Some Spitfire/Supermarine Questions

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Member for

5 years 10 months

Posts: 21

Hi! I'm fairly new here, and I've always had some questions that have been buzzing about in my head for years and I have never been able to find answers until I discovered this site.

1. Are there any line drawings available of the Supermarine Type 305 and 312 (and hopefully some information on the latter)? I've been hoping to make some hypothetical art of both types in service.

2. Which of the many "Spitfire bibles" come with good photographs of the more obscure marks/prototypes?

3. Are there any substantial artefacts of Spiteful/Seafang airframes remaining? (Plus, are there any comprehensible photographs of their cockpits? The Spiteful operating notes that I've found have decent drawings but the annotations are essentially nonexistent)

Original post

Member for

19 years 9 months

Posts: 1,777

Spitfire - The History by Morgan and Shacklady is probably the best - it covers the 305 in Q1 as well. It's not perfect, and (IMO) suffers a little from just listing modifications on some marks (and not all of them) but t's by far the most comprehensive volume on all Spitfire marks.Can't recall off the top of my head if it mentiones the 312 in any detail.

Member for

16 years 3 months

Posts: 823

Spitfire - The History does include both the projects, as does Beyond the Spitfire - the unseen designs of R.J.Mitchell
The only original drawings that have survived, that I know of, are six basic layout and armamant layout drawings held by the RAF Museum, Hendon. For the 305 they have both the original and modified versions of the design