First flight of the Spitfire

“dhfan”

Thank you for your kind words, but I was not barred from the site. 

Did not find Pickering with a quick search but here is part of his log showing his first flights in K5054

In the 1939 Register Summers is living in Weybridge and Quill in Eastleigh.

I’ve just had a quick flick through Jeffrey Quill’s A Test Pilot’s Story, and as I suspected, at the time of the preliminary flights of the Spitfire, Quill was based at Weybridge and living in Walton on Thames.

George Pickering was the production test pilot for Supermarine. I haven’t continued re-reading but as Quill became much more involved with Spitfire development I’m sure he moved nearer to Eastleigh.

I stick with my original theory, afternoon flights were to give Summers and or Quill time to fly down from Weybridge.

dhfan,

I think that your proposition that Mutt Summers was not based at Eastleigh is correct.  Brooklands, Weybridge would be correct.  Alex Henshaw in his biography mentions his ‘job interview’  with Summers in his office at Brooklands.  But, as Chief Test Pilot for the Vickers Armstrongs aviation division Summers also had responsibilities for Supermarine’s products at their airfield. That was only Eastleigh in 1936 of course. 

With Jeffrey Quill working as one of Summer’s pilots his main focus was the Woolston Southampton products. But, JQ could be called to Brooklands to test fly some of their products too. Hence he had, one one occasion, had to depart from a Wellesley in a hurry under a parachute!

Thanks as ever to Schneiderman for reminding us more accurately than my memory of the Aeroplane article April 2006 that included a photo of the Supermarine memo with the date and accurate time of day for the first flight. 

As to why relatively later in the day? Mitchell wanted to be there and no doubt some of his senior managers too. Just maybe it happened to be more convenient for the party to gather?  Or was there a technical snag earlier?  Will we ever know?

Possibly because neither Mutt Summers or Jeffrey Quill were based at Eastleigh so it’s to allow time for one or both to fly down from wherever they were based, Brooklands I assume.

Fair comment, but one is a secondary source, and hence open to query, while the other is primary, written within days of the event and highly likely to be accurate.

The memo shows that all of the first four flights took place in the afternoon, so most likely they were planned that way

Well, the question was which date, not the exact minute and it seems like both editions of “The History” and the “Supermarine internal memo” agree on the 5th.

Maybe the first flight was planned to be executed as early in the day as possible due to less thermal turbulence and probably less wind but there’s always some “last minute issue” to be resolved, delaying the event.

I’d go with the Supermarine memo over the revised history by an aging Morgan and Shaklady 

The History, 2nd Edition (2000), says morning of the 5th.

It also says the Air Ministry Certificate of Design was issued on the 6th, although as I’ve never heard of one of those I don’t know if the aircraft needs to have flown before it’s issued.

I thought that this question had been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction years ago.

In the April 2006 edition of Aeroplane they showed a copy of a Supermarine internal memo, dated 18th March 1936, that summarised the first four test flights.  The first took place at 16:35 on 5th March and lasted 8 minutes.

It seems like mine is the first edition:

https://www.gettextbooks.co.uk/author/Eric_B_Morgan

Which edition of “The History” has been consulted?

I guess it is the first edition but I’m not sure. On the first page, it states:

First published in Great Britain 1987.

Some copyright blahblah

Printed in Great Britain by William Clowes Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk

ISBN 0 946219 10 9

It has the dust cover with RM689.

I suspect, and hope, that as Oracal knows everything and finds it perfectly acceptable to be rude to and about people he doesn’t know from Adam, Key thought the board could do without him.

Which edition of “The History” has been consulted? Not that I know what was revised. I sold my first edition to buy the new one and regretted it immediately. In the first few pages there were repeated blocks of text and then (Sir) James Martin of Martin-Baker was referred to as George Martin.

I put the book on the shelf and haven’t looked at it since.

Sopwith, members becoming “Anonymous” may be down to the board being run by gremlins  ?

R6915, good research, the more I learn the more I realize how little I know!

Christer, you make a very fair comment in reporting the first flight was made by Mutt Summers and you quoted from Morgan & Shacklady’s massive tome that he got in the aircraft that morning for the first flight. I suggest that you may find that a number of people would like to adjust that statement slightly. 

It is generally accepted now that the first flight happened at approx 16.10 that afternoon. On several occasions when memorial flights of a Spitfire have been arranged over the Southampton area  on March 5th they have tried to use that timing for the take off from Eastleigh.  In 2006, there were five Spitfires including Tr 9 PV202 with John Romain at the helm and his honoured guest Alex Henshaw in the back seat.  That was the occasion and the timing that the fly past formed up near Calshott and flew along Southampton Water followed by the BBC News helicopter.

In mentioning JQ, the family keep his archive and they have said to me that they accept that the entry March 6th, should be March 5th.

Yes that is very strange Christer, I see that Oracal is also down as Anonymous in the Lightning versus Phantom thread too. Anyway that aside , thank you everybody for your input.

I don’t know what it indicates but all posts (in this thread) by “Anonymous” was “Edited 25th June 2020 at 08:16” and there are no member details.

‘THE’ somewhat definitive is it not? 

Perhaps stick with Ladybird books or Wikipedia if your offended with factual detail? 

I remember seeing a document published in a magazine or book with small written text: flew on 5th of March or something in that fashion. Before that it was always 6th of March 1936.