Supermarine
Spitfire production
A legend is born After the sucess of the Schneider Trophy win in 1931, R. J. Mitchell turned
his talents to developing designs for the Air Ministry
specification F7/30 for a single-seat monoplane four-gun
fighter. Convinced that this first design was merely a step in
the journey and there was more to come. Vickers and Rolls Royce,
who were providing the engine, decided to finance the operation
themselves allowing Mitchell and Supermarine to continue
development. The wealth of aerodynamic experience gained
during the Schneider Trophy races was to prove the
key. Without Air Ministry involvement Mitchell was given the
freedom to concieve an eight-gun monoplane fighter that had a
retractable undercarriage. It was smaller and neater than the
previous design with an enclosed cockpit; powered by the Rolls
Royce PV12 engine that later became the Merlin. Everything
came together at the right time and place and a legend was
born. 
 Supermarine
Factory, Hazel Rd Southampton. |
The immediate success of the Spitfire took Supermarine by
surprise. The Air Ministry placed an order for 450 planes in
1936, the same year that the prototype K5054 flew. The
Spitfire was the company’s first major landplane programme and they
had never before received such a large order for an
aircraft. The works were too small to build so many planes at
once and so parts of the construction were subcontracted out with
assembly at a Supermarine factory in Eastleigh. During the Blitz of September 1940 Southampton received
extensive bombing. The Supermarine factories were hit several times
badly damaging the Itchen and Woolston works, with the loss of over
one hundred lives. As a result the Minister for Aircraft
Production, Lord Beeverbrook, ordered the dispersal of Spitfire
production over the South coast. It was eventually spread over
sixty-five different units that between them built over
85,000 aircraft. In Southampton production was carried out
over twenty-eight locations and employed approximately 3,000
people. The other well-known design Supermarine produced
during the Second World War was the
life-saving Walrus air-sea rescue aircraft. This
amphibian was responsible for rescuing a large number of
ditched Allied airmen during the Second World War. After the Blitz devastation, the company in December
1940 moved its operations out of Southampton to a
country mansion near Winchester called Hursley Park. The
control centre of the Spitfire programme was located at the mansion
for the duration of the war. The Supermarine design
office continued there post-war, until 1957 when the staff
were absorbed into the main Vickers-Armstrong organisation or
re-located to South Marston in Hampshire which had been
acquired by Vickers to be the headquarters of
Supermarine. Throughout Supermarine's fifty years of
operation, beginning in 1913, it maintained its
commitment to marine aircraft the last one:
the Scimitar, was produced in 1963 at South
Marston.
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