Here’s why the Spitfire was the David Bowie of World War II fighter aircraft
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 (3rd highest)
Victories per airframe: 0.86 (1st)
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.
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 (4th)
0.36 per airframe (4th)
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.
8. Supermarine Spitfire Mark V
2560 victories (1st in list of Spitfire variants by kill)
0.39 victories per airframe (3rd)
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 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 31st and 52nd 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 (308th, part of the 31st 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 (2nd)
Victories per airframe: 0.25 (5th)
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.
As the original escort for US Air Force 8th 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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Beautifully designed and printed, and bulging with witty expert analysis and interviews from combat pilots, the best aviation writers and aeronautical insiders this takes you somewhere no other aircraft book would dare. Featuring unseen and beautiful illustrations in extreme detail and thrilling colour, thought-provoking diagrams and world-class photography, this is the definitive aviation coffee-table book.
With original articles from the Hush-Kit vaults supplemented with a meaty serving of unreleased exclusive material, volume 3 is funnier, more technical and even more irreverent than the previous books and reveals the secrets behind the technology, weapons and tactics that rule the skies.
Like the Mark V, the IX was also heavily used by customers – it started to replace the V with the 31st and 52nd 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 12th. 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 – 23rd 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 1st, 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 4th, 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 (9th)
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 (10th)
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
David Bowie, 1983, by Denis O’Regan.
*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
Hush-Kit 