Talk:Supermarine Spitfire/Archive 4

Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II and Fred Jane
The article's reference section currently has two editions of Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II listed as references,


 * Jane, Fred T. "The Supermarine Spitfire." Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II. London: Studio, 1946. ISBN 1-85170-493-0.
 * Jane, Fred T. Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II (repr). New York: Crescent Books, 1998. ISBN 0-517-67964-7.

one of which (the 1946 one) is cited. These are both different editions of the same book, which are modern near-reproductions (with new introductions etc) of the 1946 Jane's All the World's Aircraft - However Fred T. Jane was not the author or editor of the editions listed or the 1946 original - he died in 1916. The original edition was compliled and edited by Leonard Bridgman, and neither of the versions with ISBN numbers was published in 1946.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:50, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Who Paid For It?
The article mentions a number of unsuccessful efforts by Vickers to get earlier planes approved by the Air Ministry. What eventually made the difference?

I ask because of two memories from my long-ago youth of reading about "The War" still fresh in my parents' memories. One is of a throw-away line on television by Nora Docker, the famous tiddley-winks champion, in which she referred offhand to her mother having financed the Spitfire.

Another, perhaps not so specific to the Spitfire, is of the novelist Nevil Shute, pen-name of the aeronautical engineer Nevil Shute Norway. I think it may have been in his autobiography, or perhaps in his blimp book, where he valiantly humanizes capitalists and, even more, land-owners by pointing out that some of them put their allegedly vast profits into prudent investments, e.g. being ready to fend off The Hun.

Aircraft development is very often a bit of an adventure, and I for one would be very happy if the authors of this fine Wiki entry added some more background detail to the fraught 1930s when the Spit might have been a touch and go proposition.

David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 19:22, 25 September 2021 (UTC)


 * What made the difference was the design, which proved superior to Supermarine's, and Mitchell's, previous efforts.


 * The aircraft was ultimately financed by the UK taxpayer, as it was designed to an official Air Ministry specification, albeit, one modified and re-issued several times to allow for rapidly-advancing improvements in technology, one of these being the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.145.115.86 (talk) 09:27, 6 October 2021 (UTC)


 * The designs were Supermarine's and Mitchell's effort. My questions was, Who paid for the process?


 * I should perhaps have put the word "development" in the first paragraph, or even in the title. My "What made the difference?" was intended to ask the question of who paid for what eventually won Air Ministry approval?


 * Taxpayers paid for the Spits which were eventually purchased, but did not put up the risk capital for development of the plane. Governments today pay promiscuously for the development of new weapons, but this was not always so. It was not the case for the generations of fighters between the earlier biplanes and the eventual Spitfire.


 * "An official ... specification" does not "allow for" "rapidly-advancing improvements in technology" for the obvious reason that genuine developments are not known until they are accomplished. Specifications dictate what a customer is willing to buy from among the possibilities previously developed.


 * David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 12:18, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * These articles may be of interest:
 * https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-two/famous-battles-of-world-war-two/battle-of-britain/spitfire-funds/
 * https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35697546
 * "Spitfire funds" were ran by the Women's Voluntary Services
 * These appear to be for building Spitfires, rather than designing them though.
 * (Hohum @ ) 12:52, 15 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Specifications were related to contracts paid for by the government to build prototypes.
 * Most of the time manufacturers received a specification from the Air Ministry, they tendered a design and the Ministry placed a contract with one or more manufacturers to build (which included all the rest of the design work) prototypes which they would deliver to the Ministry. The RAE at Farnborough would test them and if one was chosen an order for production aircraft would be placed.
 * Sometimes the manufacturer had put some effort into a new design (or a redesign of one of their existing aircraft). They would send this proposed outline of an aircraft along to the Ministry. If the Ministry liked it and thought it worth following up without getting other manufacturers involved they would write a specification that matched the offered design ("written for") and then place a contract to that specification.
 * So once the Ministry was involved there would be payment for the work done. Tony Buttler's Secret Projects books on aircraft give a good idea of the process. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:59, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Vickers-Supermarine funded the initial design stage and the Air Ministry, suitably impressed, wrote Specification F.37/34 around it (the Hurricane was F.36/34) and in January 1935 financed the construction of the prototype. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:44, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

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== i put in a bit in the intro about how the spit could of faced 190's over the channel. this was sourced fro a axis history forum post from 2004, so it may not be very acurate. ( I'm only saying this in a talk page because of my horrible spelling in the summarised edit bit.) ==

i'm not the best with spelling or grammar so if i made any mistakes please clean them up. thank you! Redrhuadri (talk) 09:32, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry but I've had to revert your good faith additions, I won't go into detail but you can discuss it with me on my talk page if you like. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)  09:43, 25 October 2022 (UTC)