Spitfire Retired Early

[Mossie]

The Spitfire is arguably the most iconic aircraft of WWII, certainly Britain's.  It went through a number of marks & continued to be successful post war.  It's success wasn't always guaranteed however.  The Spitfires all metal construction was new for a fighter.  It was difficult to repair & maintain & it's manufacture required workers skilled in metal working techniques that were not used in other industries.  The number of Spitfires required early in the war outstripped the number being produced.  There were many with the opinion that the Spitfire was too complex to remain in production & that more simple types were what was required.

The Castle Bromwich factory was opened in 1938 with the intention of increasing Spitfire production.  However, there were serious delays in the factory building it's first Spitfire due to mismanagement, industrial action, lack of sufficiently skilled labour & rising costs.  Not a single Spitfire roled out of it's gates until two years after the factory opened.  At the same time, the Luftwaffe was making concerted efforts to bomb the existing Supermarine factories at Southampton, eventually succeeding.  Fortunately, much of the production had already been relocated to dispersal sites.

In OTL, all these problems were overcome & the Spitfire came to be the icon it is now.  But it might have just been a footnote in history had things not quite worked out.  Had the Luftwaffe succeeded in bombing the factories earlier, or the Castle Bromwich factory continued to be disaster, then things might have worked out differently.

Would the loss of the Spitfire have turned the course of the war?  Probably not on it's own, training enough pilots was more critical then aircraft numbers.  The Government also had plans for just this eventuality.  There were other aircraft that were available, such as the Hurricane which was easier to produce & maintain.  The Hawker Henley, Miles Master & Boulton Paul Defiant could have been converted into fighters.  Fighters like the Gladiator & Fury could have provided a stopgap, if being largely obsolete.  Several manufacturers had new designs waiting in the wings.

It may be heresy, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.  What if the Spitfire had to be retired early?

Simon.

[Weaver]

Wasn't one of the Martin-Baker designs intended for easy emergency production?

As you say, the Master was proposed as an emergency fighter too. They actually built a small series of them, IIRC?

The other option would be more US imports and more use of the ones we got. Throw the Mohawks into combat, get some more P-40s ASAP: maybe a Merlin-engined version? Be less sniffy about the P-39 too. What was the timescale on the Mustang?

Amazingly, we were on the verge of buying a load of Italian aircraft in 1939: Re.2000s and Caproni C.311s (?). If it was obvious that Castle Bromwich was going to be a train wreck earlier, might that process have been speeded up? We'd then have been stuck with the Re.2000s dodgy engine without support, so a Hercules conversion would have been on the cards.

[gunfighter]

I vote for stop gaps in the form of p40s and hurricanes, and P-51s as final replacement in 1941. Maybe a merlin mustang rushed into service earlier.

[Allan]

I actually like that Martin-Baker el cheapo fighter--the one with the fixed undercarriage...cheap to make and the RAF could have had thousands of them in the BOB!!! But maybe not enough pilots..perhaps they would have been instructed to bail out at the slightest emergency to save the pilot.
Allan in Canberra

[Acree]

Miles M.20s ... and lots of 'em!! Faster than a Hurricane, longer range than a Spitfire, cheaper than either one, with 8 -12 .303s.  Always thought the M.20 was pretty cool-looking (in a very utilitarian way), too.

Here's a link: http://www.aviastar.org/air/england/miles_m-20.php

Cheers,
Chuck

[lancer]

Yep, handsome looking really. Would look better with retractable undercarrige though. anybody know what it's manuverability was like?

[Cobra]

Forgive me for Asking but............Wouldn't it have Been a Workable Idea to Upgun the Fairey Battle as a Standby if the Spit Wasn't Available?? Something that's Always Bugged me. Stay Cool.

[Mossie]

Quite a lot of problems with the Battle unfortunately.  Main one, it was bomber & it had pretty poor performance in that roll.  You could loose the bombs & the extra crew, but it would still be overweight for the single Merlin engine & extra guns would have added more weight.

Mind you, there was one bomber design that was around at the time that could have operated as a heavy fighter.  My namesake (sorta), the De Havilland Mosquito.  It would have been very useful as a bomber destroyer, it speed would have reeked havoc.  Unfortunately, I doubt it would have been the case, it was looked on in the early days as very much a bomber & both the Air Ministry & RAF took a lot of persuading to take it on.  It might have happened, but probably only out of sheer desperation.

[jcf]

The Miles M.20/2 (the original M.20 concept dating to 1938) was designed and built during the BoB, first flight was 15 September, 1940, so its not really possible that it could have been available for the BoB. If, after testing, production had been approved it most likely wouldn't have entered service until the end of 1940, early 1941. The typically thick Miles wing and fixed gear would likely have made it easy prey for Fw 190s.

According to the chapter "Spitfire Production Dispersal" in Supermarine Aircraft since 1914, the Beaverbrook Spitfire dispersal
(which is separate from the pre-war sub-contracting dispersal) came after the Southampton raids, the day after in fact. The main
centers chosen for production were Salisbury, Reading and Trowbridge with High Post, Henley and Keevil as final assembly sites. A
second airfield for Salisbury was built next to the final assembly hangars at Chattis Hill. Within six weeks 35 different units had been
established, eventually the number of Spitfire production facilities (manufacturing, support etc.) amounted to 65 throughout the South
of England. The leading-edge torsion box jigs (this complex structure was the main technical cause of the Spitfire production delays)
were salvaged from the Woolston works and re-sited to the Hants and Dorset bus garage in Southampton, the Anna Valley Motors
garage in Salisbury and the Tasker steam-roller works in Trowbridge. The Southampton jigs were later moved to Trowbridge making
it the main producer, Salisbury becoming the center of the 'bowser' wings for the PR Spits.
So even without Castle Bromwich (which also dispersed production into the surrounding area) Spitfire production would not have ceased.

The aircraft was simply too important and the government would have used any means possible to keep it going.

Now if everything that could go wrong with Spitfire production did happen all at once with a resulting major delay on further production I can see
manufacturers in North America being approached with very lucrative offers to build Spitfires.

Hurricanes with the two-speed/two-stage 60-70 series Merlin are an intriguing possibility.