Spitfire Plans

Originally posted by coanda
ps..what was the (rough) build ratios for spits versus hurri’s? i understand that you could build more hurri’s in the construction time of one spit?

I suppose you would have to quote which Hurricanes and Spitfires (version, maker, timeframe) you have in mind.
The original pre-war contract for 310 Spitfires took over a year to complete. In June 1944 the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory alone completed some 300 Spitfires in one week.

I think the Packard Merlin was redrawn to use American threads etc. There may well be other differences too, but that’s the only one I’m fairly certain about.

I would imagine that all mass-produced aircraft comply totally with the plans/drawings, or are supposed to anyway. With the Spitfire, don’t forget there was a huge amount of sub-contracted manufacturing so if the parts varied, there’s a fair bet they wouldn’t have fitted. I don’t recall reading any figures for the Spitfire but I think there were over 1000 sub-contractors for the Mossie.

Ahhh I see, I’m with you now!

Not being much of an expert, I couldn’t tell you.

I would have thought, however, that the aircraft would match the plans pretty well, otherwise you’d have discrepancies in certain areas and wouldn’t be able to cannibalise other aircraft for spares (which obviously did happen).

I think that just about the only thing that COULDN’T be swapped were engine parts for the Merlin 60-series and the Packard-built Merlins – can’t remember why off the top of my head, however!

hi daz,

paul (armageddon) wants them for a research topic here at uni…roughly how closely aircraft built from paper plans (such as the spit)match the plans they were built from…..I suspect not that well in terms of the mass production of aircraft like the spitfire

ps..what was the (rough) build ratios for spits versus hurri’s? i understand that you could build more hurri’s in the construction time of one spit? not sure tho, so asking the experts!

What exactly is it for? I know where you can get hold of some very detailed 3-views.