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To: epow

The Spitfire was Britain's air superiority fighter. They relied upon it to take on the Messerschmidt M. E. 109 fighter that was its technological equal. The Spitfire was more complex to manufacture, and what Britain needed at the time was large numbers of fighters to counter the qualitative superiority of the Luftwaffe. The Hurricane had already been in production longer than the Spitfire, was very rugged, reliable and easier to manufacture and repair. Owing to these unique circumstances, the two fighters complemented each other quite well, with the Hurricane being used to take on the bomber stream and when possible, the Spitfire was mainly vectored to counter the German fighter escort.


15 posted on 05/31/2004 7:39:03 AM PDT by DMZFrank
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To: DMZFrank; epow

The Hurricane pilots called the German preference for being bested by a Spit, "Spitfire Snobbery."

British aircraft manufacturing, despite Beaverbrook's efforts, always had an overtone of cottage industry. With two good machines in production, they simply couldn't stop one line to stress building the other. It also was less a question of difficulty of building than of skills, techniques, and materials. The Hurricane is built like a big lightplane of the era with a tube frame and fabric covering. The Spitfire is a more modern alloy monocoque design, much more adaptable to mass production. The rub was that Supermarine used to hand-form most of the alloy pieces. Almost every Spitfire from the early years of the war really looks hand-made, and the parts don't necessarily interchange without hand fitting.

The British Merlin engines were the same way. When Packard went to put them into mass production, the Packard engineers were appalled to discover that hundreds of hand operations on each engine were not documented on drawings. They reluctantly had to redraw everything, and in the process they redesigned for machine production. As a result the American-made Merlins' parts didn't interchange with the British ones completely, but the British ones never interchanged themselves all that well. Packard made so many Merlins that thousands of them were exported to Britain and used to power Spitfires (MK XVI), Lancasters, Halifaxes, etc. Because of the interchange problem, the US Merlins were only used in specific marks of planes, to keep the logistics manageable.

The Me109 was designed with mass production in mind from the outset, as was the US Mustang (which was built to a British specification, originally).

With modern techniques the Spit is not that hard to build. A guy named Mike O'Sullivan in Australia took a set of Mk. IX plans and scaled them down to 75 or 80% and has a production line going in Australia. He calls his machine the "MK 26". I've seen it and it definitely has the Spitfire "vibe," and Mike is one of those great Australians that always remind me of Texans for some reason...

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F


20 posted on 05/31/2004 9:18:09 AM PDT by Criminal Number 18F
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