The Shortfinals blog has been running a series of articles (crossposted to a left wing site run by a guy called Markos which is where I picked it up) about WWII aircraft. This article is about the Griffon powered Spitfire Mk XIV at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.
http://shortfinals.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... anchester/The Spitfire has the distinction of being the only Allied fighter aircraft in production for the whole war; it was subject to a continuous improvement programme, in order to counter developments by the Axis aviation industries. Here we see a fine specimen of the Spitfire FR.XIVE, ‘AX-H’, MT847, (c/n 6S/643779), on display at the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester. This is an excellent example of improvisation. When the Fw190 arrived on the Channel coast of France, and began knocking the Spitfire Mk.V squadrons about, something had to be done. Rather than wait for the ultimate Merlin-engined ‘Spit’, the Mk.VIII, to finish development and enter production, Supermarine married a Mk.V airframe with the Merlin 61 – the result was the superb Mk.IX, which restored the balance and more! Similarly, when the late war conditions demanded a high-performance Griffon-engined ‘Spit’, Rolls-Royce shoe-horned a Griffon 65 engine of 2,035 hp into a Mk. VIII airframe, rather than ‘waiting’ for the definitive Mk.XVIII (which would arrive too late, in 1946), the result was the magnificent Mk.XIV.
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