Omdat er toch best wat mensen zijn die graag wat info over een model lezen, ga ik flink wat info op jullie loslaten. Dus neem een grote tas koffie en zet u :
Bron : wikipedia
"The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and many other Allied countries from World War II until the 1950s. It was produced in greater numbers than any other Allied design. The Spitfire was the only Allied fighter in production at the outbreak of the Second World War that was still in production at the end of the war.
The Spitfire was designed by R. J. Mitchell who was chief designer at Supermarine Aviation Works, a subsidiary of Vickers-Armstrongs. He continued to refine the design until his death from cancer in 1937, whereupon his colleague Joseph Smith became chief designer Its elliptical wing had a thin cross-section, allowing a higher top speed than the Hawker Hurricane and many other contemporary designs.
Reginald Joseph Mitchell, aeronautical engineer
The distinctive silhouette imparted by the wing planform helped the Spitfire to achieve legendary status during the Battle of Britain. There was, and still is, a public perception that it was the RAF fighter of the Battle, in spite of the fact that the more numerous Hurricane shouldered a great deal of the burden against the potent Luftwaffe. Much loved by its pilots, the Spitfire saw service throughout the whole of the Second World War, in most theatres of war, in several roles and in many different variants. The Spitfire was to continue to serve as a front line fighter and in secondary roles for several air forces well into the 1950s.
The Spitfire will always be compared to its main adversary, the Messerschmitt Bf 109: both were among the finest fighters of their day and followed similar design philosophies of marrying a small, streamlined airframe to a powerful liquid-cooled V12 engine".
R. J. Mitchell's 1931 design to meet Air Ministry specification F7/30 for a new and modern fighter capable of 250 mph,
(+/- 400 km/u) the Supermarine Type 224, resulted in an open-cockpit monoplane with bulky gull-wings and a large fixed, spatted undercarriage powered by the 600-horsepower evaporative-cooled Rolls-Royce Goshawk engine.This made its first flight in February 1934.This aircraft 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. The F7/30 design accepted was the Gloster Gladiator biplane.
Dit is de Supermarine Type 224 :
Bron : ww2drawings.jexiste.fr
En dit is de Gloster Gladiator :
Bron:
Aeroflight Home Page
Mitchell had already begun working on a new aircraft, designated Type 300, based on the Type 224. With a retractable gear and 6-ft-shorter wingspan, the aircraft was submitted to the Air Ministry in July 1934, but again was not accepted. The design evolved through a number of changes, including an enclosed cockpit, oxygen-breathing apparatus, even smaller and thinner wings, and the newly-developed and much more powerful Rolls-Royce PV-XII Vee-12 engine, later named the Merlin. In November 1934, Mitchell, with the backing of Supermarine's owner, Vickers-Armstrongs, started detailed design work on the Type 300. The Air Ministry issued a contract AM 361140/34 on 1 December 1934, providing £10,000 for the construction of Mitchell's "improved F7/30 design". On 3 January 1935, the Air Ministry formalised the contract and a new Specification F10/35 was written around the aircraft.
Dit is de Type 300 (of het prototype van de Spitfire) :
Bron : ww2drawings.jexiste.fr
Just 15 months later, after several major design changes and refinements, on 5 March 1936 the sleek new prototype (K5054) took off on its first flight from Eastleigh Aerodrome (later Southampton Airport). At the controls was Captain J. "Mutt" Summers, (chief test pilot for Vickers (Aviation) Ltd.), who was reported in the press as saying "Don't touch anything" on landing. This flight was just four months after the maiden flight of the contemporary Hawker Hurricane.
Dit is de Hawker Hurricane :
Bron : aviation-history.com
Testing continued until 26 May 1936, when Summers flew K5054 to RAF Martlesham Heath and handed the aircraft over to Squadron Leader Anderson of the Aeroplane & Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE).
The Air Ministry placed an order for 310 aircraft on 3 June 1936, before any formal report had been issued by the A&AEE, interim reports being issued on a piecemeal basis. 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, there were numerous problems which could not be overcome for some time and the first production Spitfire, K9787, didn't roll off the Woolston, Southampton assembly line until mid-1938. The first and most immediate problem was that the main Supermarine factory at Woolston was already working at full capacity fulfilling orders for Walruses and Stranraers. Although outside contractors were supposed to be involved in manufacturing many important Spitfire components, especially the wings, Vickers-Armstrongs (the parent company) were extremely reluctant to see the Spitfire being manufactured by outside concerns and were slow to release the necessary blueprints and sub-components. As a result of the innumerable delays in getting the Spitfire into full production, the Air Ministry put forward a plan that production of the Spitfire be stopped after the initial order for 310, after which Supermarine would build Bristol Beaufighters. The managements of Supermarine and Vickers were able to persuade the Air Ministry that the problems could be overcome and further orders were placed for 200 Spitfires on 24 March 1938, the two orders covering the K, L and N prefix serial numbers.
The Air Ministry submitted a list of possible names to Vickers-Armstrongs for the new aircraft, now known as the Type 300. One of these was the improbable Shrew. The name Spitfire was suggested by Sir Robert MacLean, director of Vickers-Armstrongs at the time, who called his daughter Ann "a little spitfire".
The word dates from Elizabethan times and refers to a particularly fiery, ferocious type of person. The name had previously been used unofficially for Mitchell's earlier F7/30 Type 224 design. Mitchell is reported to have said that it was "just the sort of bloody silly name they would choose".
Wordt vervolgd
Groeten, Pascal