From Nighthawk to Spitfire E-Book

John K. Shelton

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 340

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

R.J. Mitchell was virtually self-taught and almost all his aircraft were slow-flying seaplanes. The story of how this man from the land-locked Midlands, apprenticed to a locomotive works, became responsible for the Spitfire is a great tale in itself. This detailed book tells us how Mitchell learned his trade – contributing to the production of the cumbersome Nighthawk (designed to combat the German Zeppelin threat) and gradually coming to produce record-breaking racing floatplanes that won outright the prestigious international Schneider Trophy. Mitchell was thus well placed to design a high-speed aircraft when war was imminent; however, as John K. Shelton reveals, the production of the famous fighter was by no means a certainty and its vital contribution to winning the Battle of Britain was 'a very close run thing'.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Putnam’s book on Supermarine, and the annual publications of Jane’s have been invaluable sources of information, as has Price’s work on the genesis of the Spitfire. The reminiscences of various test pilots (notably Biard and Quill) and the RAF High Speed Flight officers (especially Orlebar and Schofield) have also provided valuable insights. Additionally, the works of Penrose, Viscount Templewood and Sinnot have been very helpful sources of information concerning the economic and political factors affecting British aircraft development during this period.

In the particular context of Supermarine, the extracts from publications by colleagues of Mitchell, especially Webb and Griffiths, have been most informative. Also, the unpublished manuscript of Cozens, helpfully copied to me by Solent Sky Museum.

Every effort has been made to gain permissions to reproduce material, but if there have been any omissions please contact the publisher who will include a credit in subsequent printings or editions. I have been unable to contact the following publishers or estates of authors: Collins (Templewood), Foulis (Nicholl), C.G. Grey, Hamilton (Schofield), Hurst & Blackett (Biard), J&KH Publishing (Webb), AFC Seeley Service and Co. (Orlebar), and United Writers (Griffiths).

The drawings and paintings are my own, as are the photographs, unless otherwise credited.

I am also appreciative of the kind assistance I have received in the past from the Royal Air Force Museum, Cambridge University Department of Manuscripts & Archives, The Royal Aeronautical Society and the staff at Southampton Solent Sky Museum, especially the director, Squadron Leader Alan Jones, whose early encouragement was much appreciated.

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

THE MAN

No Flash in the Pan

R.J. Mitchell’s Work Ethic

The Beginnings

The Nighthawk and Other Early Aircraft

EARLY DAYS AT SUPERMARINE

Mitchell’s Early Modifications

Mitchell’s Sea Lions

Mitchell’s First Full Design

The Sea Eagles

EARLY MILITARY ORDERS

Precursors of the Walrus

An Amphibian Bomber and an Enigma

Mitchell’s Ugly Ducklings

ANNUS MIRABILIS

Designing the Navy’s Standard Reconnaissance Machine

The Revolutionary Schneider Floatplane

SCHNEIDER TROPHY SUCCESSES

The High Speed Designer Confirmed

The Flying Radiators

THE LAST SEAPLANES

Mitchell’s Air Yachts

Giants

Mitchell’s Seaplanes at War

‘He Looped the Bloody Thing!’

PERSPECTIVES ON THE SPITFIRE

British Fighters before the Spitfire

Mitchell’s Stuka – The First Spitfire

The Real Spitfire – A Close Run Thing

The Spitfire Wing

Naming the Spitfire

AFTER MITCHELL

Mitchell’s Bomber and his Death

The Spitfire After Mitchell

Appendix

1

: Photographs Showing the Development of the Spitfire

Appendix 2:

Main Versions of the Spitfire

Appendix 3:

Supermarine Wooden Hulls

Bibliography

Copyright

THE MAN

R.J. Mitchell (c.1930). (Courtesy of Solent Sky Museum)

NO FLASH IN THE PAN

One has only to reflect for a moment on the remarkable advent and success of the Spitfire to realise that R.J. Mitchell’s fighter must surely have resulted from considerable previous experience of high speed flight. It is not just air enthusiasts who might still remember his designs, which won the international Schneider Trophy four times, contributing most significantly to the design of the famous fighter.

However, as we shall see, most of Mitchell’s aeronautical experience was with much slower seaplanes or with even slower amphibians, and it was by no means predictable that he would go on to produce the iconic fighter so strongly associated in the popular mind with the Battle of Britain. Indeed, the designer of this wide range of aircraft types – from transport or reconnaissance seaplanes to high speed Trophy racers – started out in locomotive engineering and never had any formal education as an aircraft designer.

Yet, well before the Spitfire appeared, he had emerged as one of the most prominent designers of his time, and a listing of his most significant contributions to aviation reveals promise from the very beginning:

The Commercial Amphibian, his first independent design, won an enhanced award at the 1920 Air Ministry competition for passenger amphibian flying boats. Although this aircraft came second to the Vickers Viking, because of the lower powered engine provided by his company, the second prize of £4,000 was doubled in recognition of the promise that the aircraft had shown.

His modification and uprating of an earlier company machine, the Sea Lion II, won the Schneider Trophy competition for Britain in 1922.

‘I have seen the future, and it works.’ – Lincoln Steffens. R.J. Mitchell (right) with his S6 Schneider Trophy winner. (Courtesy of Solent Sky Museum)

The small fleet of his Sea Eagle flying boats formed the first British scheduled flying boat service, operating between Southampton and the Channel Islands 1923–1928.

His Swan of 1924, a larger scale development of the Commercial Amphibian which joined the Sea Eagle fleet, was claimed by Supermarine to be the world’s first multi-engined, amphibian passenger-carrying machine.

The above mentioned flying boat service was incorporated into the newly formed Imperial Airways Ltd (later British Airways) in 1924.

His Scarab, also in 1924, equipped the Royal Spanish Air Force with a fleet of twelve military aircraft, and for its time, represented a formidable amphibious bomber gunship. This order represented a significant step towards establishing Supermarine as a prosperous aircraft company.

His Southampton flying boat, a military development of the Swan, was ordered, unusually in 1925, straight off the drawing board and became the standard RAF coastal reconnaissance aircraft, replacing less satisfactory machines of First World War design. A total of twenty-four Mark Is were built, and this established real stability and prosperity for Supermarine. Pilots reported that they were trouble free and ‘a joy to fly’, and Jane’s described the design as ‘one of the most notable successes in post-war design’. Additionally, it was described as ‘probably the most beautiful biplane flying boat that had ever been built’ and its trendsetting upswept rear hull attracted the comment that it had ‘certainly the most beautiful hull ever built’.

In the same year, Mitchell also produced his S4 Schneider Trophy racer, which revolutionised the design of virtually all successive competition entries. He moved, in one bold step, from the usual wire-braced biplanes to a startlingly new cantilever monoplane. Compared with the top speed of 175mph claimed for his Sea Lion in 1923, the S4 gained the world speed record for seaplanes and the outright British speed record for all types, with 226.75mph only two years later.

In 1926 Mitchell appointed one of the first metallurgists to the aircraft industry, which had previously worked almost exclusively with wooden airframes, and his metal-hulled Southampton Mark II was in the forefront of the movement towards all-metal aircraft construction. A total of seventy-nine metal-hulled machines were produced, as well as numerous hulls for retrofitting to the wooden-hulled Mark I, even further enhancing the prosperity and status of Supermarine.

The increased efficiency of the Mark II Southampton led to the RAF being equipped for a special Far East Flight of four of these machines. The aircraft completed a 27,000 mile cruise between October 1927 and February 1928 to Singapore, and then around Australia, which had only been visited by aircraft on four previous occasions and only circumnavigated by one earlier machine. The sixty-two timetabled stages were completed by all the aircraft. The Supermarine publicity said, ‘108,000 machine miles, giving no trouble of any consequence’, and as the Daily Mail said, ‘the flight will rank as one of the greatest feats in the history of aviation’.

In 1930, Supermarine were awarded a contract (later cancelled by the government) to build the largest wingspan flying boat in the world – greater than the famous Dornier Do X, and only to be surpassed by the Hughes H-4 Hercules of 1947.

By this time, Mitchell had designed his next two Schneider Trophy racers, the S5 and S6, which respectively won the 1927 and 1929 contests. In the following event of 1931, his uprated S6B won the trophy outright and later went on to set a new absolute air speed record of 407.5mph. This last machine was now made entirely of metal, stressed-skin construction and clearly looked towards the Spitfire, five years later.

In 1934, the last of his medium-sized amphibians, the Walrus, was ordered by the Royal Australian Air Force and, in the following year, by the Royal Air Force. Eventually a total of 746 were built. It became the standard naval fleet spotter and provided the British armed forces with their slowest aircraft, with its fastest (the Spitfire) soon to follow.

At the age of 36, Mitchell was described in Supermarine publicity as, ‘One of the leading flying boat, amphibian and high speed seaplane designers in the country.’ He had also been invited to give a talk on the BBC, had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and awarded the CBE.

Reginald Joseph Mitchell CBE in the garden of his house, Portswood, Southampton, 1931. (Courtesy of Solent Sky Museum)

The above successes, which were achieved before his early death at the age of 42, clearly suggested that he might well be entrusted with the design of an outstanding fighter when the need arose, but it was especially fortunate that he had become involved with the design of the later Schneider Trophy machines, as these gave him unfettered opportunities to extend the boundaries of high speed flight. As a result, the advent of the Spitfire prototype of 1936 marked a dramatic increase of more than 100mph over the most recent RAF fighter in service, and led to an even more dramatic and unprecedented initial order of 310, three months after its first service trial.

He died, however, without seeing the fighter go into squadron service and without knowing that nearly 23,000 examples were to be built, in a multitude of variants.

In the pages which follow, the progressive stages in the remarkable career of R.J. Mitchell will be described. But first it will appropriate to describe something of the character and capacity for hard work that produced these significant landmarks.

R.J. MITCHELL’S WORK ETHIC

The earlier listing of Mitchell’s successes (and there were also some failures) indicates a considerable output in his relatively short working life, and this is obviously not simply attributable to talent. A capacity for hard, concentrated work was also clearly involved, especially when one comes to consider the variety of aircraft he was called upon to design.

For example, between 1920 and 1922, the newly appointed chief designer, with only three previous years’ experience in the aircraft industry, was responsible for the design of a passenger-carrying prototype (the Commercial Amphibian) which required the innovation of a retracting undercarriage design; a fleet spotter (the Seal) with the added complexity of folding wings; beginning the design for a replacement for the large First World War Felixstowe coastal reconnaissance flying boat (the Scylla); and the modification of an earlier company machine for the 1922 Schneider Trophy contest (the Sea Lion II).

This varied output, which was extended to land planes in 1924 with the Sparrow, was described by Arthur Black, Mitchell’s chief metallurgist, as follows:

In the sixteen years after he became chief designer at the age of 24, he designed the incredible number [of twenty-five machines] ranging from large flying boats and amphibians to light aircraft, and from racing planes and fighters to a four-engined bomber. This diversity of effort and its amount marks R.J. Mitchell for the genius he was.

His assessment is supported by the more dispassionate view in Mitchell’s obituary in Flight magazine:

His versatility will be appreciated when it is pointed out that his productions ranged from heavy, long-range flying boats to tiny single-seat land plane fighters and on more than one occasion he had two or three very different types of aircraft passing through the design stage at the same time, so that he frequently had to switch his mind from one problem to another of a totally different character.

It must be obvious that such an output, in such a short career, implies that a capacity for hard work was one of Mitchell’s main character traits. Versatility and lateral thinking had to be allied with a determination to see a concept to its successful conclusion – and on time.

The most evident proof of Mitchell’s drive was the series of Schneider Trophy racers from 1927 to 1931 which, although at the forefront of technical knowledge and under severe time restraints, were delivered on time and outperformed rivals in terms of both speed and reliability.

Today, design complexities are such that many might have reservations about the idea of one man completely dominating the design output of a company, but it should be borne in mind that, during the 1920s and 1930s, it was still possible for one man to have a complete grasp of all the detail that went into the making of an aircraft. Alan Clifton, appointed in 1923 as Mitchell’s stress man, said, ‘R.J. was widely considered the greatest aeroplane designer of his time when one man’s brain could carry every detail of a design’. Thus, while the size of his design team gradually expanded, Mitchell, as well as making the main conceptual decisions, was able to oversee and influence all the detailed working out of a project.

Arthur Black has recorded how Mitchell (who was also the company’s chief engineer) would appear in the workshop each day and approve or require alterations before moving on to the next project.

Harry Griffiths, who joined Supermarine as a laboratory assistant in 1929, has also left the following anecdote concerning attention to engineering detail, which is also indicative of why Mitchell was so respected in the firm:

In the S-6 the fuel was carried in the mid-portion of the floats and was pumped up through the struts to the engine. In level flight this would have been OK but during the race the aircraft was banked through 80 degrees in order to negotiate the sharp bends of the course and this created such high centrifugal force that the fuel supply would have been cut off. Thus a small header tank was located in front of the engine to hold a reserve of fuel sufficient to maintain a supply during turns, and the pumps were arranged to deliver an excess of fuel. This meant that on the straight part of the course some fuel had to be returned to the float tanks.

A valve on the front of the header tank had two spring-loaded ports which were supposed to split the overflow into … We tried all sorts of combinations of spring-loaded valve flaps, differing pipe sizes and other devices to equalise the flow without success and the race was getting nearer every day.

One Sunday morning, near to exasperation, we were fitting yet another variation when Mitchell came along and stopped to have a look. At the top of the valve housing there was a small hole leading into the tank which was intended to allow air to escape as fuel went in.

He pointed to the hole and asked, ‘Why is that there?’, and hearing that it was an air bleed was quiet for a few moments. He then said, ‘Stuff it up’. I was sent to the stores to get an aluminium rivet of the right size and we hammered it in. We then reassemble the valve in its original form and switched on the pump for a test run.

Eureka – no matter what we did the fuel split into two equal parts!

Also, Alan Clifton has recorded how Mitchell, as chief designer, would also visit the drawing office and study the drawing in some detail, his head on his hands, thinking rather than speaking. Questions would produce discussion among a small group which would gradually gather round until some conclusion was reached. Mitchell would then move on to another board to repeat the process.

Griffiths has also has left the following observation:

When a problem was being discussed in the drawing office he would stand by the drawing board listening to all the arguments as to what should be done – on these occasions he had the habit of rolling a pencil back and forth on his hand (it was always a very black pencil!) – and when he had heard enough he would push everyone aside, draw a few lines on top of the existing drawing saying, ‘This is what you will do,’ throw the pencil down and march back to his office.

Ernest Mansbridge, who joined Clifton in 1924 to work on stressing, remembered Mitchell for a similar method of dealing with a problem – by calling in the leaders of various areas and getting them arguing among themselves. He would listen carefully, making sure that everyone had said what he wanted to, and then either make a decision or go home and sleep on it. Joe Smith, who became chief designer after Mitchell, put the matter in this way: ‘His work was never far from his mind, and I can remember many occasions when he arrived at the office with the complete solution of a particularly knotty problem which had baffled us all the night before’. In fact, Mansbridge expressed the suspicion that with many problems, Mitchell’s discussions were basically to check that he had not overlooked anything and that, otherwise, he had already reached a decision.

A member of the Schneider Trophy team, Flying Officer R.L.R. Atcherley, has also given a similar assessment of Mitchell from a pilot’s point of view: ‘He was always keen to listen to pilots’ opinions and never pressed his own views against theirs … He set his sights deliberately high, for he had little use for “second bests”. Yet he was the most unpompous man I ever met.’

It ought, however, to be mentioned that his very pragmatic willingness to listen to all points of view was not matched by a readiness to bear fools gladly. Most accounts mention his shortness with those who did not get his message quickly enough. For example, Joe Smith said:

R.J. was an essentially friendly person, and normally even-tempered, and although he occasionally let rip with us when he was dissatisfied with our work, the storms were of short duration and forgotten by him almost immediately – provided you put the job right.

Mitchell’s condition after his operation for bowel cancer in 1933 exacerbated his testiness, but unfortunately for those working with him, he had kept his ailment private. Even before then, it was not unknown for him to contemptuously flick aside a drawing that did not satisfy him and even to tear it into shreds if it particularly displeased him; and his secretary, Miss Vera Cross, reported that he had no time for those who did not measure up to his standards. Nor did he encourage interruptions when deep in thought at his drawing board, as Joe Smith has recalled:

A mental picture which always springs to my mind when remembering him, is R.J. leaning over a drawing, chin in hand, thinking hard. A great deal of his working life was spent in this attitude, and the results of this thinking made his reputation. His genius undoubtedly lay in his ability not only to appreciate clearly the ideal solution to a given problem, but also the difficulties and, by careful consideration, to arrive at an efficient compromise.

One result of his habit of deep concentration was that he naturally objected to having his train of thought interrupted. His staff soon learned that life became easier if they avoided such interruption … If you went into his office and found that you could only see R.J.’s back bending over a drawing, you took a hasty look at the back of his neck. If this was normal, you waited for him to speak, but if it rapidly became red, you beat a hasty retreat!

On the other hand, Beverley Shenstone, Mitchell’s chief aerodynamicist, reported that he found Mitchell ‘very gregarious – when out of the office’, and, indeed, in his younger days, he was part of a high-spirited management group not unknown for ‘serenading’ a rather pompous business manager in the early hours of the morning. There are various later accounts of practical jokes, including Mitchell’s dismantling of a colleague’s bed when staying at a hotel and his setting fire to another’s notes while the latter was giving a speech.

It is also recorded that when his brother visited Southampton, he took him out for a drink at a pub frequented by Supermarine workers, who were not at all disconcerted by the arrival of their boss. His lack of ‘side’ and, outside work hours, his readiness to be ‘one of the boys’ was complemented by his taking an active part in the firm’s sporting activities – particularly tennis and cricket. Nevertheless, only the breezy RAF Schneider Trophy pilots called him ‘Mitch’; in the works, ‘R.J.’ was the limit of familiarity.

On the domestic front, Mitchell’s son, Gordon, remembers that his father was ‘damned difficult to live with’ and that there were sometimes ‘some pretty awful rows’. On the other hand, Denis le P. Webb, who had joined Supermarine in 1926, also recalled the less stormy side of Mitchell’s character. When still a very junior apprentice he found that Mitchell ‘was friendly and pleasant’ and that he put him completely at ease. It was quite obvious that R.J.’s successes had not gone to his head, and they never did. ‘Later, if he saw me foot-slogging over to Southampton and he was making his stately way in his Rolls-Royce, he would not be above offering me a lift.’

Flying Officer Atcherley spoke in similar terms: ‘He was a man with an alert and inquisitive mind, and in spite of his very considerable attainments in the world of aircraft design he was always ready to crack a joke or take on anyone on his own wavelength.’

In the presence of strangers or women (he left interviews of female staff to others), a certain remoteness was the result of shyness, and he had a slight stammer which increased his dislike of public speaking – something that was demanded of him more as his reputation as a designer increased. Nevertheless, Smith remembered that he could also be charming, with ‘an engaging smile which was often in evidence and which transformed his habitual expression of concentration’.

Mitchell’s son has also left a boyhood anecdote which relates to this ‘concentration’. Having been shown round his father’s workplace, he was asked how he had got on and, to his reply that he had enjoyed it, his father responded, ‘I don’t care a damn whether you enjoyed it, I want to know what you learned.’

Harry Griffiths has supplied a reminiscence of Mitchell which encapsulates some of his apparently contradictory character traits and foibles:

R.J. was human like the rest of us – he could be moody, but in general he had a pleasant personality and I always had the impression that he was somewhat retiring yet he was decisive and when necessary could be very firm.

He had a small personal staff consisting of a clerk, two typists and an office boy – they were all loyal to him and understood his moods. When any unwanted visitor asked to see him he would tell his staff, ‘I’ll see him in ten minutes’ and they knew that this meant, ‘Get rid of him!’ It worked well until a new typist arrived and the visitor was ushered in after precisely ten minutes! It only happened once.

I’ve already said that his office was immediately over the laboratory and occasionally he would come downstairs to see Arthur [Black] and would always stop and ask how I was getting on. Sometimes these visits would be to ask the boss if he fancied a game of golf and off they would go for the afternoon. On another occasion he came and played merry hell because the office was untidy, although in fact it was no worse than usual.

Sir Robert McLean, the managing director of Vickers (Aviation), summed up Mitchell’s complex character, ‘He was a curious mixture of dreams and common sense’. His wife had to become accustomed to his talking at one moment and the next being miles away, and she soon learned to contact his secretary when preoccupation with some design problem led to the evening meal at home going cold. Practical matters such as money were left to her and she would hand out cash for his personal use and replace it as required. And as Vera Cross grew into her job as his secretary, she soon organised his very imperfect filing system, learned how to prevent interruptions, and also relieved him of the main burden of correspondence, which he hated – although she had often to wait beyond office hours before letters were signed.

Apart from seeking a mental break from the inevitable minutiae of aircraft design, or the later demands of becoming a director of the firm, by taking time off for golf, he would, on a nice afternoon, also slip away for a few hours’ sailing. This absenting himself is not necessarily at variance with previous accounts of his fierce work ethic but must surely have been a necessary part of the otherworldliness that Sir Robert spoke of. Bearing in mind his well-known concentrated stance at his drawing board, as described by Smith earlier, and the intuitions that pre-figured his many ground-breaking designs, Yeats’ lines about prominent persons in history put the matter rather well:

His eyes fixed upon nothing,

A hand under his head.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream.

His mind moves upon silence.

THE BEGINNINGS

Given Mitchell’s capacity for hard work and, in a more authoritarian time, given his willingness to listen to the views of the team of experts he collected around him, a description of his early years will, nevertheless, show how unexpected – one might say, inexplicable – was his emergence as the man behind the aircraft which contributed so significantly to winning the Battle of Britain.

Reginald Joseph Mitchell was born on 20 May 1895 at 115 Congleton Road in the Butt Lane district of Kidsgrove. Then, three months after his birth, Reginald’s family moved a few miles to Longton, one of the ‘six towns’ soon to be constituted as Stoke-on-Trent: first to 87 Chaplin Road, in the Normacot district, and then to the nearby Victoria Cottage at 1 Meir Road, Dresden, where he grew up. He died only forty-two years later, on 11 June 1937.

Nevertheless, from 1919, when he became chief designer at Supermarine Aviation, Southampton, his relatively brief career spans the whole development of aviation since the pioneering days until just before the beginning of the jet era.

It is worth recording that on 17 December 1903, the year when Mitchell began elementary school, the Wright brothers made the first powered aircraft flights, lasting less than one minute in duration. Only six years later, aviation progress was such that Blériot made a stir by flying across the Channel, and aerial activity came to Britain quite soon afterwards, with Alliott Verdon Roe being credited with making the first flight by a British designed, built and powered aircraft on 12 July 1909.

In the same year, air shows were organised in Doncaster and Blackpool and, in 1910, the young Mitchell must have been caught up in the local interest in flying as crowds flocked to aviation meetings which took place closer to home at Wolverhampton and Burton-upon-Trent. Even nearer, a Wright machine was put on display at the Hanley Park fete in the same year.

By this time, Mitchell was just turning 15 and his enthusiasm for the air would have been further stimulated by the flight of Louis Paulhan in a Farman biplane, which passed no more than 12 miles west of the family home on the way to winning the Daily Mail London–Manchester competition. Two years later, another early aviator, Gustav Hamel, came to nearby Stafford and to Stone, for which special trains were organised, and he also came as near as Longton for the Whitsuntide fete.

The young Mitchell was known to have had a passion for building model aircraft, no doubt informed by press photographs and the displays of the very earliest aircraft, particularly the successful machines by the Wright brothers, Farman and Blériot. But an account that Mitchell’s models ‘swooped and dipped’ (which full-size machines seldom do outside airshows), would seem at variance with the approach of a lad who, at the age of 16, made his own lathe and, later, a dynamo. It would seem more likely that his obsession would be directed more technically towards understanding the principles of aerodynamics, as exemplified in straight, level flight – a good preparation for his first Supermarine aircraft which had to satisfy the Air Ministry inspectors that it could ‘fly itself’ for at least three minutes.

There was a short-lived aircraft firm nearby at Wolverhampton (the Star Aeroplane Co., which in 1910 offered a monoplane based on the Antoinette aircraft and a biplane based on the Farman type), but there is no evidence that the young Mitchell ever visited it. And, even if this had been countenanced by the family, any such precocious visiting of manufacturers with longer-term prospects, such as Sopwith or Shorts, would have involved travelling considerable distances from Stoke-on-Trent. At this time, even motor transport was in its early stages: the year of Mitchell’s birth saw the very first car journey in Britain and Herbert Austin began car building in Britain ten years later, when Mitchell was about to go to Hanley High School.

But at least the young boy had the advantage of a good educational background, as his father, Herbert Mitchell, a Yorkshireman, had moved to the Potteries to become a headmaster at Longton. Mitchell also had the advantage of a more practical influence, as his father subsequently became a master printer and, eventually, a managing director of a printing company.

In view of the aesthetic aspects of his design work, discussed later, it should perhaps be mentioned that Reginald’s younger brother, Billy, was to set up his own business, designing patterns for the local pottery industry, and that his nephew, Jim, became an artist whose aviation prints of his uncle’s Spitfires sold widely.

It is also noteworthy that, having decided to read all the novels of Walter Scott while still a schoolboy, Mitchell is reported to have persevered to the bitter end, and his father would certainly have approved of Reginald’s sticking to the task, as he was known to demand high standards of conduct and application.

Similar perseverance was required when Reginald took his first major step away from his father’s world and towards his own future career, being apprenticed in 1911 to the locomotive engineering firm Kerr, Stuart & Company, in Fenton, another of the Potteries towns. Shipbuilding, bridge building or textiles might just as well have provided a suitable preparation for the world of engineering at that time, and the local locomotive maker would have seemed to offer just as good and as stable a career beginning. By the time Mitchell finished his apprenticeship to the company, their narrow and standard gauge engines had been sold as far afield as California, Chile, Mexico, China and India (examples are maintained at the Talyllyn, West Lancashire and Leighton Buzzard Railways).

Whatever his future career prospects, Reginald’s early training in the workshops must have been a culture shock to a lad brought up in a middle-class environment (including the works of Walter Scott). Returning each day covered with the oil and grime of the engine sheds was not to his liking and he was all for abandoning the apprenticeship, but his father would have none of it and Reginald stayed on. At least he won one minor victory when his foreman likened the tea that Mitchell had made to urine (or words to that effect). The gentleman was much better pleased with a second mug which Reginald had personally doctored accordingly.

Looking back from Mitchell’s later appointment as assistant works manager at Supermarine with its no-nonsense working practices (see later), one can see that these early days were not wasted. More important, however, was his move to the Kerr, Stuart & Co. drawing offices and his attending the Wedgwood Burslem Technical School for evening classes in engineering drawing, mathematics and mechanics. This more cerebral work clearly matched his potential better, as he was awarded one of three special prizes presented by the Midland Counties Union.

By the time he was 21, he had completed his apprenticeship and the First World War had been raging for two years. He made attempts to join the forces but his engineering training was considered more useful in civilian life. Initially, he undertook some part-time teaching at the Fenton Technical School, but his interest in flight (which had also been expressed by the keeping of homing pigeons) then took the form of the fateful decision to apply for the post of personal assistant to the managing director of the Pemberton-Billing aviation works at Woolston, Southampton.

This small company was fully engaged in the war effort, particularly with land planes, although their main interest lay in marine aircraft, and so Mitchell was not only applying for employment in a relatively esoteric form of engineering but also in the doubly remote one of seagoing aircraft. One might say that this type of product was triply remote, as ‘hydro-aeroplanes’, as they were then called, were less developed than the early land planes. It was only in March 1910 (when Reginald was nearly 15) that Henri Fabre made the first take-off from water by a powered aircraft and in the January of the next year that Glenn Curtiss took off from water in San Diego with a more practical hydro-aeroplane.

The first British aquatic events took place in 1911 at Cavendish Dock, Barrow-in-Furness, where there were several none-too-successful attempts with a converted Avro land plane. Shortly afterwards, on 25 November, another converted Avro machine made the first, more successful, take-off and alighting on water in Britain, with the newly formed Lakes Flying Company of Windermere, which was to be contracted by the Royal Naval Air Service for the development of seaplanes (much to the annoyance of author Beatrix Potter and Canon Rawnsley, founder of the National Trust).

As Blériot had already flown across the Channel two years earlier, it was clear that efficient machines dedicated to water operation were yet to be produced, despite the obvious advantages of large, readily available (and flat) stretches of water. Accordingly, Jacques Schneider sought to encourage their development by offering a trophy for hydro-aeroplanes. The first competition for the new trophy, on 16 April 1913, produced only four contestants, three Frenchmen and an American, and their aircraft all betrayed their land plane origins.

At the time of the second contest on 20 April 1914, Mitchell was exactly one month from his 19th birthday and still an apprentice to the locomotive engineering firm in Fenton, but, if his mind had already been turning to aviation as a career, the primitive state of watergoing aircraft and reports of the first two Schneider Trophy contests could hardly have been encouraging to his family – of those aircraft which managed to cross the start line, only four out of nine had completed the course.

The First World War then brought such civilian competitions to an end, but at least it saw a significant increase in the development of aircraft and of water-cooled British aero engines. Aeroplanes were now becoming sufficiently reliable to play a significant part in warfare – mainly in fighter, reconnaissance, target and gunnery spotting duties – so the demand for aircraft for the war effort now made a career in aviation at least something of a prospect for the young Reginald Mitchell. Nevertheless, it was an unexpected and bold decision at that time for a provincial lad to take a train to the (then) remote south coast for an interview at the Pemberton-Billing flying boat firm at Woolston, engaged in making machines even more unfamiliar than the new-fangled motor omnibus.

His work colleagues later noticed his apparently intuitive feel for which aerodynamic shape would work, and so his early design of model aircraft must have somehow generated an instinct to head for the unknown world of aviation in the same way that an exceptional person fifty years later, with all the insouciance of youth, would have struck out for a place in the space industry. No doubt his keenness to involve himself in this new industry and his youthfulness overcame any misgivings he might have had when he saw what a small-time and underfunded operation the company was at that time. On being offered the personal assistant position, he instantly asked for his belongings to be sent down to him.

The following extract from G.A. Cozens’ manuscript ‘Concerning the Aircraft Industry in South Hampshire’ describes the humble beginnings (1913) of the firm at Oakbank Wharf, Woolston, which Reginald Mitchell joined three years later:

Supermarine [as it was soon to be known] seems to have begun almost by accident and in the early stages the unpredictable nature of the firm’s founder [Pemberton-Billing] and his equally colourful general manager [Scott-Paine] might have diverted the destiny of Supermarine in any one of several directions. The factory was in a part of Mr Kemp’s boatyard just above the Floating Bridge on the Woolston side of the River Itchen, and a number of strange contrivances were built there. Mr Kemp often said that it was he who kept the little firm going, and indeed the works facilities like the sawmill were very useful and the workforce, who were largely the Kemp boatyard men at the start, were versatile and able to carry out some unusual projects.

(G.A. Cozens lived close to these works in the early days of the company, and was a school friend of one of their workers as well as a neighbour of Henri Biard, their long-serving test pilot. He has left some fascinating, often anecdotal, information concerning the local aircraft industry, particularly on the subject of Supermarine. The author believes that this extract, and the others following, while sometimes inaccurate, deserve to be more widely known.)

THE NIGHTHAWK AND OTHEREARLY AIRCRAFT

Many accounts state that Mitchell joined Supermarine in 1917, but we find, in Sea Flyers, C.G. Grey writing that Mitchell ‘had been discovered by Mr Pemberton-Billing as a competent draughtsman and later Hubert Scott-Paine put him in charge of the design department’. Noel Pemberton-Billing was no longer the owner of the company when it became Supermarine in 1917, and the Flight and Aeroplane obituaries to Mitchell in 1937 both stated that he joined the company in 1916. Also, a surviving works drawing of the PB 31E Nighthawk, relating to the central nacelle, its gun mountings, and the various cable runs, is initialled ‘R.J.M.’ and dated 18 September 1916.

The young Mitchell, builder of small model aeroplanes, must have felt that any misgivings about moving, alone and so far from his family and home, were forgotten, at least temporarily, when he arrived at Pemberton-Billing Ltd and saw this aircraft – a 60ft-span monster quadruplane, standing nearly 18ft high. It was completed and first flew (presumably with the control cables and gun mountings drawn by Mitchell) in February 1917, some months after Pemberton-Billing Ltd was bought by Hubert Scott-Paine, on 20 September 1916. It was he who adopted the old firm’s telegraphic address for the new firm – Supermarine Aviation Works Ltd.

The first version of the Nighthawk machine was the PB 29E of 1916 which had been devised in response to the frighteningly new bombing raids by German airships. In order to reach and patrol at the heights attainable by these invaders, an aircraft with a large wing area was required. The usual biplane principle for lightness of construction was applied with a vengeance and resulted in its quadruplane configuration. It crashed not long after its delivery to naval pilots for handling trials but, soon afterwards, the young Mitchell was working on a new version of this ‘gunship’.

Just as Mitchell’s career ended with, and was brought to the attention of the wider public by, the creation of a land-based fighting machine, the Spitfire, so his design career, devoted mainly to marine aircraft, started with a non-maritime fighting system. The 962sq. ft wing area of the PB 31 was designed to support the weight of a Lewis gun in the nose and, unusually, a non-recoil 1.5-pounder cannon mounted in the top wing pylon, together with another Lewis gun. Equally unusually, there was also a 5hp engine and generator installed in the fuselage to power a movable searchlight at the very front of the aircraft for the purpose of searching out airships at night.

Under a well-known American test pilot of the day, Clifford B. Prodger, the new aircraft was found to reach 75mph and to have a landing speed of only 35mph, but it also took one hour to reach 10,000ft, as its two 100hp Anzani engines proved not to be powerful enough. Mitchell, therefore, must have learned swiftly how aircraft designs were, more than anything else, at the mercy of engine technology.

Meanwhile, the problem of successfully combating the German Zeppelins had been solved by 1917 with the development of an explosive bullet that enabled sufficient oxygen into the airship’s hydrogen bags for them to be ignited by an incendiary bullet. As both these bullets could be loaded into the gun magazines of conventional aircraft, the development of the heavily armed Nighthawk was not required.