Tuesday Morning Vid – The Spitfire
05.15.2012 at 10:36am
The Spitfire – A testament to innovation and creative thinking. H/T to WillF and Oliver.
Not far from where I live is the former Spitfire factory at Castle Vale, Birmingham, England at the entrance to the housing estate there is a stunning piece of modern architecture / art – a memorial to the Spitfire. Try a search on Google Images with “spitfire island” + Birmingham.
Far more evocative, but rare is he opportunity to see and hear the ‘Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’. A Hurricane fighter, a Spitfire fighter and a Lancaster bomber. Humbling. Which of course feature on YouTube.
Not to throw too much cold water on the romance of the Spitfire but it had the same configuration, was powered by the same type of engine, was constructed in the same way out of the same materials and had the same general performance as most of its contemporaries. There was innovation and creative thinking but not much more or less than everything else.
Dave,
There is a bigger and more impressive story. Great Britain won the Battle of Britain because of several things and they all appear in the video to a lesser degree. Of course one was the Spitfire….the other was the exploitation of RADAR and Radio which was just coming on the scene and finally the Fighter Command Organization. All 3 combined to form a unique and formidable counter-threat to the Luftwaffe.
carl,
1-The SR-71 was totally designed with a slide rule-no computers!!!
2-The SR-71 also had the first mach 3 drone mounted on top of the aircraft. It was used primarily for photo recon against China. The year 1958!!! After the mission the photo pod was ejected and picked up at sea, the drone did a fancy manuever that caused it to pick up a lot of drag which caused a lot of friction, which caused it to burn up the atmosphere undetected by the Chinese.