Along a similar vein..

I was talking with Spitfire veteran Tom Neil at the DX show. Among many others, he flew the Spitfire Mk XII with 41 Squadron. Interestingly in our conversation he referred to the XII’s converted from Mk V’s and those converted from Mk VIII’s.

This logically would be the serials split in the ‘EN’ & ‘MB’ ranges, the latter visibly having the retracting tail wheel.

This begs the question – Did the ‘MB’ serial XII’s have the strengthened Mk VIII wing?

We know that the reason why the MK VIII is out of time sequence with the Mk IX is because of delays with the strengthening upgrade, resulting in a stop gap measure, the IX, that went on to become the second most prolific mark produced.

Mark