BIRTH OF SPITFIRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1941, Page 6

BIRTH OF SPITFIRE

SCHNEIDER TROPHY INFLUENCE. THREE SUCCESSIVE WINS. The amazing career of the Spitfire dates back 16 years to the monoplane Supermarine S 4, which was prepared for the Schneider Trophy. Alas, after setting up a record of 226 miles an hour it crashed during a test flightbefore the contest, which was to take place off Baltimore. U.S.A. Two years later the Royal Air Force, accepting the challenge on behalf of Britain, enabled Flight-Lieutenant Webster to win the trophy at Venice in Supermarine S 6 at 281 miles an hour. In 1929 Flying Officer Waghorn won it again in an improved edition of S 6 at 328 miles an hour; and in 1931 Flight-Lieutenant Boothman won it in Supermarine S-6B at 340 miles an hour. The hat trick —three successive wins by the same country—gained for Great Britain the international trophy in perpetuity and founded her surprising defences against Goering’s air pirates. A few days after Boothman’s feat Flight Lieutenant Stainforth used the same monoplane to carry out a series of dive tests from 15.000 feet into a measured mile in Spithead, Southampton. These tests set up another world record —the astonishing figure of 407.5 miles an hour. The Spitfire had arrived. It was evolved by R. G. Mitchell, chief designer of the Supermarine Aviation Works at Southampton. All the experience gained in the Schneider Trophy successes was embodied in the production of the single-seater eightgun fighter which has become a wartime terror. Rolls-Royce engines designed by the late Sir Henry Royce (who sold papers in his home town at the ago of 11) were a major factor in creating the machine to which we owe so much. ''

British aviation received a great blow a few months before the first squadron of Spitfires was delivered to the Air Ministry in July, 1938. Mitchel] died suddenly at 1 the early age of 42. having laboured during failing health for 12 years to mould his original Supermarine S 4 into the Spitfire.

Though born in Staffordshire, Mitchell made his home in Hampshire, the same county in which he produced the record-breaking machine from the works on the northern shore of Southampton Water.