Spitfire!

You Tube ^ | Public Service Broadcasting

[Da_Shrimp]

" The first designs of what became the Spitfire were floatplanes designed for air racing in the Schneider Trophy competition."

Ah yes, I was aware of that - and that's one of the sketches the actor playing Mitchell shows in the video.

Hand cranked landing gear indeed. Robert-Stanford Tuck's 'Fly for you Life' mentions that when he was testing Spits back in the 1930s - how difficult it was to maintain a smooth climb while pumping the undercart up.

[Mears]

I thought you were referring to the plane.

.

[Da_Shrimp]

“And here I thought that the post was about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iOoiEbtf2w";

Looove that vid. :-)

[Da_Shrimp]

I was.

[Mears]

Oops!

I read the first sentence and saw something about a band and thought I was wrong.

I was a sickly child and spent most of WWII eating from a tray that had a Spitfire printed on it.(I have no idea where my mother got it). I can still see it in my mind.

The Spitfire brings back lots of memories for me-—some good,some not so good.

.

[Da_Shrimp]

Ah, sorry! I thought the link to the band's video would carry through to the body of the post! My bad :-)

The Spitfire brings back lots of memories for me-—some good,some not so good.

Sorry to hear some are not so good.

[alfa6]

IIRC other than the P-51 the only other US aircraft to use the Merlin, in a production aircraft, was the P-40 in the F & L variants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_P-40_Warhawk#Variants_and_development_stages

Also recall that the P-51 started out with an Allison engine. The Mustang I or P-51A / A-36 was your basic dog over 15,000ft but excelled at the lower to medium altitudes. Both North American Aviation and the British has started to look at installing a Merlin to see what would happen to the Mustang. And the rest is history, eh?

As a side note what made the Merlin special was that it had a 2 stage mechanical supercharger. The US Allison engine did not. With no supercharger the P-40s and P-39 were dogs above 15,000 ft or so. The P-38 used Allison engines but they had turbo-superchargers. Hence the P-38s stellar performance at altitude.

The US aero engine that would be the equal of the Merlin in importance IMHO would have been the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 engine. Among notable aircraft powered by the R-2800 were the P-47 Thunderbolt,F6F Hellcat, F4U Corsair, A-26 Invader, P-61 Black Widow and C-46 Commando. The Grumman F7F and F8F also used the R-2800 but did not see service in WW-II.

FWIW :-)

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[alfa6]

Thanks for the link

Back to work I go:-(

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[alfa6]

Back in the late 60’s Triumph had adds in some US magazines featuring a Triumph Spitifre in camo!

A quick Google or Bing search will turn up the add as well as several other variants FWIW

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[alfa6]

Back in the late 60’s Triumph had adds in some US magazines featuring a Triumph Spitifre in camo!

A quick Google or Bing search will turn up the add as well as several other variants FWIW

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Timocrat]

The real genius of the design, IMHO, was that it was as a SHORT RANGE air defense fighter. It was meant to defend the skies over Britain, period..recognizing that the Germans would have to fly there, and back. Had they attempted to increase range, with large fuel tanks, and more weight it would have completely changed the performance envelope of the plane.

If I remember correctly the USAAF used modified Spitfires for long range reconnaissance using drop tanks. In fact they were able to fly over Berlin from the UK.