Spitfire books

[CINDERS]

Couple of books I am wading through at present from my library; Quills book has some very interesting data in it and some of it quite surprising one of which the production run of the Spit was due to run its course by 1940 to which there would be other types built but not the Spitfire.

Thankfully R J Mitchell's replacement fought for the plane to stay in production and a vision that also encompassed fitting the Griffon to the plane a boost to 37 litres over the current 27 litre V12.
At one point they were going to go for the airspeed record and did up a Merlin to the R series specs from 1931 getting over 2,400HP from a pretty much stock Merlin this showed just how much growth they had in this engine.
They however did not pursue the record attempts and to the best of Quills knowledge the plane went to PRU had no cameras fitted, did not see action but survived the war.
Alex Henshaws book closely follows Quill's and it was a godsend that he joined Quill as he was near chucking it in under Mutt Summers control of test flying.

When Quill first flew K5054 he had no idea that the figure would be 22,000 Spitfires following this one solitary plane.
Its design proved beyond a doubt it was years ahead of anything the British had and by shear folly the Air Ministry did not know the type of performance the plane was capable of and the continued upgrades it was capable of having done to it to keep ahead of the German types.

Well worth getting the pair if your into this aircraft and of these pilots who test flew every single one of them prior to them being accepted by the RAF.

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