pinehilljoe
Senior Airman
- 670
- May 1, 2016
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Maybe our UK friends can respond. Why did Vicker/Supermarine keep tweeking the Spitfire, and Hawkers allowed Sydney Camm to produce new designs like the Tempest and Typhoon? We all love the Spit but I think Hawkers was right in looking at clean sheets of paper for the next generation fighter.
In the end though Hawkers with the Hurricane Typhoon and Tempest produced almost the same number of AC as Supermarine and since the Spit Typhoon and Tempest had different strengths and weaknesses it was probably advantageous to have all three in 1944/45 than just one.
A bit generalised there, Kiwibiggles and in no way does a variety of types give any indication of greater success over a competitor, certainly not in this case. For starters, more Spitfires were built than any other British fighter by a large margin; in fact no other single type of British built aeroplane will ever exceed the total of Spitfire airframes built.
...for some value of great. The Shagbat may be regarded with considerable affection. It would be a bold claim to list it with the greats.You're also forgetting the Walrus in that list; one of the great aircraft of its age.
yep, bold indeed; but I do think it is one of the greats, because of the feats it carried out and that it did its job, which was admittedly a mundane one, very well indeed. Aircrew shot down at sea would probably disagree with it not being one of the greats. You don't hear about the Walrus being described in a less than positive light. Maybe I'm offering it too much praise?
The Hurricane was a design of itself which drew heavily from the fury bi plane.At the risk of being provocative, perhaps Hawker were just better than Supermarine at making aeroplanes. A simple list of successful designs post-1935 is instructive:
Hawker:
Hurricane
Typhoon
Tempest
Fury/Sea Fury
Sea Hawk
Hunter
Harrier
Supermarine:
Spitfire
Sea Otter
Pretty sad when you rely on the Sea Otter to double your count of successful designs.
I guess you could call the Supermarine Attacker and Swift as kind-of successful, but only if you don't compare them to their Hawker equivalents (Sea Hawk, Hunter). Otherwise, the Supermarine roll-call is a pretty-much unbroken list of failures.
The Hurricane was a design of itself which drew heavily from the fury bi plane.
The Typhoon was a design of itself, the Tempest was a Typhoon with thin wings and the fury /sea fury was a lightened or navalised Tempest.
Supermarine and the nation liked the name Spitfire and so there were 22 marques given the name, the seafire started as a modified spitfire and reflects that in its name, without a Supermarine Spitfire the name Supermarine Seafire is a nonsense.
One of the great what ifs is how would Supermarine's bomber to B.12/36 have developed, had the Luftwaffe not intervened?
It is possible that we would be speaking today of that design in similar terms to which we speak of the Lancaster.
Cheers
Steve
Great idea for spreading the load out for minimal structural weight of the wing. Lousy idea once Bomber command decides they want bigger than 500lb bombs.