Supermarine fighters after the Spitfire?

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Admiral Beez said:
The Brits, their Dominions and Empire didn't build many US fighters. Canada's CC&F made fifty-two Grumman FFs before the war, India's HAL made a total of five Curtiss P-36 Hawks. I think that's about it.
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Australian Mustang: CA-17 (80 built), CA-18 (120 built).
CAC also manufactured P&W R-1340 and R-1830 engines.
 
Admiral Beez said:
The Brits, their Dominions and Empire didn't build many US fighters. Canada's CC&F made fifty-two Grumman FFs before the war, India's HAL made a total of five Curtiss P-36 Hawks. I think that's about it.
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The CC&F aircraft were assembled from parts kits. Grumman built the Fuselages and Brewster built the wings.
HAL assembled 5 ex-Chinese parts kits.

While not fighters Canadian Vickers Ltd had built 19 Northrop Deltas starting in 1936.

Prewar they used for photographic survey duties. According the to accounts they were manufactured in Canada, not just assembled there.
 
Admiral Beez said:
And in the end the RAF operated only about a thousand of the Merlin-powered Mustangs. I expect had Bomber Command been ordered to fly at daytime the RAF would have ordered (or produced) more Mustangs for their own use.
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It's still a lot, during WW2, 23 RAF sqns partially or fully operated Mustang IIIs and IVs, with the last being retired in early 1947. There were around 20 RAF squadrons that operated Allison engined Mustangs at home and abroad.

One idea that was proposed early on in the Mustang story was that the type was going to be licence built by Gloster, with Merlins supplied by Rolls-Royce.

ww2restorer said:
A British specification!!!
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The Mustang was built to a British requirement, not a British specification.
 
Australian Mustang production
80 F.20 May 1945 to July 1946, 26 F.21 September 1947 to August 1948, 28 FR.22 June to September 1947 and October 1950 to July 1951 plus 1 in April 1952, 66 F.23 August 1948 to October 1950, in builders terms the F.20 were CA-17, the F.21 and 23 were CA-18 and the F.22 CA-18 (Survey).

According to the RAF census as of June 1944 there were 616 Mustang I, including 22 lost in transit, 93 mark Ia and 50 mark II, the import report has 691 mark I and 50 mark II arriving. Mark I production 620, the mark Ia was 148.

The import report has 1 A-36, 2 P-51F&G, 903 mark III and 868 Mark IV arriving, imports ending in September 1945.

The RAF list of Lend Lease Aircraft to be returned to U.S.A. says as of 31 August 1945, says 1,840 Mustang II, III, IV, P51F and P-51G had been received. Of these 613 had been lost, leaving 701 serviceable and 526 unserviceable. The plan was to return 483 serviceable and 506 unserviceable aircraft by end of 1945, 84 serviceable and 15 unserviceable aircraft by end March 1946 and 86 serviceable and 14 unserviceable aircraft by end September 1946 with the remaining 39 written off during the time.

Of all the wartime lend lease types the RAF was hoping to keep to at least end September 1946 some 588 Dakota, 1,335 Harvards, 21 Hoverfly, 27 B-24 bombers, 68 Liberator VI transports plus being stuck with 213 Vengeance.
 
You missed one small fact - General Dynamics is the parent of a company called Convair that did have a very long and distinguished history of making many types of aircraft including fighters.
 
Big Jake said:
You missed one small fact - General Dynamics is the parent of a company called Convair that did have a very long and distinguished history of making many types of aircraft including fighters.
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Convair's fighter claim to fame came well after WW2 with the F-102 and F-106. Prior to that the original company "Consolidated" (and eventually Vultee when merged) had limited success in the fighter market.




 
Given that in 1944 and in 1945 two separate RAF/2TAF studies concluded that they wanted more Allison engined Mustangs, basically a P-51A with the 20mm Hispano armament of the P-51/Mk.IA as their preferred low level Tac/R type for the RAF. But, due to the high demand for the later Merlin engine versions for the long range bomber escort role, plus the unavailability of tooling or conversion of tooling to the Merlin engine Mustangs as well as lack of manufacturing capacity to restart production, they didn't get what they wanted and had to make do with types with performance that did not meet the stated RAF requirement for a low level Tac/R type. A variant of the Merlin engined Mustang Mk.III with a Merlin optimised for low level performance was offered, and after trials by highly experienced RAF Tac/R pilots, rejected.
 
Lots of different proposals were floated around at different times to have NAA build Mustang airframes that would have UK manufactured Merlins installed in the UK after arrival, about shipping "kits" of Mustang components to be assembled and mated to UK manufactured Merlins by various UK aircraft manufacturers, and so on, but it always came back to the available capability in the UK to produce the additional Merlins required without compromising other programs that has a priority eg: Merlins for Lancasters or for Spitfires as determined by the Air Staff under the lobbying done by Bomber Command and Fighter Command, or to assemble the 'kits'. Added to that politics at various levels regarding the home grown aviation manufacturers, Treasury chipping in about expenditure that would flow back overseas rather than remaining in the UK, and it became not just operational requirements but politics.
 
Ovod said:
In any case I doubt if either Hawker or Supermarine had the production capacity to even license assemble the P-51 in the UK.
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Hawker certainly had the production capacity to jump on the P-51 bandwagon. Unfortunately, they were making Hurricanes well into 1944.
 
Big Jake said:
General Dynamics is the parent of a company called Convair that did have a very long and distinguished history of making many types of aircraft including fighters.
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Let's not forget that the design knowledge for the F-102, F-106 and B-58 came from German Alexander Lippisch...

tomo pauk said:
Hawker certainly had the production capacity to jump on the P-51 bandwagon. Unfortunately, they were making Hurricanes well into 1944.
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Well, they were building Hurricanes into 1944 because they were needed in the Middle East and the CBI. The Hurricane might have passed its use by date as a fighter but it was still an effective ground attack aircraft, and in harsh conditions faced by crews in these regions the Hurricanes proved reliable and easy to maintain compared to more sophisticated types. In a subsequent account into pushing the Japanese back on the Arakan, the Hurricane was singled out at the aircraft that did the most to do so. By then the type was almost exclusively used as a ground attack platform, but before the RAF began receiving Spitfire VIIIs and P-47s in theatre, the Hurricane was all they had. It held the line despite possessing inferior performance to current fighters in the Western theatres, so even in 1944 it was a vital type because of its qualities, and despite its lacking performance.

The suggestion that Hawker could build Mustang airframes isn't so far fetched, as Gloster was promoted at one stage to build the type under licence, but as Colford has stated, Mustangs were talked about being built in the US with British supplied engines. A meeting between the Air Ministry and Ministry of Aircraft Production in August 1942 comes the following: "If Mustang with Merlin 61 proved satisfactory the Americans might be asked to supply 200 a month for use in the Middle East, India and Australia in return for equivalent number of Spitfires for US pursuit groups in UK."

That would certainly taken the load off Hurricanes in theatre in India as that was the most modern fighter in the region at that time and for a year or so afterwards. The problem then become one of who needs the new airframes the most and the Mosquito is a lesson in this. Everyone wanted Mosquitoes, but they were allocated to whom needed them the most. If a production line was built in the USA for example, they would have gone to existing requirements before anything else.
 
Big Jake said:
You missed one small fact - General Dynamics is the parent of a company called Convair that did have a very long and distinguished history of making many types of aircraft including fighters.
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Same goes for Supermarine's parent Vickers, makers of some successful aircraft, including the Vimy, Wellington and Valiant.

I think one issue for Supermarine is that they continued to refer to every fighter they made from 1936 until the postwar Spiteful, Seafang and the jets as a "Spitfire". This was clearly the best choice for the marketing and sales departments at Supermarine, but it now tends to suggest that Supermarine made one good fighter in 1936 and from then on just ran production with minimal changes for the next twelve years. The differences between a Spitfire Mk I and a Mk 24 justifies a new label, IMO.


Had Supermarine changed the name for the Griffon-engined models to something else, perhaps Swift or Scimitar, we would have credited them with more aircraft. Others understood this, the Tempest is not a Typhoon Mk IV, for example. The Lancaster is not a Manchester Mk 2. The Seaford is not a Sunderland. The Warwick not a Wellington. Curtiss' Warhawk is not a P-36 Hawk Mk 2.

Instead, Supermarine is remembered thusly...

Macandy said:
Spitfire - one off one trick pony.
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tomo pauk said:
Hawker certainly had the production capacity to jump on the P-51 bandwagon. Unfortunately, they were making Hurricanes well into 1944.
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Well yes, that just proves that the UK didn't have the spare capacity if they still had to continue production of the Hurricane. The Hurricane was still to prove a vital aircraft as a "bomb truck" right up to the end of the war and its air-to-air qualities were of little importance by the end of 1942. (presumably the same logic would apply to explain why the US continued to produce the P-40 so late in the war).

Nevertheless, British manufacturing output was still not able to produce all the aircraft it needed for the British Commonwealth/Empire to prosecute the war - otherwise how to explain the 31,000 aircraft imported from the USA as Lend-Lease?
 
SaparotRob said:
Ponzi scheme gone wrong?
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Truth be told, it was the ability of the US to out outproduce Britain (and everyone else).

Example:
the total combined aircraft production of the Soviet Union and Britain, between 1939 and 1945, was about 288,800 aircraft.

The U.S., in the same time period, produced nearly 325,000 aircraft.
 
I know. "If ya' ain't buying 'em, just shove 'em over the side. We'll make more.". When it comes to reading about WW II and Lend-lease, I always think of the Doritos commercials with Jay Leno…"don't worry, we'll make more!"
 

Total US aircraft production in 1944 probably exceeded Soviet, British, and German production output at the same time.
Production of the B-24 bomber probably equaled the total production of Soviet aircraft in the same year.
 
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