Grace's Guide
British Industrial History
Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 146,052 pages of information and 231,597 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.
Supermarine: Spiteful
From Graces Guide
Note: This is a sub-section of Supermarine
The Supermarine Spiteful was a British Rolls-Royce Griffon-engined fighter aircraft designed by Supermarine to Air Ministry specification F.1/43 during the Second World War as a successor to the Spitfire. It featured an entirely new wing design, intended to improve its critical mach number and allow safe operations at higher speeds. The new design also allowed the landing gear to be re-arranged to a modern inward-retracting design. Other changes included a larger vertical tail to improve the somewhat marginal stability of Spitfires with the Griffon engine, and changes to the mounting of the engine to tilt it down slightly to improve visibility over the nose.
The Spiteful was ready for production as the war was ending, and was passed over in favour of jet-powered designs.
Designed by Joseph Smith
See Also
Sources of Information