You cannot need what you cant have. Lend Lease allowed the allies to prosecute a different war. British production was top heavy with 4 engined bombers, but they were needed for the combined bomber offensive. Also maybe too many short range interceptors (Spitfires) but they were protecting all UK and USA assets in UK.
Supermarine fighters after the Spitfire? (1 Viewer)
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Thumpalumpacus
Major
Sure you can. The US desperately needed more carriers in autumn 1942, but simply could not have them until the next year. Likewise, the Ukrainians desperately need both artillery and SAM systems, but those needs are only being met far too slowly. I have a friend who died of liver failure because, while he needed a transplant, he could not get one.
Unmet needs have always been a thing.
By the same token the Japanese and Germans needed a dozen more carriers each and a few thousand heavy bombers..
Thumpalumpacus
Major
Right, and they were nowhere to be found. So needs and reality don't always match up.
it just goes into what if territory.
Thumpalumpacus
Major
That particular question, sure.
In any situation. Germany just needed a few thousand more tanks and Me 262s
Admiral Beez
Major
And like today, a couple of billion barrels of Russian oil and gas. The Germans never learn, it seems.
Why Germany Can't Just Pull the Plug on Russian Energy
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Thumpalumpacus
Major
Again, that some needs are unmet is a fact of real life. I've given you three examples already. I could go on with many more drawn from history.
Howard Gibson
Senior Airman
Was Supermarine a high performance organisation, or was it an organisation with Reginald Mitchell in it?
Shortround6
Major General
First flown in 1938, first ordered in 1942, First production plane finished in Jan 1943. Actual production was by Saunders-Roe.
Blackburn received a contract for 190 planes but was unable to build any due to other commitments.
Part joking here.
But post war the entire British aero industry was hanging on by shoe strings (tied together with knots). Many of the engineers and workers were exhausted. They had been living on rations for many years and would continue to live on rations for years to come.
The engineers could draw pretty pictures of new airplanes but the tooling and machinery was often old and worn out. Or it didn't apply to high speed jets.
The research facilities may have been behind.
The US started the war with 13(?) wind tunnels, it ended the war with over 40. Maybe no large scale tunnels like Langley but more of those were coming.
American design teams could at least put models into smaller tunnels and get answers quicker.
The British built at least 13 jets between 1945 and 1954 that were mostly for research. That does include a sort of scale model of the HP Victor bomber and a sort of scale model of the English Electric P1. the Shorts SB 5.
This does NOT include any service prototypes, any commercial prototypes or any planes powered by turbo props, of which the British were world leaders but since turbo props fly at piston engine speeds they don't need cutting edge research into aerodynamics.
the Fairey FD.2 was the first jet to fly at over 1000mph.
the Americans were not smarter. They did have more engineers to put on most projects, which helps.
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Shortround6
Major General
Actually the Concorde has a much closer relationship to the Fairey FD.2 in above post. There were two Fairey FD 2s and one was reconfigured to gain data for the Concorde.
". WG774 was modified as a test aircraft to study various features of the planned British Aerospace Concorde. The landing gear struts were lengthened and the fuselage extended by six feet. It received a "drooped" nose section for improved pilot visibility during takeoff and landings. New wings were installed which had an ogee-curved leading edge. With these modifications WG774 was redesignated BAC 221. In this configuration, WG774 was tested to Mach 1.65 at 40,000 feet (12,192 meters)."
Not all Deltas were copies of German designs.
I think its easy to undersell Supermarine based on its post-WW2 aircraft, which were not world beaters and worse case scenario were rubbish, but the firm was one of the established British aviation firms, whose primary bread and butter was flying boats. First established during the Great War, Supermarine built flying boats for the Admiralty and continued that line with the RAF through to WW2 with the Stranraer, which was the last biplane flying boat in RAF service.
The firm had a history of building high performance aircraft and bearing this in mind means the Spitfire was no accident by an inexperienced firm - Supermarine had been working on high performance water aircraft since during the Great War. The Sealion II won the 1922 Schneider Trophy, it's design was by Mitchell but it's inspiration was the first flying boat fighter the Baby, which was a prototype only. The S series of seaplanes that were built for the Schneider Trophy races combined advanced airframe design and engine technology that only became de rigeur for most countries' industries years later. In the late 20s and early 30s, those Supermarine seaplanes were the fastest in the world, and while that might appear meaningless in this context, these things never happen in a vacuum.
Mitchell was certainly the genius behind Supermarine but was not the only one. The firm was not just fortunate to get big orders; it was a major player in the industry in the 20s and 30s in its niche, orders for military flying boats, the Southampton, Scapa and Stranraer, which served the RAF into the late 1930s. And then there was the Seagull series of single-engined multi-purpose ship launched amphibians, which first got orders in 1933 and culminated in the Seagull (powered by a Griffon engine) in the mid 1940s, but also included the Walrus - a breadwinner for the firm.
What happened after the spitfire, well...
Yup, I used to work in an aviation museum with this in its collection...
One of my work colleagues wrote the display board data. Conveniently there is a museum in the UK with these two on display next to each other...
Let's not forget this Handley Page design that investigated low speed handling of high sweep delta configuration...
Nevertheless, beside the point in this particular discussion.
Shortround6
Major General
It was a fine line between not being adventurous enough and being too adventurous sometimes.
Sticking with tailwheel on the Supermaine Attacker may not have been the best idea although it certainly was cheap.
Then the British got caught with the axial flow---centrifugal flow engine thing. They had the centrifugal flow engines down pretty well but they were fat.
they tried to jump the axial flow engine to what theory said but it took several years to get theory and practice to work together.
If you designed a plane for axial flow engines and they didn't work you could not drop centrifugal engines in the engine bay as a back up.
In some ways the airframe makers were at the mercy of the engine makers.
And the airframe makers could not sit on their hands waiting for the engine makers. They had to produce and sell something or go out of business.
Very much so. The problem was that Britain, having put resources into new tech like jet engines and radar and stuff then exported that stuff overseas, got left behind rather quickly once the shooting stopped. The country barely had caught its breath after the war's end and it was being superseded by the USA and Soviet Union, and it was being kicked in the teeth with the dissolution of its vast world spanning empire, so it didn't need a big armed forces anymore. It's a harsh reality to learn that you've become less relevant in a modern, rapidly advancing world... The story of post war Britain can be encapsulated within the story of post-war British aviation.
Admiral Beez
Major
If they'd been asked from the onset to make a amphibian fighter I'd like to think Supermarine could have made something like the Kawanishi N1K1 "Rex" rather than the below.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
Why?
