Being done by the Aircraft Restoration Co. in Duxford. The Mk 1s were the "Battle of Britain" Spitfires, which are now rather rare. The later models are the ones most usually seen, as they survived the war to be sold as surplus.
When they say in the story that a Mk 1 Spitfire might sell for "five million", that's in English pounds, not dollars. At current exchange rates, you'd be thinking of writing a check for nearly eight million dollars (and probably close to $400K a year just for insurance).
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Wednesday, September 21, 2011
6 comments:
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Dear Miss Fit:
ReplyDeleteWell, one learns something each day. I was surprised to see, in the archival photos, that some Spit's were fitted with two-bladed airscrews. I had thought that all the early Marks had three-bladed units attached.
I believe the Spit' is the most beautiful recip-driven monoplane ever designed. The planform always thrills. Mitchell was a genius!
Regards,
Frank
Frank, the very first Mk 1s were built with two-bladed fixed-pitch wooden props. After that, the Mk 1s had a 3-bladed two-position metal prop.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if the paddle-bladed props that we're used to seeing came along in time for the Battle of Britain.
No, the paddle-bladed props didn't come in until 1944, when the Griffon engine replaced the Merlin in later Marks of the Spitfire. It was also used on later-production Mark IX Spitfires, which still had late-generation Merlin engines.
ReplyDeleteThe paddle blades were developed using data from the Typhoon and Tempest programs, which used them to better transfer the power of the Napier Sabre engine. The USA used the same data in developing paddle blades for the P-47 Thunderbolt, which greatly improved its performance. A crash program was undertaken to develop them for the Spitfire too, and they came into use on that aircraft during the second half of 1944.
My father was an engineer officer in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and described to me the tremendous improvement imparted by the paddle blades. He said it was as good as an extra 500 horsepower in the engine.
I had no idea any Mk Is were still around. The ones that weren't destroyed were pretty much in the way by the end of the war.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see they found one.
Peter, thanks.
ReplyDeleteCujo, almost all of the Mk 1s would have been recycled. Making new airplanes was more important than preserving old ones. These Mk 1s that are being rebuilt are close to "dataplate restorations", where they can resurrect the dataplate and then add all the other parts necessary to make an airplane.
Supposedly back in the day, the Navy would take dataplates from crashed F-4s and give them to Mcdonnell, which would then "repair" the airplane by affixing the old dataplate to a new airplane coming down the assembly line. For paperwork purposes, it was still the old airplane and the Navy charged it to its repair budget rather than its new aircraft budget.
At those prices and with 60% or higher new material you'd think some crafty entrepreneur would start building reps from scratch (or have they already)
ReplyDelete