The Supermarine Seafire - Cousin of a Legend

Описание: The Supermarine Seafire - Cousin of a Legend
With Graham Mottram
Battles at Sea and Naval History on WW2TV
   • Battles at Sea and Naval History  

Our guest today is Graham Mottram who in 1983 became Curator of the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton. He was one of the team which built the “Carrier” exhibition in the early 1990s and became the Museum's Director in 1995. As part of the formation of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, he became Director of Collections and Research in 2013, finally retiring at the end of March 2015. In “retirement” he is Chair of the Society of Friends of the FAA Museum.

The Vickers Supermarine Seafire was an urgent development of the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire to generate a high performance carrier-based fighter aircraft. Somewhat compromised in service by an undercarriage that was not designed from the outset to handle the the rigours of carrier landings, the Seafire nevertheless gave valuable service throughout its operational life.

The Vickers Supermarine Seafire Mk IB was a conversion of the land-based Vickers Supermarine Spitfire VB with the conversions being carried out by Air Service Training (AST) and by Vickers Supermarine with the main modifications being the introduction of a retractable arrester hook and local fuselage strengthening.

The Fleet Air Arm was desperately short of fighter capability in its embarked air groups at the start of the war. The navalisation of the Spitfire was one of the attempts to put this problem right. The Seafire was short of range and short of drag but superb in combat in its early versions. Its naval career was consequently one of mixed fortunes but Seafires saw operational service through to the end of the war, operating with the Pacific Fleet off Japan right up to VJ Day and were still in service at the outbreak of the Korean War.

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Flight Deck Of British Aircraft (1945)    • Flight Deck Of British Aircraft (1945)  

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