Fleet Air Arm Legends: Supermarine Seafire

Matthew Willis

• Publisher: Tempest
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781911658825
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Zweiter Weltkrieg

Renowned naval aviation author Matthew Willis tells the story of the Supermarine Seafire – a navalized version of the famous Spitfire adapted for use on aircraft carriers. Some 2646 examples were built and saw action with the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm from November 1942 until after the Korean War in the early 1950s. It was involved in combat during the Allied landings in North Africa (Operation Torch), the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, the D-Day landings, and Operation Dragoon in southern France. With the Pacific fleet, the Seafire proved capable of intercepting and destroying the feared Japanese kamikaze attack aircraft.

Chapter 1

Genesis of the Seafire

The genesis of the Seafire is convoluted and confused. Rather than a single, ongoing process, two overlapping but largely unconnected programmes ran concurrently in late 1939–early 1940: one for a straightforward navalisation of existing Spitfires, and another for a comprehensively redesigned aircraft, fully adapted to carrier operation.

Though the Admiralty may have approached Fairey with the idea of licence-building a naval Spitfire in 1938, the first concrete proposal did not arise until late the following year. The Admiralty’s Advisory Committee on Aircraft examined a drawing of a proposed arrestor hook installation for a Spitfire on 27 October 1939. Soon after this, Vickers and the Admiralty began working on the problem of folding the Spitfire’s wings for carrier stowage.

At the same time, plans for a distinctive naval Spitfire were under development. This would have had totally new wings and engine cooling layout, while the rest of the aircraft would be changed to a greater or lesser degree. In the summer of 1939, the Air Ministry issued Specifications N.8/39 and N.9/39 for a new naval fighter, requested, according to contemporary doctrine, as a conventional twoseat fighter and a turret fighter. By December 1939, wartime experience had thrown a different light on FAA requirements so N.8/39 was revised to call for a two-seat fighter and a single-seat fighter, preferably to the same basic design.

For the single-seater, Supermarine turned to its tried-and-tested fighter and offered the Type 338, a design described as a “Spitfire with a Griffon engine”,1 though it differed in numerous respects from the Spitfire then in service. This development was unsurprising, on the basis that the company had issued a brochure for a Griffon Spitfire a few weeks before the revisions to N.8/39 were issued. Supermarine was confident that the Spitfire could handle the extra power of the Griffon, on the basis that the one-off aircraft developed for a speed record attempt had flown with over 2,000 hp with no handling problems. (An alternative with an even more powerful Napier Sabre was offered, though this would have required a new forward fuselage.)

The proposal was recognisable as a Spitfire, though there were significant differences in the wing. The planform was altered to increase area with greater chord thanks to greater leadingedge curvature, while reducing span by slightly squaring off the tips (not dissimilar to the tip form on the later Seafire Mk 45–47 models). The simple dihedral of the Spitfire wing was changed to a cranked ‘inverted gull’ form (as on the two-seat Type 333 designed to the original N.8/39), with the undercarriage moved out to the dihedral break, making for much shorter oleos and a wider track. The radiators were relocated to a ventral ‘tunnel’ beneath the fuselage. Unlike the later Seafire, the Type 338’s wings folded back along the fuselage, clearly derived from the wing fold system developed for the Type 333. Supermarine had taken some pains to try to integrate the Griffon into the airframe tightly, and the axis was lowered to improve visibility forward. Had this development gone ahead in 1940, it is likely that many of the problems the Seafire later faced would not have arisen, though it would have taken longer to bring into service.

The technical merit of the naval Griffon Spitfire was praised at the tender conference on 5 January 1940, but Supermarine narrowly lost out to Fairey, on the basis that the Spitfire’s view for deck landing was judged to be poor. This programme for a thoroughly redesigned naval Spitfire, with much attention given to its navalisation, was now over and little of the design work would be of use in future projects.

But a second route for a naval Spitfire was underway. The day before Supermarine’s N.8/39 project was rejected, Fifth Sea Lord Admiral Guy Royle held a meeting at the Admiralty to discuss ‘Future policy for fighters’.2 It was noted that in addition to fleet defence and strike escort, the service was now expected to defend naval bases that the RAF could not cover. The Fleet Air Arm (FAA)’s own fighters had not been developed with this task in mind – they were expected never to confront highperformance, shore-based aircraft. The meeting concluded, in a section entitled ‘Spitfires or Hurricanes’, that it would be “desirable to reinforce the weapons of the Fleet Air Arm with a number of high speed single-seater fighters of the most modern types”.3

The first Seafire, BL676 was converted from a Dutch East Indies presentation Spitfire Mk Vb named Bondowoso.

In addition to the defence of UK naval bases, these aircraft could form a mobile force to defend bases overseas, “months before such air defence was likely to be provided by the Royal Air Force”.4 With basic modification, they could even be used to supplement two-seat fighters in fleet aircraft carriers, to be “flown off when attack was imminent”. Such fighters would need folding wings –a basic requirement due to the small lifts on modern carriers – but it was noted that both Hawker and Supermarine were working on folding wings. The idea of converting existing types was investigated with a view to putting a proposal to the Air Council – by which time the Spitfire was favoured, as only the Supermarine type was raised with the Air Ministry at the end of February.5 The Secretary noted that “the possibility of providing some 50 Spitfires with folding wings and arrester hook has already been discussed informally,” adding “My Lords [of the Admiralty] would be grateful if the Air Council could give it favourable consideration.”

Supermarine estimated that the first foldingwing Spitfires could be delivered by February 1941 with a prototype flying in five months, and the 50 aircraft delivered within 16 months, or 14 months if production was instigated directly, with no prototype.

The Air Ministry resisted. They pointed out that to provide 50 Spitfires with naval modifications to the FAA would cost the RAF considerably more than 50 aircraft, due to the additional time and effort it would take to tool up for the modifications. Supermarine believed that building 50 navalised Spitfires would cost the production of 75 standard Spitfires,6 but the Air Ministry grossly exaggerated the effect, suggesting it would rob the RAF of 200 Spitfires. On this basis, the proposal was refused in March, the decision supported by Winston Churchill (then First Lord of the Admiralty), who felt that fighters for naval base defence should not be “of the latest type.”

The FAA was left to defend Scapa with obsolete Gloster Gladiators, stripped down Fairey Fulmars flown as single-seaters, and a few Grumman Martlets.

The RN still felt two-seat fighters were worth pursuing and continued to devote resources to their development, but the Norwegian campaign of April–June 1940 reinforced that the FAA could not do without a highperformance single-seater. The opening of Mediterranean hostilities shortly afterwards confirmed this. “The low speeds of the twoseater fighters hitherto embarked on all aircraft carriers have been insufficient to enable them to deal effectively with attacks pressed home on the mother ship,” the Joint Staff Mission concluded. “Our aircraft carriers are often required to operate within range of shorebased aircraft; and it will be imperative to arm these carriers with single-seater as well as twoseater fighters.”7

New carriers were nearing completion and the FAA had ambitious plans for expansion. These would come to nothing if it was impossible to protect the new ships from air attack. The answer seemed at first to come in the rotund shape of the Grumman G-36 Martlet, but deliveries of these aircraft could not come fast enough. The RAF reluctantly agreed to transfer Hawker Hurricanes for naval/maritime use, both as a conventional carrier fighter and as a catapultlaunched interceptor for convoy defence. It proved that a high-performance fighter not designed for naval use could still provide the fleet with vital protection against shadowers and bombing attack. The Admiralty regarded the Sea Hurricane Mk I as “obsolescent” before it entered service,8 and believed that the RAF would not transfer more than five squadrons’ worth of aircraft.

Seafire Bondowoso during a test flight, with 30-gallon ‘slipper’ tank fitted.

Grumman was then fulfilling an order for 240 folding-wing Martlets, due to be completed in August 1942. The Admiralty implored the US Navy to allow another 100 to be delivered but was refused.9 This left the FAA in an untenable position.

In September, Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited HMS Indomitable and was dismayed to learn that her fighter squadrons were to be equipped with the Sea Hurricane Mk Ib. The next month he finally backed the Admiralty’s requests for Spitfires.

THE SEAFIRE IS BORN

Work on the aircraft that would become the Seafire progressed quickly from this point. Supermarine had already undertaken studies into ‘navalising’ the Spitfire, but further assistance was given by the Admiralty with a set of plans for the American Vought SB2A’s arrester hook, and designs for ship-plane arrester gear that the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) had developed. Supermarine felt that the addition of an arrester hook would be relatively straightforward, but catapult spools for accelerated launching would require more alteration to the airframe.

With the aid of a ‘rocket’ from the Prime Minister, the first Spitfires were delivered to the Admiralty in January 1942, with more following over the succeeding months. The first transfer was for 48 modern aircraft, less than a quarter of the quantity the Admiralty had asked for, plus some additional Mk Is purely for training purposes.

Most of these 48 Spitfire Mk Vb were delivered to Air Service Training (AST) at Hamble for conversion to naval standards, with a handful set aside for testing the aircraft’s ‘navalisation’. So hurried was the procurement that the trialling of modifications was carried out concurrently with AST applying them to ‘production’ aircraft.

During this period, the aircraft became known as the ‘Seafire’. A convention for naval adaptations of land-based types was to add the prefix ‘Sea’, although this was a relatively new custom and not part of official naming policy. Freda Clifton, wife of Alan, one of the design team, suggested a portmanteau of ‘Sea’ and ‘Spitfire’ to avoid what would have been a mouthful.10

One of the first machines, AD371, was allocated to the RAE Farnborough in February 1941 after being converted at Vickers Armstrong, Eastleigh, with hook, catapult spooks and local strengthening. This aircraft would effectively serve as the prototype Seafire Mk II.

Another of the initial transfer of RAF Spitfires, BL676 (a presentation aircraft named Bondowoso paid for by the Dutch East Indies Spitfire Fund) was navalised with a hook and catapult spools. In this state, Lieutenant-Commander H.P. Bramwell, the officer commanding 778 Squadron, the Naval Service Trials Unit at Arbroath, used the aircraft to practise Aerodrome Dummy Deck Landings (ADDLs) in late 1941. Sources differ as to when Bramwell made the first actual carrier landing with this aircraft, but it was either in Christmas week of 194111 or the first two weeks of 194212 – the most likely date is 10 January. Bramwell made 12 landings and 11 take-offs, four accelerated and seven free, on HMS Illustrious.13

Bondowoso was modified further, with more standard naval equipment added, and a tropical filter, from January to March. At around this time it was re-serialled MB328, to be the first of all Seafires, in the serial block MB328-MB375. Confusingly, that serial block was for Seafire Mk Ib aircraft (this variant designated the Type 340 under Supermarine’s in-house numbering system) but MB328 had at least some characteristics of the Mk II, such as catapult spools, and was described as both a ‘Mk IIn’ and ‘Mk Ib’ in the same A&AEE report.14

Much thought was given to the integration of the arrestor hook, and the solution arrived at was unusual. In most aircraft, the V-frame hook sat in a well recessed into the underside of the fuselage skin. With the Seafire, a section of...