Composite Spit fuselage/wings… eh?

Aerolite Spitfire

Spitfire the History – Eric Morgan & Edward Shacklady
Pages 123 – 126 The ‘Aerolite’ Spitfire.

I seem to remember reading about it in ‘The Spitfire Story’ by Alfred Price (?). I cribbed it for a School Project, aged 10:rolleyes:

John

Good grief, I worked at the place that built it! & they’re still at Duxford:

Aero Research Ltd.
Founded in 1934 by Dr. Norman de Bruyne, a physicist/engineer and don at
Cambridge University, Aero Research Ltd. (Duxford, England) pioneers new
applications in aircraft adhesives and impregnated fabrics. Among the company’s many advances are its Aerolite, Araldite and Redux® adhesives, its Aeroweb honeycomb core, its Fiberdux glass fiber epoxy Prepregs and its Fibrelam® panels.
Aero Research Ltd. is acquired by Ciba in 1947.

Brochier
The silkweaver, J. Brochier & Fils is founded in 1895 and quickly builds a
strong reputation. In 1950, the company enters the glass fiber weaving
business, supplementing it with carbon and aramid fiber weaving in the 1970s.
Brochier is manufacturing Prepregs by the time Ciba-Geigy acquires the company
in 1980.

Ciba Composites
In 1947, Ciba, a multinational group of chemical companies headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, acquires Dr. Norman de Bruyne’s company, Aero Research Ltd., marrying their respective strengths in resin technology. In the ensuing years, Ciba merges with Geigy, another Swiss chemical concern, and builds a leading presence in adhesives and composite materials through the steady acquisitions of Orbitex, Reliable Adhesives, Deco Manufacturing, Brochier, Heath Tecna, Panel Air Corporation, Salver and Danutec. Hexcel acquires Ciba-Geigy’s composites
business in February 1996.

n/m. found it in the Morgan/Shacklady book, thanks chaps

I too had vague memories that a plastic Spitfire had been mooted, and possibly even created, but a look in the book where I thought I had seen it has revealed nothing so far… I think as Carpetbagger has mentioned it was produced to save strategic materials but in the end was not needed. One fuselage might have been produced for structural testing, but beyond that I don’t know. Pretty certain it never flew.

…Besides, ‘composite’ can mean quite a number of things. I wonder if they had the technology in the war to do things like fuselages and wings in plastics??

(Would it have been painted with little tins of Humbrol enamel and had the pilot glued in I wonder?)

So what’s the rest of story?

The ‘Aerolite’ Spitfire, certainly…but in a museum…not in any significant form that I know of.

I have the technical paper on this somewhere.

Mark

There was an attempt to produce a ‘plastic’ spitfire during the war to save on valuable aluminium, nothing much came of it however.
I wasn’t aware that there is still one extant.

Come on Spitfire experts, it’s over to you!

John