Today's Spitfire error

OK – so nobody’s perfect! This is the first time for nearly three years that anyone has pointed it out.

My recollection is that the page was originally entitled ‘Supermarine drawings’ but at some stage in the production of the web page the name and the link from http://www.rafmuseum.org/london/collections/archive/company_papers.cfm were changed.

The text relates to Supermarine drawings in general, rather than just the Spitfire, and the equivalent drawings for Spitfire wings are far more cluttered with copious references to part numbers, which makes them less aesthetically pleasing – whatever that means! The drawing title was left in to show that Supermarine designed other aircraft than the Spitfire.

I’ll ask our webmaster to change the offending words.

Peter Elliott
Senior Keeper
Department of Research & Information Services
Royal Air Force Museum

RJM’s ‘famous elliptical wing platform’?

…and we all make mistakes (I certainly do)…

See the top quote, James. I believe the word you’re looking for is “planform” 😀 :diablo:

It says quite clearly on it

TWO seat fleet fighter to Air Ministry Spec…..

I think the intention was to show a Spitfire drawing as although it says on the drawing itself ‘Two seat Fleet fighter etc’, the file name is ‘Spitfire drawing’!

Would Phantex / I Duncan like to declare an interest (having access to the RAF Museum’s cockpits)?

Not especially, although anything I do say is certainly not likely to be the Views of the RAF Museum, in any shape or form etc etc.

Of course it’s important to have everything right, but has anyone actually mentioned this to the people that can change it or are we just discussing it here?

Thanks for the input folks.

There’s a difference between Joe Bloggs identifying every propellor warplane as a ‘Spitfire’ and an internationally recognised authority doing so.

So my next ‘ought to know better’ is the august institution of Flight magazine. Deadly dull, but authoritative.

However, you’ll be interested to know that the attached image is of a ‘Hawker Hurricane’ according to the details in the image caption. Oops.

Image Reference 14130860
Contributor © Flight
Caption
Hawker Hurricane

Restrictions
Please call us on +44 (0) 20 8652 8888
if you need more information about restrictions.

Model Release No
Property Release No
Add To Cart
+44 (0) 20 8652 8888

(Dis)Credit: http://www.theflightcollection.com

Of course this is a little bit of fun, and we all make mistakes (I certainly do) but again Flight’s otherwise rigourous proofing has let them down here.

That said, the Flight Archive is a magnificent collection of great photographs – and I haven’t spotted any other errors, so 99/100. 😀

Heh.

What would you rather have chaps?

No access to drawings, or access with an illustrative example?

Um, well an illustrative example of a Spitfire drawing would be a) appropriate, b) sensible c) not misleading d) professional for a national level collection with thousands of the correct drawings to hand to use – I could go on, such as it must have been a real achievement to use a non-Spitfire drawing, as just on a ‘I closed my eyes and grabbed’ basis the Spitfire ones are more numerous and popular for research.

I don’t see anywhere that your suggestion is the choice we have to have.

Would Phantex / I Duncan like to declare an interest (having access to the RAF Museum’s cockpits)?

It says quite clearly on it

TWO seat fleet fighter to Air Ministry Spec…..

And so did I.

It’s all trivial, of course. However, I’d hope that one of the world’s top repositories of Spitfire data would bother to use an appropriate, rather than a misleading drawing. Personally, I find this more interesting than a Spitfire drawing, but I can also see this used in a pub argument to ‘prove’ the existence of a eight-machine gun four-cannon two seat Seafire… 😀

If the RAFM had proper control over their own website, it’d have been changed by now. 😉 Oh, next working day perhaps.

They DON’T anywhere state that this is a Spitfire drawing – but equally there’s no reason to use a non-Spitfire drawing on a web-page entitled ‘Spitfire Drawings’.

Well, I came across this one on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmaX_aM7LMs

Cleary one of those turboprop Dornier things.

Obviously this persons aircraft recognition skills leave a lot to be desired! :rolleyes:

But then maybe mine do to! 😀

Cheers

Paul

That reminded me of Carolyn Grace’s scrape with a chopper a few years back (if anyone remembers?). Should ML407 have been credited with another kill, perhaps?? 😀

Ronnie Harker’s memoir of his time as a Rolls-Royce test pilot has the prototype K5054 captioned as a Mark V.

William

Well, I came across this one on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmaX_aM7LMs

Cleary one of those turboprop Dornier things.

Obviously this persons aircraft recognition skills leave a lot to be desired! :rolleyes:

But then maybe mine do to! 😀

Cheers

Paul

What would you rather have chaps?

No access to drawings, or access with an illustrative example?

Spitfire Drawings

Looks like the wing of the Type 333, the two seat Fleet Fighter to N.9/39 fitted with a Merlin.

It does say Supermarine drawings further in the text, but a very poor choice of illustration in my view.

PeterA

It says quite clearly on it

TWO seat fleet fighter to Air Ministry Spec…..

More likely that in this case it is being used for illustrative purposes only…..

N8/39 was the specification that the Fairey Firefly was designed to meet.