When is a Spitfire a Spitfire?

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I own two Land Rover Defenders, a 1998 Tdi and a 2011 TDCi, the motors and gearbox's are different but tell me they aren't Defenders. View attachment 581458View attachment 581456
 
The Basket said:
The new Defender is called a Defender.
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Which essentially answers the original question. A Spitfire was a Spitfire due to marketing. Military production is still a business where firms are fighting for government procurement dollars. Vickers doesn't have any other aircraft that can get the public and government's attention. Their Wellington bomber was produced for nine years from 1936 to 1945, but it remained essentially unchanged. So, it's Spitfire after Spitfire because the government buyers who issue the POs and sign the cheques think they know what a Spitfire is and can just repeat the monthly PO.

I suspect the Spitfire name was finally abandoned when, like the British people abandoning Churchill in 1945, the government buyers wanted something new age, so Supermarine launched the Spiteful. This isn't your Dad's Oldsmobile, err... Spitfire they would say, but a brand new machine for a modern era.
 
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"Matters not; whether you agree or disagree: the company designated and the receiving gov agency agreed."

Lightning (Mk I?)


Lightning (Mk II? Mk 22?)


Is a swallow a swallow?
 
Spitfire is just a name requested by Supermarine for their fighter to Specification F.7/30 modified, in their application, and approved by the Air Ministry for the F.7/30 (F.37/34 modified) in its reply.

A Spitfire is a Spitfire until the Air Ministry decides that it is not. It really doesn't matter what the manufacturer does to the design, though of course they could apply for a new name.

The Spiteful was just another development of the Spitfire, the first order for three prototypes to F.1/43 is in fact for "Three Spitfire F Mk VIII aircraft with redesigned high performance wings". After a mock up of the aircraft was shown to the Air Ministry Vickers wrote, on 4th March 1944, asking that the name Spiteful be considered. The company presumably wanted to keep the 'S' series of names (as in Supermarine). The Air Ministry preferred Valiant, but eventually agreed to the Vickers suggestion.
That's why a Spiteful is a Spiteful and not a Spitfire (or Valiant).
 
stona said:
After a mock up of the aircraft was shown to the Air Ministry Vickers wrote, on 4th March 1944, asking that the name Spiteful be considered.
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It's not a good name, IMO. SPITEFUL | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary If I'm a pilot, I don't want an aircraft name that's synonymous with accursed, aggravating, damnable or exasperating. Sounds like tempting bad luck.

Now, Spitfire refers to what one might do to another, rather than how one may be viewed. Spitfire "a person, esp. a woman or girl, who is easily aroused to violent outbursts of anger"
 
stona said:
The company presumably wanted to keep the 'S' series of names (as in Supermarine).
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It's noteworthy that Supermarine's fighter after the Spiteful and Seafang was named the Attacker, the only non 'S' series Supermarine fighter since 1917's Nighthawk.



The firm returned to 'S' series for the Swift and Scimitar. Someone at Supermarine or the Fleet Air Arm decided to break the chain with the Attacker, an odd name for a fighter, IMO, being more apt for a strike platform.

After the Scimitar the parent firm Vickers abandoned the brand entirely as it merged to become BAC.
 
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Don't confuse design with engineering...design can, and has, happened on a napkin--see the P-38. At least two sources on the bird indicated that before he died, he described the general future development, apparently up to the last models, the 21 and above. Bigger engines, bigger guns, more fuel, that kind of thing.

Engineering is the nitty-gritty of making the damned M F actually fly!. Do we use a left-handed framitz on the right side, or vice-versa? (Since these fellows are British, they' probably go with the left-handed one.) Sometimes you find a catastrphic system failure waiting to eat your plane and pilot--Virtually every short-nosed Merlin Spit after the first production run--and the survivors were retro-fitted--had a pair of steel reinforcements running over the wheel-well. Without witch, the wing falls off in high stress maneuvers--i. e., combat. Just a trifle embarrassing, what? I presume that this was Joe Smith's job.

By the way, I have a different standard--I ask the pilot. From what I can tell, they all thought all of them were Spits--that's good enough for me.
 

Perhaps Spiteful would have been a better name for the Roc ?
 
The question was not 'real' or serious but more of a starting point for discussion.

The British car industry when Britain had a car industry was famous for older designs kept in production. But this was due to the fact of cost cutting and lack of development. If an old engine still works then crack on.

The fact cars like the mini or Land Rover were in production for so long was not deliberate by any means.
 
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