How? Unless it was a highly convex mirror, its angler of view ‘below’ would be entirely masked by the rear fuselage which was in the way. If highly convex (like one of the modern maxi-car mirrors you can buy) it would show 10-20 degrees in the lower quarters (say 4 and 8 o’clock) but nothing actually below, nor close behind or above. And convex mirrors were a lot less common then.
I don’t know why, but I’d guess it might be the pilot wanted a higher mirror for a better, slightly lower rear-view. He may have been (VERY) short. 😀
Sqn Leader Brian Lane DFC, 19 Sqn, Battle of Britain, had a couple of mirrors on his Spitfire mounted just below the armoured glass on either side of the fuselage (rather like car wing mirrors today, except long edge against the fuselage). There is a photo of one of them on pp28 of Ramrod’s ‘Battle of Britain Kaleidoscope’ Vol.II. According to the caption, he was told to remove them by a penguin Air Commode and responded: “Well you fly the bloody thing then – Sir.”
On the introduction of the Hurricane and Spitfire, the Air Min and RAF believed that at the ‘tremendous’ speeds of 300mph plus slashing straight line attacks would be all that was possible, and that no dogfights would be possible, so there was clearly no need for a rear view mirror. Or armour, or a bulged hood, etc…
Mirror positions was one of the ways you could personalise your aircraft at this period, and for negligable advantage, some pilots, such as the afore-mentioned American would have made changes. Rather like the show-not-go spoilers on rice rockets on today’s roads…
all to do with fov, I have seen at least 2 different lens types. Granted the advantage is not huge, but better. It was obviously a local mod so must have been used for aiding something. Raising it higher would give a better angle to look a bit further over the horizontal stab….
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