Dogfight series

Cigarette and tea companies had harnessed the power of collectible cards to aid sales from at least the 1930s. The huge success of the Brooke Bond Tea military aircraft card series in the 1960s inspired a series of ultra-specific military history books from Osprey. Since their first book on USAAF P-51 units – published, from memory, in 1968 – Osprey has produced a bewildering array of books on every conceivable military subject from the Tarentine Horseman of Magna Graecia to Vulcan Units of the Cold War. Osprey has followed the general trend in specialised aviation books toward greater technical detail on ever more specific subject, which can be fascinating or boring depending on the particular subject in question. The Sturmjägers, the heavily armed and armoured Fw 190 close-cange bomber killer variants, are certainly exciting subjects. The men themselves are fascinating, a motivated cadre of pilots trained to take down enemy bombers at virtually any cost, even using rammimg when required.

The details of the text, and the darkly understated pilot quotes, are illuminating – and are backed up by the quality of the many illustrations and diagrams. The subject of the Luftwaffe in World War II can having an ickiness factor, especially with such exciting artworks and a book taking a largely German perspective, but this is neatly sidestepped by the quality of the research and the focus on the tactical, analytical and technical. The author, Robert Forsyth, is impressively knowledgeable on his subject and has clearly spent a great deal of time immersed in Luftwaffe history. The result is a highly readable book charting the desperate defence of the Reich in 1943-45 and the human and technical story of a terrible era in aerial warfare. Much recommended.

Fw 190 Sturmjäger

Defence of the Reich 1943–45

Robert Forsyth (Author) , Gareth Hector (Illustrator) , Jim Laurier (Illustrator)

CH-CH-CHANGES: THE TEN REINVENTIONS of a Spitfire

In an attempt to create an article concept so complex that even the editor doesn’t really understand it, Hush-Kit teamed up with our in-house number cruncher Eddie Rippeth to compare marks of Spitfire to periods of David Bowie’s life. To further bewilder you, we have added the number of aerial victories, kills per airframe, and a combat history highlighting the Spitfire’s phoenix-like abilities to be reborn and save the day (I think).

In 1947, production of the Spitfire ended and David Bowie was born, so could the British musician have been a reincarnation of the fighter aircraft? There are certainly some parallels. The reason for the godly success of the Spitfire was its capacity for reinvention. Having achieved stardom early in its career, the svelte androgynous Spitfire suffered some knocks but always reemerged to further greatness. With an almost infinite gift for re-invention, it was truly the David Bowie of fighters – it knew when to change, to experiment, how to turn failure into success, and through these reinventions it became this immortal superstar fighter, achieving lasting fame (♫ fame ♫)well beyond its realm of combat. And like any superstar and subject of mass attention, its achievements are revised, questioned, contrasted unfavorably, reduced, and even ridiculed.

To explore the Spitfire superstar phenomenon, I have pulled out the ten most significant fighter marks – focusing on their statistical performance to show how the Spitfire went through cycles of success, failure and reinvention that uniquely kept it a front-line first-choice fighter for the entire duration of the Second World War. As always with aerial combat statistics, it comes with some major caveats*.

10. Spitfire Mark I: Ziggy Stardust: a superstar is born

1353 victories (3^rd highest)
Victories per airframe:  0.86 (1^st)
Top aces: Eric Lock 21; Colin Gray 16.2; Brian Carbury 15.75

It doesn’t need restating but I’ll do it anyway, but in its first version, the Spitfire played the starring role in the most significant air battle of all time. Not only that, but as a warm-up, the Spitfire was thrown into the equally desperate struggle of Dunkirk to make its proper debut in battle. The only argument is the degree to which the Spit I deserves the plaudits, given the work by its more numerous partner, the more rugged Hurricane. What isn’t in doubt is that no fighter marked its arrival with a bigger victory. With the Spitfire Mark I, a star was born.

The first two Spitfire aces over Dunkirk, both going on to further great success –
92 Squadron’s Bob Stanford Tuck and Al Deere of 54 Squadron.

The Spitfire I scored 19 victories in the Phoney War, starting with Heinkel He 111 over the Firth of Forth on October 16 1939. Unlike the Hurricane, they were kept out of the disasters of Norway and France. A true baptism of fire came on May 21, when sixteen Spitfire squadrons rotated in and out of the air battle over Dunkirk. Over the next ten days, Spitfires made 161 claims for 62 losses (slightly less on both counts than the Hurricane), while blunting the Luftwaffe effort enough to enable the evacuation. It was a challenging debut – poor RAF tactics like the close ‘Vic’ formation (an inflexible formation usually featuring three aircraft) contributed to unnecessary losses, as did the attempt to introduce the Big Wing (a mass formation that took time to assemble). On the plus side, pilots who would become indelibly associated with the Spitfire, namely Al Deere, Bob Stanford Tuck and Sailor Malan, emerged as aces. On 2 May, the Spitfire also became indelibly imprinted on the Luftwaffe. Luftflotte II’s diary recorded, ‘a bad day… With sixty-four aircrew missing, seven wounded and twenty-three aircraft gone, today’s losses exceed the combined total of the last ten days.’ Leading the way was Sailor Malan’s 74 Squadron, who set about a squadron of Dorniers, according to commander, Major Werner Kriepe, ‘with the fury of maniacs’. Spitfires made a mockery of their eight-machine gun armament being too light by destroying at least sixteen bombers and making ten further claims, and in doing so, inflicted significant pain on the Luftwaffe at a critical moment in the evacuation.

Dunkirk was followed swiftly by the Battle of Britain, the most intensive few months of fighter combat in RAF history. Opinion is split on just how much credit the Spitfire deserves in the battle, but a prevailing view now is that the Hurricane was the key fighter, as it was more numerous and scored more victories.

Something in the Air 

As always, there is an element of truth here, but this shouldn’t be overstated. The fact that the Spitfire was at least a match for the Me 109 was an absolute keystone to battle tactics – and to victory. Indestructible Kiwi ace Al Deere explained in his bio Nine Lives: ‘the policy of using selected Spitfire squadrons thus enabling the remaining squadrons, and this included the 12 Group Hurricanes, to concentrate more effectively on the bombers. On numerous occasions (I) witnessed the rewards reaped when enemy bombers, shorn of their escort, were set upon by the defending Hurricanes, which, excellent as they were, could not have coped so effectively without the intervention of the Spitfires.’ As the table below shows, Spitfires shot mainly fighters down, while Hurricanes, a (marginally) better gun platform, recorded a higher proportion of bombers. Spitfire squadrons also tended to be higher scoring. It’s fair to say that more Spitfires could have won without the Hurricane, but vice versa would have been much more difficult, as Me 109s would have more opportunity to achieve dominance over the less agile Hurricanes, something which would occur with horrible frequency in 1941. But it’s also very fair to say that under skillful radar-directed fighter direction, the Hurricane and Spitfire both shot down a lot of aircraft and that’s what won this crucial battle.

	Total est. victories	Victories/ squadron	Me 109	Me 110	Ju 87	Bombers
Spitfire	1156	60.8	59%	12%	4%	24%
Hurricane	1480	46.25	38%	20%	9%	33%

Yet despite this monumental contribution to one of the most consequential air battles of all time, the Mark I would disappear in the blinking of the eye. Though the Merlin II /III engines were competitive in 1940, they rapidly fell behind German competitors by early 1941. The Mark I had already needed an upgrade with hastily fixed constant speed blades post-Dunkirk, and then throughout the Battle of Britain, a key problem was that the carburetor flooded the engine in an inverted dive, giving clued-up Luftwaffe fighter pilots a get-out-of-jail card. The Spit IB introduced wing cannon, although this proved unreliable and problems weren’t fully ironed out until the Mark V. As a result, the Mark I was being phased out even before the end of the Battle of Britain.

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The Buddha of Rhubarbia

This phasing out of the Mark I was perhaps fortunate for its impeccable combat record. As it was entirely replaced by Mark IIs by March 1941, just four Mk 1s were lost in Leigh Mallory’s ill-conceived Circus and Rhubarb operations. The Mark I’s victories would be almost entirely achieved in the calendar year of 1940, with Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, and the final two months of action post-Battle giving the Mark I its final total of 1,353. There is overclaim to be factored in here – and Battle of Britain Day itself is renowned for the 175 claimed yet just 56 actual Luftwaffe losses – a 3 to 1 overclaim. However, throughout the whole battle, September 15th’s extravagance was partially balanced by days of underclaiming, notably in October**, so overall the overclaim for the Battle was about 1.5 claims to a single loss. With an overclaim ratio of slightly over 2 during Dunkirk, overall we can be confident that the majority of Spitfire I claims were actual Luftwaffe losses.

**The Parliamentary record in Hansard in 1947 records 325 Luftwaffe losses in October 1940, against just 260 RAF claims.  

Top-scoring Mark I pilot and also leading ace of the Battle of Britain, Shropshire’s Eric ‘Sawn off’ Lock, with 21 of his final total of 26 victories in the mark.

9. Supermarine Spitfire Mark II: The Fighter That Fell to Earth

334 victories (4^th)
0.36 per airframe (4^th)

Top aces: Douglas Bader 10.5; Harbourne Stephen 7.5

Fated to be one of the most overlooked marks, the Mark II arrived towards the end of the Battle of Britain, with Sailor Malan’s 74 Squadron the first to receive it on 24 September. Such was the pace of fighter development, it was being replaced by the Mark V in the spring of 1941.

Something in the Air

There was plenty to fix on the Mark I so the Mk II included some sensible developments. It featured an uprated Merlin XII engine with 140 more horsepower, while experimentation with cannon armament continued. Spitfire IIs would also all be fitted with the ‘Miss Shilling’s orifice,’ in early 1941, which prevented the engine cutting out when inverted or rolling. Yet perhaps the main significance of the Mark II is that it was the first to be churned out by the controversial state-financed Castle Bromwich plant, once Lord Beaverbrook had fired Lord Nuffield for its chaotic failure to deliver earlier Spitfires, a failure which might even have cost the war.

The Spitfire Mark II, in outward appearance almost identical to the Mark I.

In combat, it provided a modest step forward on the Mark I, but it was released at a time of hectic combat and so apparently achieved a decent number of kills per air-frame. However, over two-thirds of these victories were during the Douglas / Leigh Mallory ‘lean towards France’ – and in July 1941, the month of peak folly when 116 Spits were lost, nearly half (54) were Mark IIs. This was the period when RAF overclaiming reached 5 to 1, so it seems very likely the Mark II had both the highest overall overclaim rate of any Spitfire mark, and even worse (and uniquely), suffered more air-to-air losses than actual victories. One of these losses was the iconic legless ace Douglas Bader, who top-scored with the Mark II but was shot down / collided on August 24 1941, spending the rest of the war as a PoW. Mark IIs scarcely outlasted Bader’s participation in the war, being mostly phased out by late 1941, outclassed by the new Focke-Wulf Fw 190s and Me 109Fs. Sadly, no one in the higher echelons of Fighter Command thought to send the Mark IIs elsewhere – it might not have been a match for the latest Luftwaffe fighters, but it would have made a heck of an improvement on the Brewster Buffalo.

THE TOP TEN SPITFIRE MARKS RANKED BY NUMBER OF KILLS

8. Supermarine Spitfire Mark V

2560 victories (1st in list of Spitfire variants by kill)

0.39 victories per airframe (3^rd)

Top aces: George Buerling (Can) 29.33; Jamie Rankin (Eng) 18.75; Adrian Goldsmith (Aus) 16.25

The disappointing third album which gets critically panned and finds an unexpected cult following overseas.

The Mark V is never anyone’s favourite Spitfire. It was clearly outclassed by the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, whose arrival caused a major panic in RAF circles, and even led to a loss of faith in the Spit itself. Its reputation was tarnished by association, as it represented the bulk of Spits used during Douglas and Leigh Mallory’s ineffective and wasteful Circus and Rhubarb operations of 1941. Mark Vs were also the first to model Vokes and Aboukir filters, the clipped wings – and other such abominations which undoubtedly defiled the original Spit’s sleek beauty <Eddie’s views on clipped wings do not represent the Hush-Kit site>. Pilots even compared it unfavorably with the Mark II. Even the aviation history writer Bill Gunston derisively captioned a flight of Desert Air Force Spitfires as among the slowest ever built. As the first Spitfire to be exported, it was despised by the Soviets, who briefly used and abused 200 Spitfire Vs during the Kuban campaign, and ultimately rejected it for the Airacobra. Even in Australia, it disappointed in the raids over Darwin where it failed to dish out the expected trouncing of Japanese raiders (although it still saw them off with minimal damage to northern Australia).

So the Spitfire V bore the unusual burden of not being the best fighter for much of its service. The type had built on the improvements on the Mark II – notably in that the cannon for the VBs and VCs (introduced in the IB) were much improved in efficacy. Some Spit VCs even switched to four 20mm cannon. And in reality, it was less the plane and more the engine that was the issue – the Merlin 45 could deliver 1,460 horse-power, an excellent output on the Mark V’s introduction in 1941, (and of course it included the questionably nicknamed ‘Mrs Shilling’s Orifice’, a modification that meant the Merlin no longer cut out in an inverted dive). However, in September 1941, it fell very clearly behind in the horse-power race when the Focke-Wulf Fw 190A arrived, with 1700hp-plus with its BMW 801 engine, translating into a 30mph top speed advantage.

A form of panic descended on the RAF powers that be – even the retired Lord Dowding, its great champion in 1940, thought a new fighter needed. Others were looking to the new Hawker Tornado and Typhoon. Hasty modifications to create the ‘clipped, cropped and clapped’ LF version barely helped. Yet, it wasn’t the Mark V’s fault that it would be stupidly deployed en masse in Douglas and Leigh Mallory’s ‘Non-stop Offensive’ of Circus and Rhubarb raids throughout 1941. But the numbers simply embarrassed it. July to December 1941 saw big claims – but 713 translated into just 103 Bf 109s lost to enemy action with a sobering 413 Spits lost in the same period. And this was before the arrival of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. It got worse in 1942, with the failure to stop the Channel Dash and 59 Spits lost in one day in the massive air battle over Dieppe. Perhaps the lowest moment was the fate of the Canadian 403 Squadron on 2 June 1942. Led by Al Deere, as top cover for yet another cross-Channel fighter sweep, Fw190s jumped his squadron, shooting down seven Mark Vs, with Deere one of the few to make it home. Outrageously, the heroic Kiwi would be criticised to his face by the architect of the Non-Stop Offensive, Leigh Mallory, who blamed Deere’s over-aggressive approach for the losses.

And yet, in early 1942, the Spitfire V would re-invent itself by going international. This apparently mediocre fighter was exactly the aeroplane required in a strategically hopeless situation facing Luftwaffe and Regia dominance. The Air Ministry finally prised a handful of squadrons of Spitfires from Douglas and Leigh Mallory and sent them to the Mediterranean, to the besieged island of Malta, and the Libyan/ Egyptian front, where things were taking a truly dark turn in early 1942. The effect was dramatic – particularly in Malta.

For Malta, Spitfire Vs had to be hastily adapted, with the Vokes filter and a slipper fuel tank. They would need to fly from the decks of carriers, then over 800 miles across the Mediterranean and its Axis-dominated shores to the tiny bombed-out island citadel. Here, once reunited with the great Spitfire commander Keith Park, they defeated Kesselring’s massive bomber campaign, inflicting crushing losses and extinguishing Axis plans for invasion. The Canadian George Buerling led a pack of aces, running up 27 victories in just four months of fighting. Spitfire claims during the Malta air battles eventually reached over 680 victories. In North Africa, a small number of Spitfires would provide top cover while Coningham’s Desert Air Force fighter bombers wrought havoc below among the Afrika Korps in the weeks and months as they tried to follow up their crushing victories of Gazala and Tobruk. In both cases, the Spitfire V, under the superb fighter generalship of Park, Coningham and others, played a hugely significant tactical role in major strategic victories which turned the tide of the entire war.

Algeria Touchshriek

Following El Alamein, Spitfire Vs played a critical role in Algeria following the Torch landings in early November 1942, with Spitfires flown into the forward Bone and Maison Blanche airfields, which would be seized from Vichy control by commandos hours before their arrival from Gibraltar. For the second time in 1942, Spitfire squadrons were placed well behind the established lines and in real jeopardy. The Luftwaffe response was furious, with a dramatic reinforcement and days of major bombing raids on allied ports and the Spitfire’s airfields. In one of the last periods where RAF fighters faced huge odds, the Spit Vs performed superbly, scoring 144 victories in just a month’s fighting – victories which matched closely recorded Luftwaffe losses.

Surprisingly, the Mark V found a new lease of life when Spitfire IXs started to arrive in Tunisia in small numbers in early 1943 – suddenly even Focke-Wulf pilots had to be more careful when dealing with Spits in case they attacked the new super-charged version. Just how well the two complemented each other was perfectly demonstrated on July 25, 1943, during the German evacuation of Sicily. Three mixed squadrons of Spitfire Vs and IXs led by Kiwi ace Colin Gray destroyed an entire formation of fleeing Junkers Ju 52s and the bulk of their Me 109 escort, claiming 26 shot down without loss – the Mark Vs accounted for all but two of the victories. Sicily, like Malta, El Alamein and Tunisia, was yet another great and consequential aerial victory for the Spit V against the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica, with Spitfires scoring five kills for every loss, asserting superiority over the Luftwaffe Me 109s and Fw 190s which would never be lost. Though the Mark V never recorded an album with Iggy Pop.

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes launches in North America

The upshot of all this was that the Spitfire V, despite its technical inferiority, mustered a heroic list of RAF battle honours, doing more to end the Luftwaffe’s pre-eminence in the Mediterranean theatre than any other fighter – and when all is added up, scored more victories than any other Spitfire mark. The Spit V also added 80 claims in their short, despised (yet reasonably successful) deployment by the Soviets, and added more in the Spitfire’s first ETO deployment in Northern Australia. In both cases, wheezing old second-hand fighters suffered mechanical issues which marred the deployments. The equipping of the 31^st and 52^nd US fighter groups in North Africa proved more satisfactory, and the majority of the USAAF’s 379 Spit victories were made in the Mark V.

In looking at the final scoresheet, we need to acknowledge that the Spit Vs was the most heavily involved mark in the misguided ‘Non-stop offensive’ of 1941. During this chaotic stage, there was a startling level of overclaiming – at one stage passing five confirmed claims per Luftwaffe loss*. This fell to 2 to 1 in the air battles of Malta and North Africa – and below 1.5 to 1 in Tunisia and Sicily. So overall the big claims number probably can be safely halved for actual shot-down aircraft, yet even factoring this in, there seems little doubt that the Spitfire V was the top-scoring Spitfire mark.

Top Spitfire Mark V pilot was the maverick Canadian George Buerling, who outscored several great Luftwaffe aces, such as Joachim Muncheberg, Gerhard Michalski and Siegfried Freytag to be the top-scoring ace during the Battle of Malta, scoring 27.33 victories (of 31.33).

Supermarine Spitfire Mark VII

– 24 victories
Victories per air-frame: 0.16

Gareth Nowell, Jack Cleland, A.D.Yeardley 2

The overlooked B-side gem which hit new heights

The threat of high-altitude Luftwaffe bombers in the shape of the Junker Ju86P led to the development of a strand of high-altitude Spitfires, and in parallel the crucial development of a two-stage supercharger which would transform Spitfire performance from 1942. The first of the high altitude models was the Mark VI, which saw some action and managed a handful of victories, equipping two squadrons – this introduced a semi-pressurised cockpit, which rather worryingly came with a non-slidable canopy, an upgraded Merlin and the introduction of longer pointy wings. In service, the Mark VI scarcely outperformed the Mark V, underlined by the latter scoring the first successful high-altitude interception of the Ju86P. However, the development of the two-stage supercharged Merlin 61, specifically to provide optimal high-altitude performance, led to the much better Mark VII, which soon replaced the Mark VI at 616 and 124 Squadrons. It was also picked up by 131 Squadron, and flown operationally from Spring 1943 to late summer 1944. However, the ground-breaking nature of the Merlin 61 meant it was rushed into use with the Spitfire Mark IX, which turned out to be the equal to (but not better than) the Mark VII, even at high altitudes, and being in service months earlier, had already made an indelible impression in combat.

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The Mark VII had a limited production run, as much work was also being done on the Mark VIII (a tropicalised development of the VII). With Luftwaffe high-level raids somewhat infrequent, Mark VIIs tended to be used for top cover escort duties and sometimes joined Ramrod raids over France, where they had a number of successful encounters. The stand-out came on June 12 1944, when the Mark VII ‘wing’, led by Manchester’s top Spitfire ace Peter Malham Brothers, caught and destroyed six Focke-Wulf Fw 190s as they took off from Le Mans airbase. A collection of Mark VI and Mark VIIs was also based in Skaebrae on the Orkney, where various squadrons were posted to rest and rebuild. On one occasion, 602 Squadron’s Ian Blair got a go in a Mark VII and even shot down a reconnaissance Me 109. Blair succinctly summarised the aircraft as ‘phenomenal with pointy wing tips and a phenomenal rate of climb’.

Jack Cleland’s Spitfire VII (616 Squadron)

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Supermarine Spitfire Mark VIII

202 victories
0.14 kills per airframe

Top aces: Albert Houle 7, Neville Duke 6, Robert Day 5.5

The Thin White Duke – exquisitely handsome but oft-misunderstood reinvention (without the fascistic associations)

The gorgeous Mark VIII was what the Mark IX would have been had the Supermarine design team been allowed the chance to fully develop the Merlin Spitfire. It took several design refinements from the two excellent high-altitude Spitfire Marks VI and VII, such as the pointed tail fin, and retractable tail wheel (but not the pressurized cockpit), it was also fully tropicalized, and its combat career would be restricted to warmer climes: the Mediterranean and India/Burma campaigns.

Exquisite in performance and in looks, in truth the Mark VIII didn’t accumulate a lot of victories – the Mark V and Mark IX had already done a great job of decimating the Luftwaffe before the Mark VIII’s arrival in Italy in late 1943. However, they did some great work, and an interesting aspect of the VIII’s arrival was it came to the RAF (and SAAF) and USAAF at the same time, and served alongside comparable numbers of Mark IXs (and also Mark Vs), so a friendly comparison can be made in terms of its performance (see table). This suggests the VIII had a distinct edge in air combat over the Mark IX, recording an air-to-air kill ratio just shy of 10. The Mark VIII’s best day in Italy was shared between two RAF squadrons (111 and 601), and one US (308^th, part of the 31^st Fighter Group), when they tackled Fw190 Jabos and Me109 escorts over Cassino. Unusually the Spits underclaimed – just five victories were confirmed. In fact, Luftwaffe records show six Me 109s and three Fw 190s were shot down in this combat, with no Spits lost.

Table showing Spitfire victories and losses over Anzio and Cassino, January to March 1944. Note heavy losses to AA and mechanical failure as Spitfires were increasingly employed in ground attack operations – particularly the old Mark Vs.

	RAF			USAAF
	Vics	Losses (air)	Losses (AA/mech)	Vics	Losses (air)	Losses (AA/mech)	Air-to-air kill ratio
Mk V	2	1	19	37	7	12	4.88
Mk VIII	51	7	15	28	1	2	9.88
Mk IX	42	11	19	33	4	5	5.00

In Burma, the Mark VIIIs timely deployment in January 1944 with 81 and 152 squadrons came just prior to the battle of the Admin Box. Here, General Slim had trained his forces to stand fast after being surrounded, the key being that the cut-off forces were to be supplied by air – this despite hitherto Japanese air superiority. In just three days, just two squadrons of Mark VIIIs mauled the Japanese fighter and bomber formations, registering over fifty claims of destroyed or damaged.

After this, Japanese aircraft became very scarce over the Box. Not a single Dakota flying into the box was lost, the army held firm against attack after attack, and the first major victory against the Japanese Army was achieved. It would be followed with further crushing victories at Kohima and Imphal, and the destruction of an entire Japanese army. Yet this most refined version of the most finely crafted aircraft in history had to put up with some indignities, even beyond the basic jungle airstrips. There was an ill-considered attempt to put six VIIIs into a jungle-cleared Chindit stronghold, Broadway, behind Japanese lines, but without effective radar, it was only a matter of time before they were caught and destroyed on the ground. On another occasion, a squadron of Spit VIIIs was caught in a vicious tropical storm and nine were lost. Nevertheless, at no point in its combat career in Asia was the thoroughbred Mark VIII seriously challenged in the skies. Top scorers with the Mark VIII were (in Italy), Canadian Albert Houle and the RAF’s leading ace in the Med, Neville Duke, and in Burma/India, the Canadian Robert Day.

The exquisite and perfectly engineered Mark VIII was often forced to slum it on rugged jungle-cleared airfields, like this 136 Squadron Spitfire at Rumkhapalong in Burma.

Supermarine Spitfire Mark IX

1520 victories (2^nd)
Victories per airframe: 0.25 (5^th)

Top aces: Johnnie ‘I’m Only Dancing’ Johnson (Eng) 29.08; Donald Laubman (Can), Wilfred Crawford-Compton (NZl) 15

Let’s Dance – return of the superstar

The arrival of the Mark IX in June 1942 put the Spitfire back to its rightful place as the best fighter in the world, coinciding directly with the tide of the war turning irrevocably. Jeffrey Quill described the Spitfire IX as a ‘quantum leap’, and the mark would serve in the majority of RAF squadrons for the remaining three years of war with distinction, and despite the arrival of great US types, the Hawker Tempest and some upgraded Luftwaffe fighters, the Mark IX was never discomforted like its predecessor. Yet in design terms, it wasn’t a quantum leap; It was the Mark V airframe modified to accommodate a bigger engine, the new more powerful Merlin 61, with Stanley Hooker’s two-stage supercharger. It provided the boost to enable the Spitfire IX to match the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in the key areas of speed, climb rate, manoeuvrability and best of all, high-altitude performance. The IX marked the end of the Focke-Wulf supremacy, winning its first victories in the summer of 1942. And that satisfying moment of redemption is where the Spitfire’s involvement in many histories of the air war ends, as along came the US Eighth Air Force with its Thunderbolts and Mustangs to do the great wiping out of the Luftwaffe. In fact, there is much more to tell – the Mark IX had an illustrious combat record in northern Europe which compares strongly with the admittedly superb US fighters.

Obviously A.
Slowish start with lots of promise (BoF/YBRTS) era defining 2nd album (BoB/ITANOMTHUB), strong follow ups (MkV/IX over Europe/FOABP), evolved and remained relevant (everything after in both cases).
Both still show stoppers when seen live to this day.

— riksbar (@riksbar1) April 20, 2024

As the original escort for US Air Force 8^th Air Force raids, the Spit IX was lacking in range, but nonetheless was intensively involved until the end of 1943, when longer-range P47s and the superb Merlin-engined P-51s took over the job entirely as US raids ventured deep into Germany. During the second half of 1943, Spitfires (predominantly Mk IXs) outscored US fighters by 396 to 379 victories, with many of these victories on escort missions – including both raids on Schweinfurt, where both Spitfires and P-47s were helpless to stop the heavy bomber losses beyond their limited defensive curtain. Should the Mark IX have been adapted for long-range? Certainly it could have been (this was certainly the view of Quill) although the question was very soon superfluous as the P51B Mustang arrived in late 1943.

Suffer jet city

The Mark IX served a vital role in enforcing air superiority in the final stages of the Tunisian campaign, with Eisenhower demanding its deployment as a response to the arrival of considerable Luftwaffe reinforcements, including the dreaded Focke-Wulf Fw 190, which by February 1943 were meting out some punishment for both the RAF and the relatively green USAAF P-38 and P-40 squadrons. The arrival of the Spit IX, albeit in small numbers, would help ensure the 190s impact in the theatre was limited. Its most notable deployment was with the ‘Polish Fighting Group’, assigned to 126 Squadron, led by the top Polish aces Stanislav Skalski and Eugeniusz Horbaczewski. The group shot down 26 Luftwaffe aircraft in their two months in Tunisia. The Mark IX would also see action in Sicily and Italy, alongside the Mark V and VIII.  

However, the Spitfire IX’s greatest achievements were over Normandy and Western Europe following D-Day, where they helped ensure air superiority despite ever more Luftwaffe fighters being thrown into the desperate fray. On D-Day, a mere two Me 109s reached the beach, but major Luftwaffe reinforcements would soon arrive. The Spitfire IX leapt into huge air battles, with the Canadian Fighter Wing racking up some impressive scores under the leadership of the top Spitfire ace of all time, Johnnie ‘I’m only dancing’ Johnson, amassing 393 victories over Normandy in the weeks following D-Day. Spit IXs also scored heavily in the fighting over Belgium and the Netherlands. A Mark IX from the Canadian 401 Squadron would be the first to shoot down the new Me 262 jet on 5 October 1944 (a P-47 had earlier achieved a maneuver kill).

The greatest of Spitfire aces, Johnnie Johnson, leader of the Canadian fighter wing of Mark IXs over a Luftwaffe airbase. Johnson shot down 21 Fw 190s – more than any other allied pilot.

Given the battlefield role, most Spitfire IXs involved were the low-level variant, sometimes with clipped wings, and often used as fighter-bombers. This was the case on 29 December 1944, when Spitfire IXs of firstly, the Norwegian 331, and secondly the Canadian 411 ‘Grizzly Bears’ Squadron, jumped III/JG54, the legendary ‘Green heart’ outfit, which was led by 122-kill Robert Weiss. The gruppe was the first to fly the brand new Fw 190D ‘Doras’, and had attacked some Typhoons near Osnabruck. What followed was two massacres in one day, with 17 Doras shot down and 13 pilots killed, including Weiss himself. Three Typhoons and two Spitfires were lost, while 411’s French-Canadian Richard Audet claimed five victories (the first Spitfire ‘ace in a day’ since the Battle of Britain), and Norwegian aces Helner Grund Spang and Martin Yngvar Gran both claimed three. Payback and more for the Focke-Wulf humiliations of 1941/42.

Just three days later, Spits would be heavily involved in intercepting Operation Bodenplatte, the Luftwaffe’s New Year’s Day massed surprise attack, though many Spits were caught and destroyed on the ground, those that got into the air scored heavily, with Polish 308 Squadron credited with 13 of 56 Spitfire victories that day. As the war ground out its final months, Spit IXs claimed a variety of other aircraft types, including Me262 and Arado Ar234 jets, while Canadian Donald Gordon even shot down a Mistel – a Junkers Ju 88 airframe converted into a pilotless missile, which was steered by a composite piloted Fw 190. Stingy RAF authorities granted Gordon credit for half a kill while his wingman was given half for shooting down the composite fighter.

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Like the Mark V, the IX was also heavily used by customers – it started to replace the V with the 31^st and 52^nd Fighter Groups, and fought in Sicily and Italy, although these would be supplanted once the Foggia airfields were secured and the US switched to longer range Mustangs for escort duties. The Soviets also took 1200 Mark IXs, and these were given the honour of defending Moscow and Leningrad, where their high-altitude attributes were prized. As there was no late-war strategic bombing campaign, they scarcely saw any action. Mark IXs were also at the heart of the bizarre three-way Spitfire battle during the Palestinian crisis of 1949. In the end, this superlative model amassed over 1,400 victories, and was competitive and playing a great role in securing battlefield air supremacy right up to the final day of the war in Europe.

Supermarine Spitfire Mark XII (12)

53 victories
0.53 victories per airframe
Raymond Harries (Wal) 10.5; Grey Stenborg (NZl) 4.33
Tin Machine – the short-lived heavy metal experiment

There was nothing subtle about the first Griffon-engined Spitfire to reach production – a hasty lash-up, borrowing Spitfire V and later Spitfire VIII airframes, with the Griffon requiring a disproportionately stretched nose and propellor spinner, topped off with sawn-off wings. A powerful successful brute, just 100 were before production switched to the twin-stage supercharged Griffon version, the Mark XIV. As a result, the XII equipped just two squadrons at its peak – 41 and 91, between April 1943 and September 1944.

Scary Monsters (and Super Mission Creeps)

The single-stage Griffon engine cranked out a hearty 1735 horsepower, more than enough for devilish high speed at low level, a useful quality for tackling nuisance Focke-Wulf Jabo (An abbreviation for the German term Jagdbomber for fighter-bomber aircraft) raiders. In a 1942 low-level speed trial against a Hawker Typhoon and captured Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the Spitfire was expected to be trounced. Instead, the Mark XII soundly thrashed the other aircraft, marking the arrival of the Griffon-engined Superspit. The airframe taking part, the prototype XII (in the hands of Jeffrey Quill), did a stellar job of convincing a cynical RAF audience of the aircraft’s blistering low-level performance. This was no fluke, as on 25 May 1943, the XII called time on the impunity of the Focke-Wulf Jabos. As the 91 Squadron diary related, ‘We got the Huns tonight, five of them, all in the drink…’ . The 190s time in the sun was over.

When not chasing Jabos the Mark XII also flew fighter escort for early B-17 raids and ‘Rhubarb’ fighter-baiting missions, along with B-26 Marauders – with much success. Indeed, 91 Squadron with its XIIs was the top-scoring squadron of September 1943 with 18 victories, led by their inspirational leader, Welshman Raymond Harries (above). Despite this, the Mark XII would have a short career, being phased out of the front line in September 1944 as both its squadrons re-equipped with Mark XIVs. Among the XII’s very last victories was the Focke-Wulf Fw190 of Emil ‘Bully’ Lang, a 173-kill super ace and holder of the record of 18 planes shot down in a day, who ran into a reconnaissance flight from 41 Squadron led by Terry Spencer. Ironically, Lang would be Terry Spencer’s only victory, who would gain international fame as a photographer, subjects including the Congolese war and the Beatles. The remaining Mark XIIs would be assigned to the reserve 595 Squadron – responsible for the air defence of Wales, a role they held until the end of 1945 – perhaps in a nod to the legendary Harries?

Heavy metal Spit: Spitfire Mk XII with 41 Squadron.

Raymond Harries – top Welsh ace and also top scorer in Griffon-engined Spitfires,
all scored in the Mark XII (10.5 of his 16.5 victories).

Spitfire Mark XIV: Heroes – valedictory anthem to brilliance

154 victories
0.17 victories per airframe
Aces: Harold Walmesley (Rho) 9.25, Ian Ponsford (Eng) 7

To many, the Mark XIV was the signature Griffon-engined Spitfire, and is a compelling candidate for the title of the best fighter of the War. It boasted an astonishing climb rate of nearly 5,000 feet per minute and a top speed just shy of 450 mph. With its sleek bubble canopy, stretched cut-back fuselage and enlarged sharkish tail fin, the Spit XIV was an utterly different beast to the petite Mark I. Rolls-Royce had designed the Griffon engine as a bigger, more powerful version of the Merlin, so it didn’t take long to realise that it, like the Merlin, would benefit tremendously from the addition of Hooker’s two-stage supercharger. And like the first super-charged Merlin Spitfire IX, the resultant Mark XIV was also intended as a stopgap, in this case until the more thoroughly revised Mark XVIII arrived. But life being what happens when you’re busy making other plans, the slightly less refined but still sensational Mark XIV was rushed into service in time to make a real impact on the war.

https://hushkit.net/2023/03/10/10-reasons-the-vickers-vc10-was-the-keith-moon-of-jetliners/

The first Mark XIV squadrons arrived with 610 Squadron in early 1944, and it would be followed with several more home defence fighter squadrons, alongside another aircraft of extraordinary performance, the Tempest V, both of which would be kept back from the Normandy invasion. By this stage of the war, opportunities of air combat over Britain were minimal – but these high-performance fighters were vital to counter a sinister new threat, the V1 pilotless bomb, the first of which was launched on June 12^th. Over the next three months, Spit Mark XIVs would shoot down 249 V1s – with 185 claimed by 91 squadron alone (exceeded only by two Tempest squadrons). One of the Spit XIV pilots, Kenneth Collier, would be the first to successfully ‘tip up’ a V1, a highly dangerous manoeuvre using his wing to flip the V1 over, causing it to career off into the ground (hopefully harmlessly).

The first deployment on the continent would be with 41, 91, 130 and 350 squadrons in late 1944, and the Mark XIV’s first victories came late – 23^rd January 1945, when Pilot Officers Benham and Hegerty shot down three Fw190 Doras. After this, the Mark XIV started to take an increasingly important role in enforcing air superiority.  The five weeks from the start of April 1945 to the war’s end saw the Mark XIV achieve total dominance wherever it flew. They amassed 90 victories and produced some of the war’s last aces, such as 130 Squadron’s Harold Walmsley and Ian Ponsford, who considered the Mark XIV as ‘the best operational fighter of them all as it could out-climb virtually anything’. 91 Squadron reported 33 victories in this period without a scratch to a single plane. Most of their victims were the Spitfire’s time-honoured main opponents, the 190 and 109, which came out in numbers to fight the hopeless fight on several days but on May 1^st, there was a bizarre phenomenon. Almost like Winged ants day, as the regime collapsed following Hitler’s death, the sky was filled with planes of all varieties as officers and apparatchiks grabbed anything to flee the tightening noose around Berlin, offering some last easy victories for allied pilots. The Mark XIV’s victory ledger that day featured Bucker Bu131 biplanes, Fieseler Storches, Messerschmitt Me108 trainers and other easy game. On May 4^th, a Mark XIV scored the Spitfire’s last victory of the war in Europe, a Siebel Si-204, a small airliner with an unfortunate similarity to a Dornier bomber. And that was it for the sublime Mark XIV’s combat victories, although it would attract some international customers – including Thailand, India and Belgium, serving for several years after the war. Some went out to Burma, where they missed the combat but became subject of the Burma’s missing Spitfires myth.

The sublime Mark XIV in 350 Squadron’s Belgian exiles livery. They scored 23 victories
in the closing months of the war.

Supermarine Spitfire Mark XVI

40 victories
0.04 victories per airframe (9^th)

Stephen Butte 3

Forgettable Young Americans

Confusingly the Mark XVI (16) arrived in service a full year after the Mark VIII (8) and Mark XIV (14), which were both markedly superior in performance. This was because the Mark XVI was essentially a Mark IX but used US Packard-built Merlin 266 engines instead of the home-grown RR Merlins. A big plus clearly was to take advantage of the US production line of Merlins. But the opportunity to take advantage of mass production at the cost of excellence is just so-unSpitfire. Not that it was a bad fighter – it was on a par with the Mark IX and quite a few XVIs sported the bubble canopy, giving a step up in visibility, and clipped wings, being used in a fighter-bomber role. It started equipping squadrons in late December 1944, as attrition from the European campaign started to bite, but for most squadrons it arrived too late. Nonetheless, it saw some lively action with 402 and 403 RCAF squadrons, notably on New Year’s Day 1945, when Luftwaffe fighters attacked allied airfields en masse. 403’s Stephen Butte took off into a sky ‘overcast of aluminium’, full of Luftwaffe fighters and his blazing away saw no fewer than three Fw190 Doras shot down.

V-2 Schneider

 Butte didn’t add further kills but he remained the top-scoring pilot in a Mark XVI. Spit XVIs were also tasked with attacks on V2 sites, with Mk XVI pilot Raymond Baxter (later a BBC presenter) laconically recalling his wing-man shooting at a V-2 as it launched, “I dread to think what would have happened if he’d hit the thing!”

Many Mark XVIs were built with the all-around view bubble canopy and cutback rear fuselage, more typical of Griffon-engined Spits.

Supermarine Seafire IIC / III

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence: initially all at sea with acting, but redemption in Japan

37 victories
0.03 victories per airframe (10^th)
Richard Reynolds 3.83

Always Crashing in the Same Car(rier)

Had the Blackburn Roc been a 1990s supercar, its often quoted (rather generously) 223mph top speed, would have pretty racy. Sadly, for Fleet Air Arm pilots it was a fighter aircraft in World War II, and scrapping 200mph made you prey, not a predator. As the war escalated, the Navy looked enviously at the Spitfire’s success, and wanted a piece. Unfortunately, the Spitfire had three fundamental problems which made an unlikely carrier fighter: its forward visibility with its long nose and low cockpit; the narrow and relatively short undercarriage; and thirdly, and its delicacy. Navy test pilot Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown noted, ‘there was a certain air of fragility about the plane; a ballerina-like delicacy that seemed inconsistent with the demanding muscle-taxing scenario of shipboard operations.’

Word on a Wing

The first combat use of this Seafire was as part of Operation Torch (8–16 November 1942) an Allied invasion of French North Africa. Here Seafire made its first claims – Vichy French Dewoittine D520s and a Martin Maryland. Operation Torch went reasonably well, but carrier-friendly conditions hid some real problems with the Seafire, which came dramatically to light at Salerno in September 1943. This time, Seafires were deployed on smaller escort carriers, and this, coupled with little wind, wrought chaos, with 42 Seafires lost to landing accidents or mechanical problems. The two test pilots, Geoffrey Quill and ‘Winkle’ Brown, were brought together to find an urgent solution. Their recommendations included strengthening the fuselage and undercarriage, while devising a special landing protocol. The Seafire remained a tricky aircraft to land, but the scale of the Salerno fiasco wasn’t repeated.

A Seafire following a misjudged landing on the deck of HMS Implacable. Note the hybrid roundels with bars to differentiate from Japanese livery.

In the dramatic days of early 1945, several squadrons of Seafires equipped the British Pacific Fleet that joined the US Navy in the final bitter fighting off Japan. Though adept at intercepting (Rock’n’Roll) suicide attacks, the operations highlighted the Spitfire’s perilously short endurance, especially while providing fleet Combat Air Patrols. While fighting over the coast of Japan, Seafires finally hit their stride – on the very last day of the war, August 15 1945 – claiming seven for one loss. Meanwhile, in a reverse of the norm, the greatest of allied sea-board fighters, the Grumman Hellcat, suffered a mauling with four losses to Mitsubishi Raidens. Which might explain their switched trajectories after the war. While the fantastic Hellcat was swiftly replaced by the Bearcat and Corsair, the Royal Navy stuck with the Seafire, ending with the monster Mark 47, with the 2350hp Griffon 88 engine and six-blade contra-rotating propellors, which saw action in Malaya and Korea, where it would generally be replaced by the Hawker Sea Fury. The creators of the Hurricane finally trumped Supermarine, a footnote in aviation history as jet fighters now dominated the skies.

Fantastic Voyage

And that, in essence, is the Spitfire story through its top ten fighter versions. Further marks would follow – the Mark 21 (note the switch to Arabic numerals) actually made it to squadrons before the end of the war, and even saw combat (it destroyed a German miniature sub). The refined Mk XVIII missed the war entirely although would get to shoot a few planes down – mainly Egyptian Spitfires, in the Palestinian war (two were also lost to Israeli Spitfires). And of course, in concluding, we’d better mention the elephant in the room as we scan the fighting records of the Spitfire.

Sound & Vision

The Spitfire also had a parallel development strand as the superlative allied photo-reconnaissance aircraft for most of the war, an activity of incredible yet unquantifiable importance to the Allied war effort – one that fully deserves a separate story.

Caveats

*Firstly, the numbers given are estimated confirmed claims (see Acks), gleaned from a number of authoritative but occasionally conflicting sources, but no single complete data set. Where there are gaps I’ve made best estimates, so there is room for error, and I’m happy to receive new or conflicting information. Secondly, the numbers are for victories confirmed by the RAF or allied authorities, which famously can vary considerably from actual losses suffered by Axis forces. This means it is comparable with published numbers for US fighter victories and for Luftwaffe’s high-scoring aces. I have commented on the overclaim in the narratives. Just one more point on the subject of quantifying a fighter’s efficacy into a number of victories. Keith Park on arriving in bombed-out Malta asked his predecessor Hugh Pugh-Lloyd of the Luftwaffe, ‘why don’t you stop them coming.’ And that’s exactly what Spitfires did in the Battle of Britain, Malta, Burma and North Africa, on some occasions without scoring a huge number of victories. The Me 109 probably topped 50,000 victories simply because it never did ‘stop them coming’. The Luftwaffe’s predilection with huge ace scores would prove as effective a war-winning strategy as General Westmoreland’s VC body counts in Vietnam.

Bowie/aviation puns

Crashes to crashes

Aladdin Plane

Golden Lears

Boeings Keep Swinging Always

Crashing In The Same Plane

SuffraJET City

Moonage Day Dreamliner

Let’s Spend the Flight Together

This is not American Airlines.

Miggy Stardust

Zlin White Duke Merlin Trilogy with Brian Eno

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Romania fathered the modern aeroplane, created the first propellerless powered aeroplane, contributed a major theory to aerodynamics – and even had a flying queen. We look at some exciting flying machines made by a maverick nation that always did things in its own distinctive way.

10. IAR 317 Airfox

You’ve heard of Airwolf, now get ready for…Airfox! Romania was a rare bird in the Warsaw Pact, licence-producing a number of Western aircraft types, notably the Aerospatiale SA 316 Alouette III (as the IAR 316) and the SA 330 Puma (as the IAR 330). Weirdly, they tried to turn both of these into attack helicopters, only one of which was successful – and that wasn’t the Alouette.

What it did have was an extremely cool name and a real can-do attitude and that counts for a hell of a lot as far as Hush Kit is concerned. IAR made a single prototype IAR 317 Airfox, a diminutive helicopter that looked a fair bit more anaemic compared to its originator, with a totally redesigned fuselage that brought a crew of two into a tandem configuration – you know, like a real attack helicopter.

It was offered at the 1985 Paris Air Show as capable of carrying machine gun pods, rockets and – get this – even iron bombs. Truly, it was the Little Gunship That Could. Sadly, however, it couldn’t – and the sole example remains preserved at the National Museum of Romanian Aviation in Bucharest.

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9. I.A.R.13/14 (1933)

By all accounts excellent, the I.A.R.13 was essentially a souped-up I.A.R.-12, with 50 greater horsepower and a top speed of 205mph (23mph faster). It was spurned by the Romanian Aeronautica Militaria in favour of the gull-winged Polish PZL P.11, but the ’13 was by no means shabby.

IAR toyed with making an effective low-wing monoplane fighter for a few years in the early thirties and several different prototypes were built but only one actually entered production, the IAR 14, of which 20 were built. Its high-speed aesthetics weren’t entirely born out by its performance as it could only manage 183mph flat out which was fairly respectable for the era, and fine if your major fear is war with, say, Bulgaria but is a bit on the modest side compared with the Hawker Fury or Polikarpov I1-16. Only twenty were built, for the Royal Romanian Air Force. Its advantage over the faster ’13 was its use of a licence-built Lorraine 12.Eb (as used on the earlier 12) over the foreign Hispano-Suiza S M12C. The 14 was the first Romanian fighter to enter production and laid the foundations for I.A.R.’s impressive future achievements.

8. Type 1910 (probably never flown)

The rest of the world – with some freakish exceptions – had to wait for rockets and jets for propeller-less aeroplanes, but Henri Coandă did it in 1910! Power came from a unique propulsion system that used a piston engine to compress and heat air and to push it out of the back. Henri claimed to have thrown the 1910 but other than his personal account there seems little to support this claim.

Describing it as the first jet aircraft would be hyperbole but it was an early example of thinking beyond the propeller. Henri Marie Coandă (7 June 1886 – 25 November 1972) was an inventor, and aerodynamics pioneer, and discovered the Coandă effect of fluid dynamics. This explains how a fluid which flows close to a convex surface will be deflected. The Coanda effect has been exploited to generate high lift for STOL aircraft, the NOTOR for helicopters and even high-speed flying saucer concepts explored in Canada and the US. Coandă worked in the UK to design aircraft, including the Bristol T.B.8 and Bristol Coanda Monoplanes.

7. I.A.R.16 (1934)

From 1930 to 1937 Elie Carafoli worked at Industria Aeronautică Română in Braşov. Carafoli designed the IAR 14 and 15, and later initiated the IAR 80 fighter aircraft, at the bequest of Prime Minister Armand Călinescu. His handsome I.A.R.16 was a vital stepping stone to the I.A.R. 80 despite the gap of several years between them.

6. I.A.R.93 Vultur (1974)

“The saddest country I went to was Romania, years ago, during Ceausescu’s rule.”

• Christopher Lee

As has been previously stated on this website, the SOKO J-22 Orao is the most interesting and appealing aircraft in the world – it’s just a simple fact. While this fascinating ground attack jet is well-known(ish) in its Yugoslavian and Serbian guise, it’s less known that it was developed in tandem with Romania. Both countries had a need to replace various obsolete aircraft in their inventories but by the 1970s neither could afford to pursue a complex military aircraft alone, and the prospect of a domestically designed and produced type was politically appealing on both sides of the border at a time when Tito and Ceaucescu were trying to move away from the Soviet Union.

Romania set up the company Avioane Craiova to take part in the joint project and though there were some difficulties in development, both the J-22 and, as it was known in Romanian use, the IAR-93 Vultur had their maiden flights simultaneously on 31 October 1974. Although it had been intended from the start to be a supersonic design, troubles with afterburners meant it never broke that particular barrier but this rugged Balkan equivalent of the Jaguar could operate from austere or dirt strips and carry a potent range of weaponry. The aircraft operated by the two countries barely differed, with various upgrades made by each country over the years.

In Romanian service the Vultur led an uneventful life, leaving production in 1992 and eventually being retired in 1998 having seen no conflict in its life. Fortunately, multiple aircraft have been preserved in Romania at various museums and other locations and it continues to live on in our hearts (and Serbia).

5. I.A.R. 95

The IAR-95 was a late 70s attempt by Romania to create a light fighter in the same class as the F-16. Romania’s ‘maverick’ international status meant it need not look to the Soviet Union for all fighter needs. Success with the more modest IAR-93 made it clear, the nation had the experience to create its own high-performance combat aircraft (albeit with a Soviet or British engine and multiple international systems). Its aerodynamic configuration was tested in detail at the Mach 3.5 wind tunnel at INCAS.  If you overlay a blueprint of the Chinese/Pakistani JF-17 light fighter with the same of the cancelled Romanian IAR-95 you will notice a great deal of similarities. So did the IAR-95 influence the JF-17, let’s take a quick look at the possible secondary parents of Pakistan’s flexible fighter.

Grumman help

The official story is that the design started as a MiG-21 (or F-7) derivative, and with some input from the US company Grumman in the 1980s, evolved into a rather different design. The wing and tail sweep grew progressively less pronounced as it evolved, it lost its MiG-21esque tail and the wing became more F-16 like – though with a tip of far smaller tip chord. It appears that during the latter stages of Grumman cooperation, it did have the LERX but not the inner tail flowing form reminiscent of the F-16 and this came later (though Grumman was very interested in aft body shaping as can be seen on the control surfaces of the contemporary X-29). With the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, US relations with China soured and the Grumman collaboration ended.

Northrop F-20 Tigershark

There is not too much that links these designs as far as can be seen beyond a similar role as a multi-role single-engined fighter and the use of LERX. The rear fuselage and height of the wings on the fuselage appear very different.

MiG product 33

Izdeliye 33 was an early 1980s study of light single-engined fighter with export in mind, which would benefit from experience with the MiG-29. This project did not last long and is very different from the JF-17 in wing and tail planform, and more distinctly, engine placement. It is hard to see any 33 ‘DNA’ in the external configuration of the JF-17. The cockpit section is far higher and further forward on the ’33. The wedge intake in the chin is quite unlike the JF-17 as is the beaky nose and long shallow LERX, the dog tooth of the horizontal tail and the presence of ventral fins. Any influence on the JF-17 seems unlikely unless more related to the systems supporting a single RD-33 derivative (though the RD-93 of the JF-17 is notably different, including the gearbox position).

Anti-Asian prejudice?

It would be easy to accuse modern Western observers of the same underestimation of Asian design skills that led to the Mitsubishi Zero’s dominance of US fighters in the early 1940s, but this is not fair in the context of modern Chinese development. With the Communist distaste for proprietary design, the Chinese state has indeed copied (in the case of Flankers for one) foreign designs, and in the cases of other aircraft (the J-20) likely benefitted from espionage. It has also pragmatically looked at the design solutions of other nations, as do all aircraft manufacturers.

Is similarity skin deep?

Given the same requirement, it is not unlikely that two design bureaus will create a similar design – though historically this is often not the case. The YA-10/YA-9, YF-22/YF-23, X-32/X-35 as well as the MiG 1.42/ Sukhoi S-37 Berkut are all examples of how the same brief can result in very different solutions, one reason being the ones issuing the requirement are likely to encourage different solutions.

The ‘packaging’ or fitment of systems within an aircraft is a big deal. In establishing the degree one aircraft is influenced by another design we would do well to look at the structure, fuel tank and undercarriage placement.

So?

The similarities between the IAR-95 are striking, with many of the angles and mold lines identical, but this is not conclusive proof of the Romanian influence. A detailed look at the individuals involved and timeline of Romanian-Chinese relations, as well independent Chinese research would be needed to know for sure. What is clear is that considering China’s ‘waste-not-want-not’ attitude to existing research it would be unlikely to ignore the offer of a windfall of mature studies likely at a bargain price. Another question that needs answering – is the layout as important as a modern FCS anyway?

4. IAR-80/81 (1939)

Aircraft that are made out of bits of other aircraft have a mixed record. The awesome might of the US aircraft industry notably failed in its attempts to Flight Of The Phoenix-up a long-range escort fighter out of Curtiss and Douglas leftovers in 1944 – the Fisher Eagle was a turkey. All the more surprising, then, that a tiny Eastern European country with an even tinier aircraft industry created a modern, competitive fighter from chunks of obsolete aircraft and the second-rate equipment its Nazi ally deigned to pass on. It also happened to be one of the best-looking piston-engined fighters of all time – the IAR 80/81.

Industria Aeronautică Română (IAR) was set up in 1925 with the support of the Romanian government, fed up with relying on foreign countries for aircraft. Between its establishment and the beginning of WW2, the company had largely failed to change those circumstances. Despite multiple attempts to develop frontline combat aircraft for the Aeronautica RegalăRomână (Royal Romanian Air Force – ARR), the company’s products were consistently beaten in competitions by aircraft from overseas. To add insult to injury, IAR was sometimes required to build these types under licence. This happened with the Polish PZL P.11 in 1930, and while at the time of the P.11’s launch it was arguably the most modern fighter in the world, the pace of advance meant it would not stay that way for long.

The indigenous IAR-14 fighter was thrown an order for 20 aircraft as an advanced trainer in 1933, but a couple of years later the ARR once again went to Poland for combat aircraft, buying the PZL P.24, a moderately updated P.11. Designer Ion Grosu began looking more closely at the Polish aircraft, which once again IAR was contracted to build. He was convinced that AIR’s preferred low-wing cantilever layout was superior to the PZL’s high-set gull-wing, but studied where else PZL may have got it right. Though its high, strut-braced wing and fixed undercarriage was dated by late 1930s standards, theP.24 was structurally pretty modern, with semi-monocoque fuselage, enclosed cockpit and clean, duralumin skinning. It was powered by a French Gnome-Rhône 14K radial engine of 850hp rather than the inline engines IAR had favoured previously, packaged in a snug-fitting NACA cowling.

Grosu was not above stealing, and in 1937 penned a new fighter with the rear fuselage and engine assembly of the P.24 lifted almost wholesale. He mated this to a new forward fuselage and wing in a layout considerably more modern than that of the PZL, with a low-mounted cantilever wing using an American NACA aerofoil, and retractable undercarriage. The prototype progressed slowly, IAR’s production work taking priority, but was ready for flight in April 1939. Despite having the same engine as the P.24, not to mention large sections of airframe, the IAR-80 prototype was 60mph faster.

Circumstances largely beyond Romania’s control shifted the country’s inclination from the Western Allies towards Nazi Germany. Once again it looked as though IAR’s efforts would be for nothing, as Germany looked to offload Heinkel’s He112 fighter onto its allies after the Luftwaffe decided to favour the Messerschmitt Bf109. But when the ARR tested the He112 against the IAR-80 in the summer of 1939, the domestic fighter was found to be superior in every way. The previous pattern was reversed, with ARR ordering 100 IAR-80s compared with a paltry 30 Heinkels. Thanks to the airframe being based on the PZL, it could be brought into production quickly.

The production IAR-80 was capable of a whisker over 300mph, less than some other fighters entering service in the late 1930s, and about 10mph slower than the prototype thanks to the weight of service equipment. It was manoeuvrable, climbed well, and was competitive in air combat with modern fighters like the Bf 109E, the Hawker Hurricane Mk I and Fiat G50. Its initial armament of two rifle-calibre guns was too light but this was later improved to 13.2mm FN guns produced in occupied Belgium, and later still, Ikaria 20mm cannon. A notable development was the addition of a blown canopy similar to that used on high-back Spitfires, introduced to improve visibility around the long nose.

Romania entered the war when Germany invaded the USSR, and the IAR-80 went into action. It was effective against Soviet aircraft, though the harsh conditions took their toll, particularly on the somewhat fragile engines. IAR developed improved A, B and C variants with more powerful engines, better equipment and heavier armament, as well as the IAR-81 which was developed as a dive-bomber with a swinging bomb crutch, but ended up chiefly used as a fighter thanks to Germany belatedly supplying Ju87s. In 1943, the type began to face US aircraft, as attacks by long range bombers meant the IAR-80/81 squadrons had to be pulled back for home defence. These operations culminated in the attacks on oil facilities at Ploești which began in August 1943 and continued into 1944. The IARs shot down a number of B-24 Liberators and even some P-38 Lightnings, which proved no match for the nimble IARs ‘on the deck.’

Eventually, though, the increasing number of US and Soviet aircraft over Romania overwhelmed the Romanian Air Force, and the IAR-80, its numbers dwindling and its competitiveness failing, was withdrawn from frontline use in July 1944. No example survives, as all were believed scrapped, though some survived as late as the mid-50s in the training role. A couple of replicas have been built, and a project is underway in Romania to build a flying reproduction incorporating some original parts – http://www.iar80.org/.

For an aircraft built in small numbers – 450 of all models – and serving a little-known air force, the IAR-80 seems to excite enthusiasts out of all proportion to its importance to the course of the war, though it was pretty important to Romania. No doubt part of that is down to the ingenuity of the construction, taking the best bits of the obsolete PZL and creating a fighter that held its own for most of WW2. However, the majority of the appeal is certainly down to the aircraft’s looks. The combination of the long nose, svelte but pugnacious lines, and blown canopy, make the IAR-80 look years ahead of its time, with hints of F4U Corsair and Fw 190D. Considering it was a ‘bitza’ created by a minuscule aircraft industry, the IAR-80 knocked it out of the park.

• Matthew Willis, author of these books and contributed to The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes series

3. I.A.R. 79 (1937)

Needing a modern monoplane bomber in 1937 the Romanian Air Force turned to the good people at Savoia Marchetti and their SM.79. Rather than the usual three 861hp Alfa 128 engines however, these were fitted with two 900hp IAR K14s in the wing positions. The nose position now being filled with a glazed bombardier’s position making the aircraft around 60cm longer. Those of you familiar with basic maths will have realised 2x900hp is less than 3x861hp, for those unfamiliar it’s about 780hp less and unsurprisingly the SM.79B suffered slightly in the performance department. They were in fact over 100km/h slower than the tri-motor SM.79s.

Despite this, the 22, of 24, aircraft that made it to Romania were appreciated by the crews of the 1st Bomber Group. Because of it a follow-on order replaced the K14s with licence-built Jumo 211Da engines providing a more useful 1200hp and upping the top speed to a more respectable 405km/h. Although the first eight examples were produced by Savoia Marchetti in Italy a further 36 were built at the IAR factory in Brasov as the JRS 79, for Jumo Roman S 79 to distinguish them from the Italian-built JIS 79s.

Starting the war on the wrong side, the 1^st Bomber Group’s SM.79s were involved in Operation Barbarossa with the first example being lost on day one, although they were at least beaten to the title of First Romanian Aircraft Lost in WW2 by a Bristol Blenheim. By July 1941 at least one squadron had replaced its SM.79s with the more powerful JRS 79s, just in time to take part in the Battle of Odessa. The JRS 79s would take over from the earlier model on the front line through late 1941 into 1942 with the last action for the type on the Eastern Front being in support of Romanian Forces around Stalingrad.

As the war turned against the Axis a further batch of 36 JRS 79s were ordered with the improved Jumo 211F delivering 1320hp increasing the top speed to around 440km/h. After these had failed to repeal the Soviet assault on Romania the country wisely swapped sides and the 1^st Bomber Group would use them against German and Hungarian forces from October 1944 until the end of the war.  The surviving aircraft would continue in service post-war until replaced by Soviet types.

-Bing Chandler

1. A Vlaicu I

Traian Vuia invented the modern aeroplane, whereas the Wright Brothers made a weird pusher biplane that required rails (and initially a headwind) to take-off. Vuia created a wheeled tractor monoplane, the very first. This machine took an unsustained hop in 1906. Vuia’s longest flight in 1906 was 24 metres, the Wright Brothers’ first flight had been 36 metres. This was an impressive achievement, even if it does look like a Lilienthal-glider tied to a pram.

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I hope you like jamming too

In my flying career I was fortunate enough to fly Dassault Falcon 20’s for UK-based company F R Aviation (part of Cobham PLC). The operation existed to provide Electronic Warfare training to the RAF, Royal Navy and other forces around NATO. Utilising a fleet of heavily modified Falcons we flew daily missions over the southwest approaches in support of the Navy, over the North Sea against RAF Tornado F3s and latterly Typhoons, we also took part in many major NATO exercises from Cope Thunder in Alaska to NATO Air Meet in Turkey and even in operations as far afield as Malaysia. The operation is now run by Draken International who still utilise the same aircraft but twith the addition of a more agile platform in the AERO L-159 single-seat Light Combat Aircraft.

Electronic warfare, particularly radar “jamming” has been around since the Second World War, driven by the need to counter the emerging threat of radar-guided weapons and detection systems. Training in how to use and counter EW is still an essential part of military training worldwide.

The first EW system, codenamed “Moonshine” was introduced in July of 1942 and fitted to RAF Defiant fighters to deceive the German ground-based early warning “Freya” radar system.

The first mission was a great success, three Defiants fitted with Moonshine, each tuned to a different frequency successfully “spoofed” the German radar system into believing that a large wave of enemy aircraft was approaching. This caused the entire German fighter force in the Cherbourg area to scramble into the air, potentially leaving large sections of the coast unguarded.

This type of spoofing continued into 1943 with one of the Dambusters Lancaster bombers carrying a Moonshine jammer on the famous raid in May. In response, the Freya system was modified to operate on higher frequencies to the extent that Moonshine was no longer practicable in that role. It had however proved that not only was radar jamming possible, it was also essential.

In the years following the war the development of EW systems was rapid and continuous, with both sides in the Korean and Vietnam wars using EW to great effect. The United States Navy launched its first dedicated electronic warfare aircraft, the EA-6B Prowler in 1971 with the US Air Force utilising the Douglas A-7D Corsair in a similar role until the introduction of the EF-111 in the early 80’s. Both types are now out of service and the EF-18G Growler, a derivative of the very successful Super Hornet, now fulfills the role for the USN and Marine Corps.

Around NATO many EW systems are in use, the RAF Typhoon is equipped with the Praetorian Electronic Warfare System, while the F-35 Lightning II features the AN/ASQ-239 Barracuda EW suite. Both of these are highly sophisticated systems that incorporate Radar Warning Receivers, Electronic Attack capabilities (jamming), Threat Identification and Classification and Integrated Self-protection.

But how do these Electronic Attack capabilities and Self-protection systems actually work? Let’s take them in a rough order of effectiveness working from the least effective to the most effective:

10. Stealth

“Where did HE come from?” While not actually an electronic system a stealthy design is the first step in protecting an aircraft from enemy radar systems. Stealth aircraft are designed to minimise their radar cross-section (RCS), making them less detectable by enemy radar systems. By reducing radar reflections the aircraft can avoid or delay detection until they are closer to their targets, giving them a tactical advantage.

9. Mechanical techniques

“Where’d he go?” Chaff: a “cloud” of metallic strips explosively ejected from an aircraft to create a false radar return. Having “dropped” the chaff, a suitably hard manoeuvre by the defending aircraft should be enough to “confuse” the radar in question, allowing it to “break” the radar lock for long enough to escape.

8. Decoys

“Well, it looked like him!”. Having mentioned the Growler (stop laughing at the back) earlier it’s useful to point out that it carries a Fibre Optic Towed Decoy, which is designed to protect the aircraft from radar-guided missiles. Consisting of a small, lightweight decoy module connected to the aircraft by a long, thin fiber-optic cable its design mimics the radar cross-section and electronic signature of the aircraft, deceiving radar-guided threats into tracking and engaging the decoy instead of the actual aircraft.

Barrage jamming “I can’t see anything!” Very simple really, the jammer covers the entire bandwidth of frequencies that the target radar is capable of operating on generating lots of electronic noise. It’s like standing in a pub yelling at your mates so loudly that they can’t hear each other, the problem is, neither can anyone else!

6. Sweep jamming

“Peek-a-boo!” Similar to barrage, only this time one frequency is “hit” for a short period before “sweeping” onto the next, think of it as covering the eyes of one person at a time, you can put all of you energy into it but the others can still see you.

5. Spot jamming

The clue’s in the name. Continuously poking one enemy in the eyes. Again a lot of power is available but if the target radar changes frequency your effect disappears.

4. Deception jamming

“He can’t do that!” This is the clever bit, known as Range Gate Pull Off (RGPO) and Velocity Gate Pull Off (VGPO), both of these techniques confuse a radar into believing that a target has done the impossible. Electronically making it look like the range to the target or the velocity of the target has changed so quickly as to not be physically possible. Like an illusionist moving from one transparent box on the stage to another, you can’t believe your eyes. A radar doesn’t believe it either so it breaks the lock.

3. DRFM

(pronounced “DrrFmm”, no, really): “There’s f’ousands of ‘em!”

Digital Radio Frequency Memory is a highly advanced technique. The jammer receives a radar’s pulse, stores it, analyses it, modifies it and fires it back in time for it to be accepted as genuine by the radar awaiting the response. The analysis of the pulses is so accurate that the system is very quickly able to “predict” what the next pulse in a stream might “look like”. In this way false targets can be generated, they can be made to appear to be moving around in the vicinity of real targets to look like a much bigger force. It’s almost like a very clever version of the original 1940’s Moonshine system.

2. GPS Jamming

“Where are we?” In the news for all of the wrong reasons right now, GPS jamming is extremely simple and extremely effective. With large swathes of the Eastern Mediterranean being “blanked out” by jamming related to the ongoing Gaza campaign, the western Black Sea is seeing similar effects due to the situation in Ukraine. This insidious form of jamming and spoofing has caused numerous civilian aircraft to stray from their intended routes and, in at least one case, to the boundary of Iranian airspace.

1. Communications Jamming

“What did he say?!” In my experience jamming the radio comms of aircraft engaged in air warfare is one of the most effective techniques. From “broadband” frequency jamming, individual frequency jamming to recording and playing back individual radio calls it can make a fighter pilot’s life hell. It was always the main reason no-one ever bought us a beer on exercise.

The above is a simplistic overview of the electronic techniques that can be used in the increasingly electronic battlespace. However, with the advent of widespread GPS jamming affecting civilian aircraft, it’s no longer only the domain of the military pilot.

• Steve Cummings

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Delighted to say!

This fabulous book has just been released in North America!

Here’s the US link – https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-hush-kit-book-of-warplanes/20294418?ean=9781800180949

Here’s the Canadian link

https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/the-hush-kit-book-of-warplanes/9781800180949.html

£300 million funding has been approved for a massive building in the shape of Britain’s famous Spitfire fighter jet of World War II. Dubbed the Spithedral the building will celebrate Southampton’s contribution to world history.

Southhampton councilman Eric Pulp has been campaigning for the project for over ten years and is delighted at the decision. Pulp noted, “This is exactly what Southampton needs, no doubt the so-called Woke Brigade will complain the money could be better spent on essential services, but this will have some features just as important. There will be 24 rooms each themed around a different Spitfire mark with specially commissioned songs by local musicians explaining the key features of each variant.” Though Pulp refused to confirm it, it is rumoured the musicians will include UK Garage superstar Craig David and Rock legend Aqualung. Pulp continued, “This is a vital educational tool, I was inspired to start this project when I was speaking to a local teenager and was horrified to discover he didn’t know how many propellers a Spitfire Mk IX had! I realised Britain was losing its way and something had to be done. No doubt the Woke Brigade (or at least one Woke Battalion) would rather spend these funds on tackling knife-crime or child poverty or some other snowflake madness, but we will be building a legacy to a legend and it will made from wood unofficially harvested from trees on the Churchill family estate, so it will be made by trees likely containing the DNA of Winston Churchill.”

Oh god no!

World War II was the most depressingly boring event in history. As civilians joyously ate powdered eggs and sipped ersatz coffee they watched their world torn to pieces by a shambolic swarm of tiresome flying machines. Here are just 10 of the most boring of these lugubrious sky vultures.

10. Curtiss P-40 Warhawk

A city drab enough will attract graffiti from a population starved of colour and flair. Similarly, the sensibly portioned, depressingly conventional, P-40 inspired a happy gallery of shark’s teeth, skulls and monsters to help distract attention away from how anyone could actually make a World War II fighter boring. Curtiss-Wright clearly felt the same way we do and with its next-generation fighter, the XP-55 Ascender, it reached new heights of stimulating lunacy.

9. Douglas A-26 Invader

Technically good, but extremely boring – and with a long career, the A-26 is the Mark Knopfler of World War Two combat aircraft. The A-26 was the victim of overly balanced proportions, making the eye tire as it rolls across its horribly sensible shape.

8. Hawker Hurricane

Whereas a biplane fighter is a dashingly handsome machine, and a true monoplane a sensuously sleek affair, the Hurricane was an awkward halfway house. It was certainly not as attractive as its peers, lacking the curvaceous sex appeal of the Spitfire and the waspish bastardlyness of the Bf 109 – the Hurricane is a flaming beacon for the dull. If the Spitfire is a rapier-flashing Romeo then the Hurricane was his friend filling in his expenses on a spreadsheet with a little too much skill (and no doubt making jokes about how Brexit sounds like breakfast… in a nasal voice). Not only is it relatively uninspiring to look at it, the Hurricane is the bore’s aeroplane of choice, even now I can hear the tiresome calls of ‘What about the Hurricane..?’ and ‘Don’t you know it shot down 60% of enemy blah blah blah.’ ‘No one ever talks about the Hurricane’ they’ll tell you, despite it being one of the most famous aircraft in history with over 1,740,000 Google results and the subject of hundreds of books. Come back to me when you have a less generic wing.

Top Ten Most Boring Aircraft in History!

7. Avro Anson

Despite attacking U-boats only two days into the war and even shooting down 109s, ‘Faithful Annie’ only earned the descriptor ‘Faithful’ (the far more charismatic Mikoyan-Gurevich 23-01 took the more edgy antonym ‘Faithless’). The Anson did loads of worthy things in a reliable kind of way, which is great but we like our warplanes mad and thunderous rather than ‘docile’.

6. Fiat BR.20 Cicogna

Nobody pictures Fiat’s boxy BR.20 when they think of the Battle of Britain, despite it destroying a canning factory in Lowestoft (or maybe because its sole achievement was destroying a canning factory in Lowestoft). That it managed to remain relatively unknown through a wild and exciting career around the world is a remarkable achievement. Even a spell in the Japanese army air force didn’t make this boxy Italian bore memorable.

5. Blackburn Skua

The Blackburn Roc turret fighter may have been lamentable, but at least it had a distinctive gun turret. The Skua had all the killer machismo of a clapped-out Morris Marina ice-cream van.

3. Vickers Wellington

Despite being named after a particularly delicious beef dish and being influenced by Vickers’ absolutely fantastic Wellesley, the Wellington was the most dull way to kill civilians. From its ‘scout hut in Reigate’ side windows to its vague vertical tail everything about the dreary Wellington screamed ‘I was found on an industrial estate and should have been left there.’

The Wellington was nicknamed the ‘Wimpy’ by its crews as it was as boring as sitting in a branch of Wimpy burger*.

*I can’t live with myself for writing that, as a kid I loved Wimpy.

2. Kawasaki Ki-32

There isn’t something about Mary. Look at a three-view illustration of a Kawasaki Ki-32 and the word ‘aeroplane’ comes to mind. It looks like a plane drawn by someone with no interest in aircraft. As well as the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service, the Mary served with the ‘definitely real’ Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (which had an air force capable of rather too exciting things with other types – like using a suicidal Ki-27 to down an airborne B-29). Even service in the extremely exciting Indonesian pro-independence guerrillas couldn’t bring glamour to Mary.

Top Cancelled Carrier Fighters

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes Vol 3 – a massive beautiful book! Pre-order your copy here.

1. Douglas B-18 Bolo

The USAAC chose the Bolo over a design called the Boeing 299 as its heavy bomber. This was the wrong decision as the 299 would become the brilliant B-17 Flying Fortress – and the B-18 was utterly mediocre. The B-17 would go on to have its own Apple TV+ series, and the Bolo was declared obsolete right when it was most needed (it was the most numerous US heavy bomber at the time of Pearl Harbor). Even when demoted to the anti-submarine warfare role – which any large aircraft can do – it didn’t last long and was replaced by the excellent B-24. Its most exciting moment would be as a post-war crop-sprayer.

Thank you for reading the Hush-Kit site. It’s all been a huge labour of love that I have devoted a great deal of time to over the last 12 years. There are over 1100 totally free articles on Hush-Kit, think of the work that’s gone into that! To keep this going please do consider a donation (see button on top of page) or by supporting on Patreon. Not having a sponsor or paid content keeps this free, unbiased (other than to the Whirlwind) and a lot naughtier. We can only do this with your support. I really love this site and want it to keep going, this is where you come in.

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We have often knocked the Britain’s Cold War Javelin interceptor as a sluggish mess. For the sake of balance, we asked former Tornado pilot and author Michael Napier to defend Gloster’s ‘Flying Flat-iron’.

Firstly, the Javelin was the first RAF aircraft to be designed from the outset as a night/ all-weather interceptor; all previous night/ all-weather types had been less than ideal modifications of existing day fighters. The Javelin was designed to take-off on a dark and stormy night, intercept enemy aircraft many miles out over the North Sea and then return to an airfield right on the weather limits. To achieve this, it had to be stable enough to fly almost entirely on instruments: it was never intended (or required) to be an air superiority fighter, so comparisons of daytime air combat performance against, say, the Hunter completely miss the point. As an all-weather interceptor the Javelin, which equipped 10 squadrons in Fighter Command in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, was very effective in role. You wouldn’t want to be flying a Hunter over the North Sea on a dark and stormy night!

Javelin also boasted an iconic – and unique – design in the T-tailed delta. The delta wing was chosen because it combined the best control and stability characteristics at high subsonic speeds. The drawback was that delta wings need a high angle of attack at approach speeds, so the pilot would potentially come out of cloud at decision height and be unable to see the runway because the nose of the aircraft would be in the way. Hence the T-tail: by putting the elevators on top of the tailfin, the whole of the wing trailing edge was free for flaps which would, in turn, lower the nose angle. As a result, the Javelin came in an almost flat attitude during an approach – ideal for bad weather operations. The flying controls feel system introduced a nose down bias at high angles of attack so that the pilot did not stall and spin the aircraft, since, like most subsequent high performance aircraft, a spin was irrecoverable.

As a result of its stability, the Javelin was an excellent gun platform – interestingly two Javelin squadrons beat a Hunter squadron into third place in the Duncan Trophy gun/ciné-weave competition in Germany in 1961. So there, Hunter fans!

The Javelin was the first British front-line aircraft to be armed with guided Air-to-Air missiles (AAM) – the de Havilland Firestreak Infra-Red seeking missile in 1960. As such the Javelin was the pioneer of RAF AAM tactics. It could carry four Firestreaks – that’s four more than a Hunter and twice as many as a Lightning!

One drawback, which I’ll admit to – the Sapphire engines (oops!). Unfortunately, the Sapphire suffered from a condition known as Centreline Closure if they encountered super-cooling conditions – basically inside a thick cloud in the tropics. The engine outer casing shrunk rapidly as it cooled and squeezed the compressor blades so that they could no longer move. A number of aircraft were lost when the engines seized explosively in cloud. The simple remedy was to coat the compressor blades with ‘Rockide’ an abrasive substance that enabled the blades simply to rub themselves free if the engine casing contracted onto them! A simple fix.

Sometimes people also criticise the reheat system on the Sapphires, but that is not to understand how and why it was designed. The reheat was intended as a low-cost “fix” to restore the high-level performance of the aircraft with missiles (a draggy fit) to that of the original guns-only FAW7. Rather than designing a completely new fuel system to incorporate a reheat feed (which would have been excessively expensive), the reheat in the Javelin was designed around the excess high pressure fuel that was delivered to the engine core, but not needed at altitudes above 20,000ft. Rather than returning this fuel back to the tanks (which happened on pretty much all other aircraft types) in the Javelin FAW8 and 9 (as the reheated variants were designated) it could be delivered instead to the reheat, where the extra power was enough to overcome the drag of the missiles and restore the performance to guns-only days. It was not needed (and didn’t work!) at lower levels below 20,000ft.

The Javelin was the pioneer of Air-to-Air Refuelling (AAR) for RAF tactical aircraft. For, although the RAF had belatedly come to look at AAR seriously for the V-Force and carried out several high-profile long-range flights with Valiants, tactical aircraft were not included in AAR operations. This changed in 1960, when the Javelins of 23 Squadron began working with the Valiants of 214 Squadron. Eventually, two units, 23 and 64 Squadrons became AAR capable. Both operated the FAW9 and the AAR probe was attached specifically for AAR sorties. NOTE: some people erroneously think that an FAW9 with a probe was an FAW9R – not so! The FAW9R was fitted with wet pylons that could take under-wing fuel tanks… if you can see an under-wing fuel tank then it’s a FAW9R! Long-range deployments were trialled by 23 Squadron in 1960 when Exercise Dyke saw the deployment of four Javelins to Singapore and during Exercise Pounce the following year, 8 Javelins from 23 and 64 Squadrons deployed to Karachi. These two trials proved the possibility of deploying an entire squadron all the way to Singapore using AAR – something that happened when 64 Squadron moved there in 1964 in response to the Indonesian Confrontation.

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Because of its flexibility and the ability to redeploy swiftly if needed, the Javelin became the RAF’s rapid reaction force. Javelins reinforced Germany during the Berlin Crisis in 1961 (in addition to the two squadrons already out there), Cyprus in 1963 and Zambia (during the Rhodesian UDI) in 1965… and, of course Singapore as already mentioned.

In short, the Javelin was the backbone of RAF Fighter command in the late 1950s and early 1960s and proved to be a flexible and effective interceptor. It was the pioneer of techniques and tactics for both AAMs and AAR in the RAF and the Lightning and Phantom benefitted hugely from the work carried out by the Javelin squadrons that preceded them. It was also the first aircraft to be called when crises erupted around the world and once again proved most capable wherever it was sent. So – the Javelin played a major, and very successful, part in the development of jet fighter aircraft in the RAF and ought to be remembered in that light.

Michael Napier is the author of the
Gloster Javelin: An Operational History

Pre-order The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes Vol 3 here

We spoke to Ron Smith, former Head of Future Projects at Westland Helicopters to get his first thoughts.

Revealed this week on Chinese social media was a new Chinese attack helicopter. We spoke to Ron Smith, former Head of Future Projects at Westland Helicopters to get his first thoughts.

“It’s a development of the Z-20, which is very much a Black Hawk clone. It has a five-blade rotor and a slim fuselage with tandem cockpits – presumably as AH-64, with the gunner in the front seat and the pilot to the rear…with rather restricted view – which may be complemented by helmet-mounted display, which may access distributed camera systems to provide synthetic ‘through the skin’ vision. There are large laterally disposed panniers, presumably for a significant volume of mission system avionics. The overall appearance is that of a Black Hawk crossed with the US AH-64 and Russian Mil Mi-28. There appears to be a TADS (Target Acquisition and Designation Sights) and PNVS (Pilot Night Vision System) – style sensor pack under the nose and presumably provision for a forward-mounted cannon for area suppression. There may be provision for a mast-mounted sensor for target acquisition, dependent on weapon guidance technology. There would appear to be upward exhausting infra-red Suppression. Other protuberances suggest High Frequency radio, defensive aids (one might expect missile launch detection / approach warning, presumably with a capability to trigger appropriate countermeasures. One would also expect navigation aids and a comprehensive comms fit. Dependent upon doctrine, there may be provision of data links / satcom for coordination with land vehicles, other helicopters and command infrastructure – particularly if third party target designation forms part of the operational tactics. In the modern world, one might speculate about the capability to interact with and potentially provide for command and control of unmanned air systems. Presumably, the aircraft is designed for operation across a wide range of environmental conditions. Measures to reduce detectable signatures are not particularly evident, other than with respect to the IR suppression treatment. The extra blade area might allow a reduced tip speed operation to minimise acoustic signature. The lack of a stepped canopy is evident. This could minimise the weight of protective armour, whether metallic or transparent. This does suggest synthetic measures to provide all-round situation awareness for the crew / rear seat occupant. The wing appears to have inboard heavy weapon stations, presumably for long-range anti-armour weapons or external fuel carriage, when required. The outboard stations could carry lighter missiles for anti-air use, or rockets, or electronic warfare systems. It would be interesting to understand the PLAAF doctrine for the use of helicopters in support of ground forces in both offensive and defensive operations. The size of the helicopter suggests classic anti-armour operations in natural terrain (using terrain screening) rather than urban operations. Other possible roles could be as an escort to troop-carrying helicopters and operations against enemy command centres and logistic nodes.”

Find out more about The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes Vol 3 here.

So it is to the Z-20 what a Huey Cobra is to a Huey?

“Yes – a slimmed-down fuselage will save some weight, but think AH-1Z, rather than AH-1G. Issues that one can’t easily speculate about include internal fuel capacity, ammunition capacity for cannon (heavy stuff), and if it is driven by a ‘hot and high capability’. Something to consider is what the engine rating and transmission rating structure look like.”

10. Sud-Est SE.200 Amphitrite ‘L’oie de l’épinette’ (1942)

Flying boats opened up the world in the 1930s. Who needed airports if you could land on water? There weren’t many large airports, so flying boats – in all their grand glamour – led the aeroplane travel revolution. Now air travel routes linking North America, Europe, South America, Africa and Asia were possible.

In the 1930s the French air ministry was tantalised by the possibilities of international travel and identified a need for a transatlantic flying boat airliner to serve Air France. The requirement specified a 6,000 km (3,700 mi) range – and being the 1930s – room for only 20 lucky passengers (and 500 kg of cargo, probably mostly consisting of Pâté en Croûte, Pastis and mistresses’ underwear).

The aircraft manufacturer Lioré et Olivier set about creating a large handsome six-engined aeroplane, the LeO H-49, powered by six of the then-new Gnome-Rhône 14R-26 1600-horsepower radial aero-engine. With the unfortunately timed nationalisation of the French aviation industry, the aircraft became a Sud-Est concern. The hugely impressive flying boat was named ‘Amphitrite’ after the sea goddess and wife of Poseidon from Greek mythology. Before the huge machine could be flown, Germany invaded France – but work continued at Marignane in southern France. The first aircraft, named Rochambeau, flew on 11 December 1942, and what a machine it was.

The German occupiers were impressed by the aircraft and seized it, taking it to Lake Constance in Germany for assessment. It was here that it was destroyed by RAF Mosquitoes. Four other airframes survived for a short time at Marignane, but one was wrecked by a USAAF raid that also severely damaged the other three.

Sadly, 2022 would see another beautiful six-engined giant aeroplane destroyed from the air with the destruction of the world’s biggest aircraft, the Ukrainian An-225.

9. Avro Canada C.102 Jetliner

In the turbulent 1970s, there was a saying about Canada: we could have had French food, British government and American technology but instead, we wound up with American food, French government and British technology.  Well, this over-populated, over-heated world has pretty much gone to shit and now everybody everywhere is up to their neck in cheap plastic crap made in China.  Yes, times change and the potential greatness just swirls off like some beautiful chemtrail in a carbon-laced sky.  Take the Avro Canada C.102 Jetliner, a four-Derwent airliner prototype from 1949. Ahead of the Boeing 707, the Jetliner was Canada’s first jet design and North America’s first jet airliner.  It was the premier regional jet, beating the Sud Aviation Caravelle by a decade and Bombardier by a lifetime.  The C.102 carried the first ever jet air mail: Toronto to New York City in an hour.  Howard Hughes took it for a spin, loved it so much he leased it for six months.  Damn English carpet-baggers running Avro Canada dropped this handsome, commercially promising bird to soak the RCAF budget with the CF-100 instead.  Good work federal government, Trans Canada Airlines and Avro Canada.  It was the perfect prelude to the capable, expensive and cruelly/sensibly quashed CF-105 Arrow.

So where is the C.102 now? Well, the nose is in a museum in Ottawa. Oh, and the landing gear ended up on a farm wagon some place.

9. Avro 722 Atlantic (1952) ‘Vulcan-do’

Flying from London to New York in an airliner based on the Avro Vulcan in less than seven hours would have been a truly remarkable way to travel. Intended for up to 113 passengers, who presumably didn’t mind a bit of noise, the 200,000Ib 600mph Atlantic was not pursued. A bonkers idea from the perspective of economy of operation – but absolutely appealing in terms of delivering noise-loving aesthetes a lovely silver monster. We asked aircraft noise expert Michael Carley his view of the Atlantic and he noted, “If you’re comparing to conventional subsonic airliners, it would certainly be louder than any modern airliner. It would probably have been much louder than any contemporary as well. FAA data taken at Dulles for Concorde and wide- and narrow-body airliners in the seventies have Concorde 10-15dB louder the

8. Convair Model 49

In the 1960s the US Army was growing sick of dependence on inappropriate USAF aircraft for the close support mission. Aircraft like the Republic F-105 Thunderchief were simply too fast and vulnerable to support troops on the ground effectively. Instead, the US Army wanted the versatility and forward-basing possibilities of a vertical take-off platform able to hover. To excel in the tough close support role the type would need to be heavily armed and armoured. This need was expressed formally as the Advanced Aerial Fire Support System or AAFSS.

Convair, a company famed for its adventurous designs, responded to the Army’s AAFSS requirement with typical ambition. Drawing on their experience with the tail-sitting XFY-1 ‘Pogo’ they proposed a two-man ‘ring’ (or annular) wing ducted-fan design quite unlike anything else in service, though somewhat similar to the experimental SNECMA C.540 Coléoptère. The concept was bizarre in appearance but Convair believed it was the perfect configuration for an aircraft combining a helicopter’s unusual abilities with some of the offensive features of a military ground vehicle. One of the greatest challenges was creating a cockpit that tilted so the pilot was not facing the sky in the take-off/landing and landed support parts of its mission. This necessitated a complex hinged forward fuselage giving the type its distinctly ‘Transformer’-like looks.

The Convair XFY-1 ‘Pogo’ tail-sitting fighter.

Two co-axially mounted contra-rotated rotors were to be powered by either Pratt & Whitney’s JFTD12 or Lycoming’s LTC4B-11 (GE’s T64 and Allison’s T56 were also assessed as candidates). The duct would generate more thrust from the engine than would the open rotors of a conventional helicopter design, which was a good thing as it was expected to weigh in at around 21,000 Ib (9526kg) fully-loaded.

The untold story of Britain’s cancelled superfighter, the Hawker P.1154, can be read here.

Armament for this monstrous machine would include a central turret with a XM-140 30-mm automatic cannon with 1,000 rounds or a launcher for 500 (!) WASP rockets and two remotely-controlled light machine-gun turrets with 12,000 rounds of ammunition or a XM-75 grenade launchers with 500 rounds. Addition to this already awe-inspiring arsenal were four hard points on the nacelles which could carry Shellelagh or BGM-71 TOW missiles, or even the M40 ‘106-mm ‘ recoilless gun! The weapons could be fired during any part of the flight profile (note the ‘hover firing’ position). The steel armour would be impervious to 12.7-mm rounds, but there was little or no provision for defences or countermeasures against surface-to-air missiles.

7. RF-4X Mach 3 Hellraiser 

In the 1970s, the Israeli air force wanted a reconnaissance aircraft capable of carrying the extremely impressive HIAC-1 camera. The F-4 was considered, but the G-139 pod that contained the sensor was over 22 feet long and weighed over 4000 pounds – and the Phantom did not have the power to carry such a bulky store and remain fast and agile enough to survive in hostile airspace. One solution was to increase the power of the engines with water injection, something that had been done for various successful F-4 record attempts. This combined with new inlets, a new canopy and huge bolt-on water tanks promised a mouth-watering 150% increase in power. This would have allowed a startling top speed of mach 3.2 and a cruising speed of mach 2.7. This level of performance would have made the F-4X almost impossible to shoot-down with the technology then in service.

The F-4X would also have been a formidable interceptor – something that threatened the F-15 development effort, causing the State Department to revoke an export licence for the RF-4X. Even with the increase in power, the Israeli air force was still worried about the huge amount of drag, but a solution came in the form of a slimmed-down camera installation in a specially elongated nose. This meant the interceptor radar had to be removed, which assuaged the State Department’s fears and the project was permitted to continue. However, worries from the F-15 project community returned (as did worries about how safe the F-4X would have been to fly) and the US pulled out. Israel tried to go it alone but didn’t have enough money, so the Mach 3 Phantom never flew. UPDATE: Or so we thought. In 2019 someone close to the project revealed to Hush-Kit that a high-speed Phantom variant had indeed served, though there is nothing in open-source literature.

5. Antonov An-71 ‘Madcap‘

Photos: Joe Coles

Inspired by the success of the Israeli Air Force’s E-2 Hawkeye in the 1982 campaign in Lebanon, the Soviet Union went about creating its own tactical airborne early warning and control aircraft – the Antonov An-71.

An operational requirement was formulated in 1982, with the aim of creating a land-based AEW&C aircraft at least as capable as the E-2C. The aircraft was required to have an endurance of at least 4.5 hours and the ability to detect low-flying aircraft and other low-observable aerial targets – and track 120 of them at a time.

After considering the An-12 and An-32 as platforms for the new surveillance aircraft, Antonov opted for the short take-off and landing (STOL) An-72 Coaler. While the ‘saucer’ rotodome was conventional, its position on top of the tail was radical. The tail fin itself was swept forward to compensate for centre-of-gravity changes; the T-tail was replaced by a low-set horizontal tail. To ensure there was enough power despite the weight of all the internal systems, an additional small turbojet was buried in the rear fuselage. Those onboard systems were to be operated by a mission crew of three, in addition to two pilots and a flight engineer.

Briefly, consideration was given to developing a carrier-based version of the Madcap, but there was no way to successfully fold the wing for hangar stowage and the thrust-to-weight ratio was inadequate for a ‘ski jump’ take-off. Instead, the Soviet Navy opted for the more conventional Yakovlev Yak-44 project, which, in the event, never progressed beyond a mock-up.

Deck trials of the Yak-44 mock-up.

Work on the land-based An-71 continued and a first flight followed in July 1985. Another prototype was completed before the programme was axed, the victim of the demise of the Soviet Union.

It’s hard to say whether the An-71 could ever have been a success, but flight trials demonstrated generally good flight characteristics and avionics performance – the radar was shown capable of detecting 400 targets over land of water within a range of 230 miles and simultaneously tracking up to 120 of them. With its rough-field performance, the Madcap might have been a very useful force-multiplier for Soviet tactical aviation operating over Europe’s Central Front in a late 1980s Cold War scenario.

4. Makhonine « Mak-10 » The Flying Extendable Dining Table

Several notable Russian aircraft designers fled to the west following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Sikorsky and Seversky were two of these emigres, and they founded Sikorsky and Republic respectively, two giants of US aviation, but Makhonine – a rather complex individual – took his unusual ideas to France.

By 1931 Ivan Makhonine, was a French nationalised engineer, working on a variable surface wing system (think flying extendable dining table). For take-off, economical cruise and landing the wings of his aircraft were fully extended, for high-speed flight the wing could be telescoped into the thicker inner wing section to reduce drag and lifting surface. In the extended configuration the wingspan gained eight metres.

The whole system was pneumatically operated and was coupled to a manual back-up system. To test his concept, Ivan Makhonine built a large single-engine monoplane equipped with the telescopic wing, the Mak-10 (not to be confused with the MAC-10 submachine gun beloved by Miami gangsters in 1980s movies). It flew for the first time on 11 August 1931, demonstrating that such a wing type could work.

It was nevertheless, like many French aircraft of the time, underpowered. Its twelve-cylinder Lorraine 12Eb engine was enough for such a large aircraft. A second version of the aircraft, the Mak-101, was built at the end of the ’30s to further studies of such an aircraft. The 101 was far more modern, equipped with an enclosed cockpit, retractable landing gear and a Gnome-Rhône 14K Mistral Major engine allowing it to reach 380 km/h. However, before the aircraft could begin its test campaign, the Second World War broke out, and the aircraft was captured by the Germans military. The aircraft was repainted in the colours of the Third Reich and transferred the aircraft to Germany for further tests. Its fate is unknown.

3. Hughes LHX SCAT

In the 1980s, the Hughes company was producing the world’s most advanced helicopter gunship for the US Army, the AH-64 Apache, so felt they were in a strong position to win LHX, the contract to build the next US Army attack helicopter. Their offer was extremely bold and quite unlike any flying machine before or since. The Hughes LHX SCAT had no tail rotor, instead using the NOTAR system allowing a shape that would have had far less drag than any other helicopter. The fuselage was an aerodynamically wasp-like pod with two sharply swept wings and a nose section closer in appearance to a supersonic fighter than an attack helicopter. Smaller than the other proposals, yet equally well armed and fast at an estimated 342mph. It is unclear what Hughes were offering the utility category for LHX.

2. Boeing LHX

Staying on the subject of LHX, Boeing rejected the notion of very high speed, deciding that stealth and advanced sensors were the solution to the requirement for enhanced survivability. Their proposal was shaped for low radar observability — with weapons mounted internally. According to the writer Bill Gunston, the proposal rejected cockpit transparency (windows) in favour of sensors creating an artificial view of the world for the pilot; the reason for this is two-fold, transparencies create problems for stealthy designs and at the time there was a fear of laser dazzling weapons (also seen on the stealthy BAe P.125 concept). 

Boeing’s embrace of stealth over speed won out, and a 1984 review of the proposals agreed. An updated requirement was issued – LHX / LOA – which insisted that the new aircraft must be low-observable (to radar and infra-red sensors) . Such a brief immediately wiped out the chances of any tilt-rotor designs with their massive frontal cross-sections.

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes will feature the finest cuts from Hush-Kit along with exclusive new articles, explosive photography and gorgeous bespoke illustrations.Order The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes here

Boeing LHX SCAT.

Though knocked out of the LHX contest, American interest in high-speed battlefield tilt-rotors would soon return. Replacing the A-10 battlefield support aircraft with a vertical take-off aircraft could prove a boon for forward deployment and potentially offer far greater flexibility. In 1986, Bell and Boeing created a proposal for such a machine, dubbing it the Tactical Tiltrotor. This extremely ambitious machine promised supersonic performance, thanks to an ingenious propulsion system. On take-off, landing and speeds up to 186 mph the aircraft acted as a turboprop tilt-rotor with the engines fed from a central turbojet, above these speeds the rotors folded into the engine nacelle and the turbojet provided direct thrust. In this mode, a top speed of Mach 2 was anticipated. This already radical idea was to be combined with forward swept wings, canards and an internal weapons bay housing eight Hellfire or Stinger missiles. Work continued until 1990, when it was cancelled as the Soviet threat disappeared.

An artist’s impression of an early Bell / Boeing Tactical Tiltrotor concept. 

Various Bell / Boeing Tactical Tiltrotor layouts were studied, including versions with two turbojet engines. 

The novel internal arrangement of the Bell / Boeing Tactical Tiltrotor. 

This glamorous artist impression shows two Tactical Tiltrotors at extremely low altitude attacking with cannon and Maverick missiles. The Tactical Tiltrotor was probably an idea born too early, and included too many risky technical features.

This artist’s impression shows a glass two person cockpit and as a two-ship attack Soviet tanks on a bridge. 

In addition to the battlefield attack variant, a transonic combat utility convertoplane was considered. It appears that this design may have some external features designed to reduce radar conspicuity. 

Would the LHX Stingbat have been any good? Find out here.

1. ShinMaywa US-2

The LHX effort eventually led to the RAH-66 Comanche stealth heliocopter. As attack helicopter projects are as vunerable as an E-scooter on a motorway, the Comanche was cancelled. Not all was lost however, and the LHTEC T800 turboshaft developed by Rolls-Royce and Honeywell for the Comanche has seen considerable use. It powers the Super Lynx 300, AW159 Wildcat, Sikorsky X2 (an experimental co-axial pusher), T129 ATAK gunship and even serves (as a boundary layer control compressor) on a vast flying boat – the ShinMaya US-2.

The US-2 is an unlikely beneficiary of the LHX project. This majestic high-tech flying boat uses the T800 turboshaft for active boundary layer control giving the aircraft’s its spritely short-take off performance.

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