I was tempted to post this last Friday, but I doubt if anyone would have believed me! Primary source documentation often requires further research – and sometimes it is possible to turn up the strangest of items!
I have a number of titles on the go at the moment, including some on aircraft production, and I was amazed to read the following…
The state of emergency which existed in Britain during the later months of 1940 demanded an all-embracing review of the country’s resources of material supply. The fall of France eliminated as a source of allied supply (and placed at the disposal of the enemy) some of the largest bauxite deposits in the world and among the measures considered at the time was the possibility of building aircraft from materials, other than light alloys, which could be produced in the British Isles. In August of that year. Aero Research, Ltd., were asked, as a result of a proposal put forward by themselves, to build an experimental Spitfire fighter fuselage in order to determine whether synthetic material could be used satisfactorily for such a purpose.
I started digging – and yes, it DID happen – and I have pictures to prove it!… the next thing is, what do I DO with them???
By: GrahamSimons - 8th April 2011 at 19:18
“…a synthetic resin material called Aerolite I believe.:
Aerolite is not the material, it’s the two-part urea-formadehyde glue that was used in wooden Mosquitos.
The item I have says the material was ‘Gordon Aerolite’ – which had a Ulitimate Tensile Strength of 70,000 lb/sq in; a Youngs Modulus of 7.0 x10 to the power of 6 and a density of 85 lb/cu.ft. along with cellulose-acetate sheet and cotton reinforced phenol-formaldihyde sheet.
And yes, it did have a lot of rivets, but again, the item reports that when the RAE tested it ‘The fuselage of the Gordon Aerolite was of the same total weight as the production fuselage in light alloy’.
The item concluded (it was written in 1945) with…
‘The construction of this fuselage may be regarded as having been something in the nature of an extreme insurance policy to cover a fairly remote but nevertheless possible emergency. Although the need for this type of construction never actually arose, the experiment was justified by the circumstances and the results obtained. It affords an interesting example of what can be done with alternative materials’
By: Mark12 - 8th April 2011 at 18:28
I have an original copy of the report.
Mark
By: Stepwilk - 8th April 2011 at 18:28
“…a synthetic resin material called Aerolite I believe.:
Aerolite is not the material, it’s the two-part urea-formadehyde glue that was used in wooden Mosquitos.
I used it when I built my Falco, so it’s still around.
By: DazDaMan - 8th April 2011 at 18:14
If I remember rightly, the “Aerolite” Spitfire fuselage required three times as many rivets to hold it together, compared to a metal one!
By: Sky High - 8th April 2011 at 18:13
So James May was 70 years late….
By: DazDaMan - 8th April 2011 at 18:11
There’s a good bit about this in the Morgan and Shacklady book “Spitfire: The history”, a synthetic resin material called Aerolite I believe.
That’s exactly what I was going to post. I believe it was merely a feasibility study, nothing more, with a full fuselage built to test it.
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April 8, 2011 at 2:22 pm