speed of 184 mph and it could outrun every fighter the RAF had. In 1931, Camm followed this up with an even faster biplane, the Fury, which flew with a top speed of 207 mph. So it came as no surprise when Camm was able to apply the knowledge he had gained from the then, state of the art biplanes and utilise this on his new monoplane, the Hurricane. There was obvious urgency on the project with Camm being pressed by the Ministry to provide the aircraft quickly in the face of the menacing policies of the German Nazis and the rate of development of the Luftwaffe aircraft. Within a year of the specifications being issued, the Hurricane prototype was undergoing air tests, turning out speeds in excess of 320 mph. So impressed was the RAF that seven months later, the first production aircraft were being delivered to them, the first monoplane to enter military service. Sir Henry Royce was born 27th March 1863. At age 15 he became an apprentice with Great Northern Railway in Peterborough. At the age of 19, he was appointed Chief Engineer for Liverpools electric street lighting system, two years later he started his own electrical engineering company, Royce Limited, making electrically driven cranes, dynamos and motors. He later merged his company with that of C S Rolls motor dealership and renamed the company, Rolls Royce. Over the years Rolls Royce were producing aircraft engines and Royce was later to work with Mitchell in his development of the Rolls Royce engines from the time that Mitchell swapped from the Napier Lion to the Rolls Royce V-12 Type R engine in his S.6 speed floatplanes. He had also worked with the Rolls Royce Goshawk evaporative cooled engine, which Mitchell had fitted to the Type 224 prototype.It was not until Mitchell and Smith changed the engine of the Type 300 to the new Rolls Royce, 12-cylinder, liquid cooled, PV-12 engine and changed the wing straight plan-form from straight to elliptical, that vast improvements were seen in the development aircraft. At the same time, Sydney Camm was also fitting the PV-12 to his Hurricane aircraft. By November 1934, the PV-12 had completed its 100 hour bench-type-testing, rating it at 790hp. Eight years later, special Merlin engines would be producing 2,000hp.In November 1934, the Type 300, plus the PV-12 engine, was submitted to the Air Ministry. The PV-12 eventually became the Merlin C engine rated at 990hp. With the same engine, the Hurricane prototype flew in December 1935 and this was followed by the first Spitfire prototype taking to the air in March 1936.However, it was not only the Spitfire and Hurricanes that were to benefit from the birth of the Merlin engines, these were installed into many British war planes, not least the Mosquito and the Lancaster. In fact, so successful was it that the Americans installed Merlins into the impressive Mustang. In all, 168,040 Merlin engines were built, with over 50,000 of these being built by Packard in America.Royce died in 1933 at the age of 70 years.Epilogue

The question should never be asked as to which was the greater of the two aircraft in the Battle of Britain, but if the question was asked then there must be but one answer, and that is that neither type would have won the battle on its own. Both aircraft types were a match for the enemy aircraft and the superior numbers of the Luftwaffe bombers and their fighter escorts. It is a historical fact the Battle of Britain victory averted an imminent invasion and occupation by the Germans.

The Battle of Britain did not just happen and victory for Britain was never a forgone conclusion. In fact, there were occasions when the outcome could have been completely different.

The stage for this battle may possibly have been set in the early 1920s when two brilliant young men sat at their drawing boards and pressed graphite impregnated furrows into translucent detail paper with chisel pointed 4H and 7H pencils, dragging them along straight edges and set squares; twisting spring-bows into circles and swinging trammels into long arcs; each man with a slide-rule, trigonometry tables and a set of logarithms at hand.Sydney Camm of Hawker worked on high speed biplane fighter and bomber designs, whilst at Supermarine, Reginald Mitchell was designing high-speed racer monoplane floatplanes. Two completely different people working on completely different projects but both were working on a common platform of powered flying machines.When their expertise was called upon to provide aircraft that would dominate and defend the British skies to a conclusion, they did not fail us, they provided the best dogfighter aircraft the world had seen with the Hurricane being the first service aircraft to fly at more than 330 miles per hour in level flight. When the Spitfire entered service almost a year later, it was even faster at more than 360 miles per hour after its design had been assisted and processed by Mitchells right-hand man, Joseph Smith.As good as these aircraft were, had Sir Henry Royces pioneered Merlin engines not have powered them, when it came to challenging the Luftwaffe fighters and bombers, there would have been no contest.

When next you look up into the sky at those magnificent flying machines as they perform their fly-past on 15th September and Remembrance Day, remember not only the few who flew them, remember also, the fewer who put them there.

Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, photographed by Yousuf Karsh, 1941.

A Hawker Hurricane shown in later years of the War.

A Heinkel He111 getting some close and probably terminal attention from a Spitfire

Supermarine Type 224, designed to meet the requirements of F7/30. It was not a success.

Charlie Browns famous shot of Spitfire XIV RB140, which sums up the aircraft perfectly; power, elegance, brute force, and grace in a single package.

The Hawker Hurricane showing that it also has a great deal of elegance and brute force.

The prototype Spitfire in its early days, shown here with the original tailskid and straight canopy.

The Heinkel He 70 of 1932. A 10-seat passenger aircraft commissioned by Luft Hansa, (later Lufthansa).

An amazing likeness between the prototype Spitfire (top), compared here with the Heinkel He 70 shown here with the nose graphically rotated by the writer.

Supermarine S.6B S1596, the second of two and the one that set the new World Speed Record of 407mph on 29 September 1931. Just over a fortnight earlier, it had permanently won the Schneider Trophy for Britain.

Hawker Hart lightweight bombers of No. 57 Squadron, after a few modifications, these were developed into general purpose and fighter versions.

The Seafire, 10 years on from the prototype Spitfire. Worlds apart in performance, mechanical specification and firepower.

The history making Hawker P.1127 Kestrel, forerunner of the Harrier

The Merlin 61 shows the poetic quality of Rolls Royce engineering. The classic V-12 cylinder overhead camshaft engine is supplemented by a two-stage supercharger drawing mixture from the updraught carburettor and passing it on to develop 2,000hp by the end of WWII compared with 1,000hp from the Battle of Britain Mk III in 1940.

Reginald Mitchell, (left) and Sir Henry Royce in 1931 at the time of the S.6Bs Schneider Trophy and World Air Speed triumphs.

Four of the greatest aircraft of the Second World War, the Hawker Hurricane, De Havilland Mosquito, Avro Lancaster and the Supermarine Spitfire in a Battle of Britain fly-past. All are powered by Rolls Royce Merlin engines.

Cliff Lindley 1The Few and the Fewer