Supermarine Spitfire and the Battle of Britain

[Music] welcome to Peninsula seniors out and about right the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance let's go see what cindy has for us today welcome everyone to the Western Museum of Flight I'm Cindy maka the director Lynn Jensen is an accomplished and knowledgeable engineer who has applied his technical skills to his principal avocation which is conducting historical research in the field the development of the world's combat aircraft particularly World War two and today he's going to share some of the fruits of his labor of love and I'm sure we are in for a fast it's a fascinating time so let it roll then [Applause] [Music] I originally gave this presentation in a in a shorter form at Northrop Grumman on as you can see Battle of Britain Day 2016 I've upgraded it a little bit but I wanted to leave that because that is the day every year at Northrop Grumman I send out an email to everyone on the f18 program which I'm on now September 15 Battle of Britain day I send them a special note and a and the chart that commemorates this battle it was called the most afterwards at the time it certainly wasn't this way but afterwards it was called the most romantic air battle this was after the movie and things like that not not during the time and of course the symbol of that battle was the Supermarine Spitfire and I wanted to go into some of the design details and some of the politics and things that made the Spitfire famous and then talk about the battle itself there's there's so much that's been written on this battle and truly I can say that without that air superiority that the Spitfire the Royal Air Force Fighter Command and the Hurricanes provided our civilization would be quite different we might be speaking German now I don't know gutentag but because of this airplane and and it's stablemate the Hawker hurricane that was not so the battle was very very dramatic oh by the way if you have a question below my name is Mai I'm on the f-18 program management see it that's systems engineering and integration teams if you had questions about that acronym we live in a world of acronyms these days so I thought I'd explain that right away and of course everybody knows the acronym RAF I unfortunately could only bring a 172nd scale Spitfire I would have liked to fly my own Spitfire in for the day but this was all I could manage but this is a battle of britain Spitfire mark 1 DW is the squadron code for 610 squadron I believe the 600 RAF squadrons were kind of the Air National Guard and they were really the pilots were usually wealthy young men and basically their squadron was like a flying club in fact in the 30s they called the Royal Air Force the greatest flying club in the world I wanted to start out by giving you an idea of the sources that I use these are the principal sources and I would recommend these books top one on the list is called Spitfire the history Eric B Morgan and Edward Schack lady this is a massive book three inches thick large format you know the table the coffee table format but it has details you would not believe that it is the definitive history of the Spitfire and it's well worth reading from a technical historical aspect it's just just full of treasures it's an Aladdin's cave of treasures on the Spitfire and of course everybody should read Lyn Dayton now you know Len Deighton wrote the book for the movie the epoch of smile the old spy movies and things but he also wrote a very carefully balanced and excellently researched book on the Battle of Britain it's called Fighter others you can see on the list the Battle of Britain excellent you look at them look them up under the authors here of course bill Gunston has to be there bill Sweetman is now a colleague at Northrop Grumman then you know bill Sweetman is a tremendous air historian and journalist and bill Sweetman called bill Gunston the Yoda of aviation journalism so we wouldn't want to miss bill gustin's book of course I grew up on this book I got a special when I was a kid about eight years old I got special permission from the librarian upstairs in the library for adults the kids were downstairs this was in Brigham City Utah Minuteman missile the country I got special permission to go upstairs and check out this one book from the adult library and it was William Greene's famous fighters of the Second World War so I grew up reading and rereading that book and of course Alfred prices Spitfire at war battle a Briton RG / II is a very good analysis very written recently about some of the some of the information and some of the analyses that were not available earlier you know Ian Fleming the author who created James Bond had an older brother his older brother was named Peter Fleming and Peter Fleming wrote the most entertaining and beautiful fun book of course it's historically accurate it's called Operation Sea Lion and he has such a knack for a humorous British understatement that this book in itself is just worth reading because it is so entertaining so I recommend that when I I realized just now I forgot to put on the list is a book called the man who won the Battle of Britain and does anybody can anyone guess who that might be the man who won the Battle of Britain yes correct absolutely you win the prize Hugh Dowding he was a head of fighter command and he had his preparation in the 30s meant that the Germans really would not have a chance so Hugh Dowding 'he's the best book on hugh doubting that i've read is called the man who won the battle of britain so with that we'll proceed to the man who designed the Supermarine Spitfire Reginald Joseph Mitchell is a commander of the British Empire a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society it was born in 1895 and died in 1937 of cancer actually he was he joined Supermarine in 1917 they made him chief designer a couple of years later that showed he had talent now remember that Supermarine means on the water right or over the water so basically Supermarine was in the business of building and designing sea planes and there are some famous ones that mitchell came up with we'll talk about those later but Mitchell had an approach much like Deming had with quality and we've all heard of Deming and his his ideas about how you attain quality and aircraft and other production basically his idea was this if you make things simple then it helps enhances quality if it's simple to do you don't have to worry that much about quality avoid complexity and I love this quote from Mitchell if anybody ever tells you anything about an aeroplane which is so bloody complicated you can't understand it take it from me it's all balls and we can see in the beautiful lines of the Spitfire what he was talking about and of course he didn't like the name Spitfire for his airplane you can see the quote below Spitfire was just the sort of bloody silly name they would choose but it turns out it was perfect for this airplane well I'm sure everyone is familiar with the famous poem the US Air Force used to use it when they when TV station when TV stations used to sign off at midnight just before they signed off they would show a Northrop t-38 flying in the you know soaring in the Sun and the voiceover for that those beautiful shots of the t-38 flying was Charles McGee's I'm sorry john gillespie McGee's poem hi flight so I kind of grew up with that too because I would watch TV until midnight just so I could see that t-38 flying through this sunlit heavens and here this poem recited oh I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter silvered wings sunward I've climbed and done a thousand done a hundred things you have not dreamed of so here in my researches I found a picture of the pilot who wrote that of sitting of course in his Spitfire he was anxious to get into the war it was just a young student but he was in the US and he was trying to get back to Canada so that he could join the Royal Canadian Air Force and get into World War two fly in other words he loved airplanes there is actually the letter that he wrote with that poem on it to his family so basically he was interviewed by The Washington Times and they in the interview they he talked to them told him what he wanted to do and they basically characterized him as happy at having won his wings more so at the prospect of flying a Spitfire the ultimate dream of every British flyer he said and the prospect of this is the typical British understatement the prospect of a little action well it turns out he died tragically he he got to take a few shots at Messerschmitts but tragically he died when his Spitfire was hit by a or he hit there was a aerial collision with a a training aircraft and so that was his demise let's look at some other Mitchell designs speaking about Supermarine we have the now this is ironic because one of his first designs and this was in the I believe the 1921 Snyder race as a as a competitor for you know an air race - I think it went about a hundred and forty five miles an hour I don't remember if it won but it was at least at least placed but ironically this airplane was named the sea lion another famous plane that Mitchell design was the Supermarine walrus which basically rescued hundreds of fliers when they had to ditch in the Atlantic or the English Channel etc interestingly enough Mitchell designed a six engine flying boat it was never built but you can see at this time this airplane had the characteristic elliptical wing which for aerodynamicists has a special characteristic does anyone remember what the special characteristic of an elliptical wing is uniform that's close uniform wing loading it's actually a uniform coefficient of lift over the entire span of the wing so this is a nice thing to have it simplifies the design process so obviously simplifies drag it simplifies a lot of things and of course we're looking at simplicity this flying boat was never built but this is where that elliptical wing idea kind of stuck in Mitchell's mind now in the lower right corner you see the Supermarine s6b which in 1931 took the schneider trophy forever for England for Great Britain at a speed of four hundred and seven miles per hour and in that beautifully streamlined racing plane we don't see that elliptical wing but we do see that fuselage that is just a fantastic streamlining it just could not get more sleek as a trainer now let's look at a very great contrast between this sleek just killer lines of the s6b racer schneider trophy Trophy winner - the first Spitfire there it is folks looking in all its glory like a Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber that the Luftwaffe use it's got the reverse gull wings the fixed landing gear the spats on the landing gear just like a Stuka and it was about the contemporary with Snuka of course other airplanes had that reverse goal wing which were very effective and some people would say that one of those these the chants bought Corsair f4u was the top airplane top performing fighter plane in world war ii it's a very controversial but that is one of those so that reverse goal wing was something that was kind of in silent of course in this case as in the case of the Corsair they wanted to have that reverse goal wing so they didn't have to make the landing gear longer than necessary for the propeller to clear the ground so there we see the supermarine type 224 this was the result of a specification a requirement from the air ministry raf they wanted a fighter plane that would go 50% faster than the gauntlets and and that by wing planes could at the time and they wanted it to carry four machine guns rather than just the two that we'd had around since the Sopwith Camel this was requirement f7 / 30 F ment fighter 7 was the seventh specification of the year / 1930 so these were some of the contenders in this competition you can see the blackburn 1-2-3 was a strange looking bird it was a biplane it looks kind of like it's upside-down the pilot sat in the top way up there he probably needed a stepladder or a ladder to get up there in the first place how did he get up there I don't know actually then there's a bottom wing and that one was a little too radical for the Royal Air Force it would be radical today and it stealth characteristics would be terrible the Bolton Paul who later came up with the Defiant fighter which was kind of like a hurricane but with a turret on on behind the pilot which they used in the Battle of Britain but quickly they had to change the night fighting because Messerschmitts figured out that hey they can't keep their guns trained on us if we're on their tail so that was that was it for the Bolton Paul the bhopal mono monoplane was fair advanced twin-engine airplane fast and everything but if you notice look at the structure of that it still got two guy wires and things to to give to keep the structure straight to give it strength than everything anyway the 224 looked good it had a tremendously advanced cooling system the engine would be cooled by water which the engine from its heat would turn into steam and then that steam would be circulated through the front of the wing etc and cooled down to water again and then it would be recycled through the engine well in 1934 when the chief test pilot at Supermarine mutt summers tried to take this thing off they had so much trouble with the cooling system that the RAF said well let's rethink this thing so guess what airplane won the competition anybody have any ideas this airplane the Gloster gladiator it was it was obsolescent when it was what it before it even came into operation but there it was this is how these this is how these competitions go sometimes I won't say anything more but we've all seen it the best plane does not always win moving on much summers a comment as he got out of the 224 was we can do better than that he had worked with their closely with Mitchell and he knew Mitchell was a genius so basically super Marines Board of Directors said okay Mitchell we're gonna support you we're going to use our private funds for you to Davitt to for you to design a fighter that is the best fighter you can possibly come up with so for the next few slides we're gonna look at the development of this killer fighter first of all on the far left there's the revised F 730 spec 425 which basically is it's lost the Goldwings it's got a retractable landing gear as they're able to carry bombs and it's got four machine guns four machine guns which still fire through the propeller so that means you have to fire more slowly you know the interrupter gear doesn't allow the machine guns to fire at the rate that they are capable of the middle picture is the revised F 730 speck 425 a and you can see that it's starting to look a little bit sleeker the guns now two of the guns anyway fire outside of the propeller arc this airplane looks much like for the aficionados here the Heinkel he1 12 we could go into that sometime later anyway but heikal does figure in the elliptical wing as we'll see in a few minutes basically the final design for the F 730 SPECT 425 before the elliptical wing look at that wing from the side is starting to look like the Spitfire we're familiar with the landing gear is looking like the Spitfire but no elliptical wing okay final design for F 730 spec 425 before the elliptical wing on the far left there is very interesting because that wing is a strange sort of mathematical shape but you can see in the back of Mitchell's mind was okay now we've got all the guns for guns for machine guns outside of the propeller arc and we need room to put you know to arm those guns the ammunition and this sort of thing for those guns in that wing and we also want to have the aerodynamic characteristics of the elliptical wing so now drawing 30,000 sheet 13 here is the elliptical wing and the RAF when they saw this said hey we're writing a specification around this airplane so it was F 37:34 1934 they said okay now we want this airplane and so they specifically wrote a spec so that Supermarine would produce this airplane that's always nice when you can have the Air Force write a specification around you airplane and then you see basically on the right specification f 1035 which was a Spitfire with fill it's on the wings eight machine guns still has a two bladed prop wooden prop by the way but there it is there's this super re and look at the I want you to look at that the up near the engine we've got the exhaust pipe that was an ejector type exhaust pipe they wanted to get every bit of thrust they could so they they funneled the exhaust from the engine through this they call it a t exhaust out over the wing so that it would provide more air going over the wing and more lift there's the eight gun wing of the embryonic Spitfire we'll call it and what a wing that was the man who worked with Mitchell to design that wing was named shen stone you can see that the spar well thus far was a special lightweight version inboard toward the fuselage it was a channeled metal which kind of telescoped and then it was held in place by a web matrix but it was very strong and very light the wing actually had a twist and a downwash to it there was a higher downwash at the the fuselage wing root than there was on the tip there was a little bit of a twist on the tip and we see this on the Japanese zero as well horikoshi designed the zero for the same reason he put a little twist downward twist on the wing tips so that when you're approaching a stall for the Spitfire when you approach the stall the wing tip would not stall out first the wing root would stall out first the airplane would shudder but it wouldn't fall off into a spin like most airplanes do take your typical cherokee or or 172 and there's nothing like a spin when you're trying to draw a bead on an enemy heiko bomber or slow down enough to knock a Stuka out of the sky so this was a fantastic beautiful wing and novelist's pre-war days taught there was a there was a fictional version I mean that the British since the turn of the century you know since 1902 were always worried about Germans invading Britain so again this became a a meme in the in the atmosphere thoughts fear and so there was a novel written about these these beautiful elliptical winged fighters that saved Britain from the German invasion the elliptical wing after the war chené stone and was accused of hey you just you just crib that's British where you just copied or stole the wing of the Heinkel HD 70 which was the fastest airplane of its day the Condor Legion used it as a bomber as a transport plane a messaging plane it was fast but basically actually Mitchell was in contact with heikal and this is a quote from a letter he sent we at super marine aviation were particularly impressed with your airplane since we have been unable to achieve such smooth lines in the aircraft that we entered for the schneider trophy races in addition to this we recently investigated the effect that installing certain new British fighter engines now see he's trying to sell British Kestrel engines to the Germans this is a marketing effort a disguised marketing effort all those who have been in the aerospace industry know how this works so he's praising the HD 70 and it was praise worthy let me tell you we were dismayed to find that your new aircraft despite its larger measurements is appreciably faster than our fighters it is indeed a triumph Michel basically used this planned form and layout to design the principal bomber of the Battle of Britain the Heinkel 111 as you can see had a couple of engines put on the on that bottom picture put a cockpit to a Glade glazed cockpit like a b-29 in the front and you've got a michael 111 bomber and it was a fast bomber but by the time battle britain it was not as fast as it should have been it was starting to become a little obsolescence but it was used entirely through the war now Shen stone replied later it has been suggested that we at Supermarine had cribbed the winged shape from that of this a chi 70 transport this was not so the elliptical wing had been used on other aircraft and its advantages were well known as we can see from that six engine full plane design of Mitchell earlier our wing was much thinner than that of the Heinkel and that and had a quite different section and this is another things that was really really great about the Spitfire wing as it was very thin very very thin in any case it would have been simply asking for trouble to have copied a wing shape from an aircraft designed for an entirely different purpose so there we go if anybody asks that's your answer here is a type 300 which they named that we can do better than that airplane that the dream airplane that they told Mitchell he could design originally they were looking at radiators like on the p40 Kitty Hawk you know the chin radiator this sort of thing but a guy named Meredith came up with a much better idea let's put the gray da tur under the wing position it so that it gets the amount of air intake that it needs and then we'll design it so that the heat from the engine it's kind of like a little jet engine the heat from the engine from the radiator will generate will expand and combined with the air flow coming in to the Meredith radiator you would get more lift not more lift be a bit more thrust coming out of the back of that radiator and just like the p-51 Mustang you can adjust the the aperture at the back of the radiator so that you can maximize the extra thrust you get from that radiator again it's genius okay so then we see basically the side view and that with that beautiful tail is the basic Spitfire mark one that we see still the twin blade wooden propeller but you notice on under that tail there was one last detail that we had to take care of it still had a skid just like a sopwith camel so somebody said let's put a tail wheel on this and then we'll get it into production and here we go first flight 5 March 1936 what much summers got out of the airplane after flying that beautiful beautiful airplane he said don't touch anything it's perfect now we all know test pilots who got out of airplanes and they said ok we got to work on this we got to work on this this is you know we didn't work this is a little shaky this is a little weak much Sommers don't touch anything the engine we all know that when you design an airplane the most important thing is your engine the fighters the American fighters in the late 40s early 50s were handicapped because the jet engines could not provide the thrust that they needed to fully take advantage of the aerodynamic qualities of their airplanes so here is that beautiful engine in the upper left is the r-25 R that was a large powerful engine I think it put out almost 3,000 horsepower and that's what they had in the Supermarine at 6 B that's why you owe 407 miles an hour now you can see just beneath that the s6b and the engine being put into it it looks like when you're at the dentist how are they gonna fit that thing in there open wide B how is it gonna get in there it doesn't look like it's gonna fit but it did and then of course the Spitfire mark 1 had the first Merlin engine between the r-25 R and the Merlin was a the development the first Merlin was called the Kestrel and this was a again a world-beating engine a tremendous V v12 engine Spitfire mark 1 had the first Merlin engine as did the hurricane and the Merlin engine also provided power for the p-51 Mustang it's interesting at the beginning the war the British who needed America they wanted to tap into American production capability came to Henry Ford Ford Motor Company and said will you build us these Merlin engines we need them badly at the time the US was not in the war Henry Ford was a rather cranky cantankerous character and he said no I I won't do that I'm in America and I'm not going to build something for you British so the British went to Packard Motor Company and Packard said yeah we'll build it and they built thousands of Packard Merlin engines and it's interesting that they actually through their manufacturing ability and analyses they actually made the production of that engine much more efficient so they were able to produce better engines higher quality at a lower cost and many of these Packard build engines were in Spitfires as well not just in the Mustangs and they they powered all they had they had a separate designation for the Packard Merlin Spitfires the Spitfire mark 16 for example was a mark 9 but had a a Packard built Merlin engine in it then they needed more power for the Spitfire and other airplanes so rules royce developed the Griffon engine Merlin had a top capability of about Oh 16 1700 horsepower and then with boost maybe 18 or so the Griffon could go up to maybe 2,500 horsepower so he wanted this in an airplane so they put it in a Spitfire and Spitfires after the Mark 9 basically had the Griffon engine in them and this meant they were fast but there was one problem the Griffon engine turned the propeller in the opposite direction of the Merlin engine so if you're a pilot you are very very careful when you're taking off because that torque you used to torque pulling totaling you one-way now you're in an airplane where the torque is going to pull you the other way and so there were a lot of training situations where they had to be very very careful and of course we see the Griffon at that sleek Spitfire mark 24 which was basically the last of the Spitfires and that had a Griffon engine and look at the difference you know I forget the name of the journal but he said the Spitfire mark 1 the one in the left on the left there was like a ballerina it was beautiful graceful especially compared to the mark 24 look at that that is pure engined power we had to be careful when we were priming the engine of the Spitfire you can see in the lower left in the middle there you there's a giant flame coming out of the exhaust pipes of this Spitfire well basically you had a little pump that you would put three little pumps which would prime the engine and then you would turn you know turn the ignition and the engine would start if you got too much in there this is what would happen you'd have a giant flame come out from the exhaust pipes as you were starting the engine interestingly enough the first Messerschmitt 109 was powered by a rolls-royce engine they couldn't get the DB 601 daimler-benz in time to fly the first prototype of the Messerschmitt so Messerschmitt of course took took rolls-royce up on their marketing deal and said hey we're gonna buy a Kestrel from you so we can test our airplane so the first Messerschmitt had a Kestrel engine and of course and then subsequent Messerschmitts had the Daimler Benz engines DB 601 DB 605 etc interesting enough full circle Messerschmitt sent airplanes to Franco in Spain who is a fascist and basically neutral but on the side of the Germans they sent him mr. Schmidt's but after the war they had all these mr. Smith sitting around he couldn't get any diner Ben's engines for them so they decided they were gonna put Merlin engines in their Messerschmitts so we see in the lower right Spanish mr. Schmidt's with Merlin engines now if you saw that 1969 movie the Battle of Britain and you're an aircraft spotter basically you recognize immediately that those messersmith's had merlin engines in the movie the Spitfires were Spitfires the Messerschmitts were Spanish Spanish Bouchon the dove or pigeon with Merlin engines and a side-story - this is actually technical advisers on that movie were Bob Chuck for example the Battle of Britain ace Adolf Galland you know the head of Jay Z 26 later the head of all German Fighter Command etc doubting himself was a technical adviser on this movie well the pilots are all together there are other German pilots that were going to be flying these Spanish Messerschmitts and they said hey Adolf are they calling Dolph oh you know Dolph Oh didn't weren't you used to didn't you once you used to didn't you used to fly a very low pass maybe 50 feet off the ground and do a four point roll in your mr. Smith and he said well yeah I did but you know that was you know almost 30 years ago and he's in a business suit as well but you know how fighter pilots are so he hopped in this Spanish Messerschmitt took off and he was sweating like a pig he got to altitude came down this is called beating up the airfield and he beat up the airfield they were at and did this war point roll and then came back landed and just he was drenched when he got he ruined the suit when he got out of their plane but of course he did it be careful when you're around fighter pilots and remember a lot of the airline pilots are were previously in the Air Force transport pilots I'm not sure on the application form if they have a box you check were you a fighter pilot or a transport but anyway and to to complete the irony the Germans actually took a captured Spitfire mark 5 and put a daimler-benz DB 605 in it and tested it so this is what the Spitfire would have looked like if the British had had to by daimler-benz engines and put them in their Spitfires the aviation industry is a fascinating thing now I don't know if there are any Mormons in the audience but if the Mormon missionaries contact you and ask you if you've ever heard of Joseph Smith you can say well yes of course he was the chief engineer on the Supermarine Spitfire and because of him because he saw the development potential of the Spitfire he developed that airplane to the final stages of the of the performance and it reached Jeffrey quill was the chief test pilot through all those years he wrote a great book also just called Spitfire of his experiences so we see 22,000 plus of these airplanes were produced in a ten-year period greater than any other British aircraft obviously 43 different variants flew operationally on every front used by the air forces of 36 countries I want to go to some of those countries and see if they've got any left but I think that people like Cindy's brother probably gotten there before me now this this shows you how greatly this airplane was developed it started out with a 1030 horsepower Merlin engine it weighed 5,800 pounds went 362 miles an hour the last mark of the Spitfire you can see the different marks on the right but at the lower right picture as a Seafire mark 46 I actually found this on a Russian web site but it was such a cool picture that show it that shows what a what an airplane that was that that's just a picture of pure power and you can see those contra-rotating props looks like scimitars swords ready to chop up any enemy that gets in their way anyway the last the mark of the Spitfire was a Seafire mark 47 it weighed 12,000 pounds had two thousand three hundred horsepower that's almost three times the horsepower of the first one weighed more than twice as much and it went almost a hundred miles per hour faster we're getting in the jet realm now and of course they used the sea fires in Korea etc and the last the last Spitfire the last official RAF Spitfire mission was in 1957 it was a PR 19 reconnaissance Spitfire in the in the Far East it had one last mission to perform the RAF thought that they would have to fight indonesian mustangs in 1963 there was some problem with some contra temps between the British and the Indonesians over something probably oil but the British the RAF took their English Electric lightning z' amok to fighter interceptors and they commissioned some Spitfires to fly combat with them this is the ultimate aggressor squadron of Spitfires in your aggressor squadron to see because the Spitfire this mark had flying characteristics like the Mustang to see how to develop tactics on how they could fly their lightnings against these Indonesian Mustangs so that was the very last combat mission of the of this beautiful airplane there were some unusual Spitfires and unusual Spitfire missions it was a world speed record record contender in 37 they British said hey we got a Spitfire let's turn it into a world speed record airplane so in the talk we'd see the high speed Spitfire at the 1938 World's Fair it was displayed it has a four blade wooden prop and they figured it would probably go around four hundred four hundred and ten miles per hour four hundred thirty it never actually flew and they eventually converted it back into a regular combat style Spitfire we see the Spitfire seaplane Spitfires are used in air sea rescue they'd fly out they would drop dinghies and you know floatation gear for pilots that had had the ditch we've got a hundred killer night fighter we've got a long-range fighter escort in 1943 you can see in the middle picture the long-range escort the right field took a Spitfire and put gas everywhere to extend the range so that's picture of the airplane it's got wing tanks there was gas everywhere a pilot named lund Lundqvist or Lundgren flew this airplane across the Atlantic but he said you know it flew like a dog by this time the Mustang was coming online and we really didn't need a long-range escort as a Spitfire there were trainers were the and usually the trainers were conversions the Irish Air Force could made a conversion here's a Russian Air Force you know a Soviet Spitfire conversion they put a seat in back of the pilot for training purposes there's the photo recon PR 19 we can see there and then was there there was a Spitfire 30 they called it the X xx and this was an interesting mission because they basically you can see of the wing tanks on that Spitfire it's got the invasion stripes we had landed at Normandy and they had air strips RAF had air strips in Normandy in France this Spitfire was used to fly beer to the squadrons and typical of our times the government I believe this was the Hennessy beer company the government came to Hennessy and said you can't do that you do not have a license to export beer and last but not least you know they put two Tiger jaws shark jaws on everything this is a Spitfire with Tiger jaws on it just just to fill in the picture of every year even the b-24s have Tiger jaws on and of course the Flying Tigers made those famous but it was actually the British one twelve squadron in North Africa that put the first tiger or shark jaws on their p-40s in North Africa remember when triumph came out with the TR three sports car they called it the Spitfire their motto was you always remember your first Spitfire I happened to get an mga at the time and I remember that well was in the shop most of the time my first Spitfire my first flying Spitfire was a Gill's model you see I put it together on the table there there are the plans in the left my first flight the torque from that rubber band just turned that airplane around and that was the last flight as well later on I did a like a 1/4 scale Spitfire mark 14 just very very lightly you know filling in the wings the fuselage a sort of thing it was the beginnings of a 14 and I I mounted it on top of my Toyota Corolla but that was about it that didn't get very far either I couldn't find a buyer okay now we're gonna get to the battle a few years ago thanks to my wonderful angel wife who found an ad in the newspaper out of the flying Museum in Santa Monica they were having a Battle of Britain commemoration and they were gonna have a Spitfire there a couple of Spitfires and me-109 or real one Andy not with a Merlin engine and they were going to have a Mustang it was there as part of the show well I discovered that when they took off in this Spitfire they didn't get more than about 4,000 feet in the air and I could even see that airplane anymore so basically you all the people on the ground and they would go out and watch these air battles believe me all the people on the ground could see were these contrails and we see various pictures the Messerschmitts flying in there rota a tactic they developed for protection in in Spain in the Spanish Civil War in the continent Condor Legion and their fighter tactics were far ahead of the British in terms of fighter to fighter tactics fighter to fighter warfare you can see the Spitfire the the RAF pilots scrambling to their aircraft you see a downed Heinkel 111 you can see the the few in front of a Spitfire now with a three blade - speed - pitch propeller which tremendously increased the performance and also an interesting note is the British when they got 100 octane gasoline from the US that really increased their the the performance of the airplanes as well especially visa we the Germans who were flying theirs on 87 octane just like I quit in my car that's what that little 87 symbol in the in the yellow a triangle on the Messerschmitts was this is 87 gasps anyway you can see the in the lower left-hand three hurricanes in what they call the Vic formation the Vic was great for attacking bombers and boy the British their phobia was bombers they had a they had a a mindset that where the phrase that described it was the bomber will always get through so they were terribly afraid of bombers so they developed the Vic which was just a big line of airplanes and then when they attacked bombers the they practice active bombers they peel off one at a time just like the cavalry and they'd make a run in and take out a bomber the next guy peel off run into the bomber so those are the difference in tactics Dunkirk preceded the battle from the end of May until the 4th of June there were three hundred and thirty-eight thousand British troops stuck surrounded by the Germans Hitler strangely enough stopped the tanks at the beaches you know the pond sir commander said said why don't let us go we can capture all these men Hitler said no stop what Hitler wanted to do basically and there's a lot of speculation on this but basically he didn't he didn't feel that the British were a subhuman race like he felt that everybody else was he kind of felt like the British were not as good as the Germans but they were kind of like little brothers so he kind of wanted to give him the chance to surrender I mean it's like come on you're surrounded all your troops are you're gonna you all your whole army practically is gonna be captured all the equipment just surrender and then maybe you can help us fight the Russians later but you know if thinking but in a demanded way anyway these are pictures of Dunkirk and probably the low point of the RAF Fighter Command was Dunkirk as I mentioned you could not see those airplanes in the air but the fighter command had airplanes covering Dunkirk all the time and they shot down a lot of German airplanes but the Germans came in lower as well and they bombed the beaches so that when the fighter pilots landed or some were shot down and they parachuted out landed on the beaches they were treated as they were hated it's like you know your RAF where were you we've never we haven't seen any British airplanes we need you you know Bri being bombed and strafed they just didn't know that the RAF was covering them all the time one pilot landed on the beach he was he made his way to a destroyer to get back to England and they treated him so coldly he said why the warm welcome and they said well your RAF you haven't helped us at all so this was a low point and then came the high point they were considered the saviors of the country this is pure directive 16 I have decided to get this to begin to prepare for and if necessary to carry out an invasion of England there's a lot of a lot of weasel wording there actually if for a quote Fuehrer directive you can see add more ater talking with Hitler on the Left Raider was the only guy who had his wits about him he said it can never be done there's no way we're gonna be able to do this the weather in the channel across the across the channel is terrible we don't have the we don't have the ships we don't have the cover and he said and of course the army said well we want to hit these beaches and you can see that the army had planned a 200-mile long set of beaches you can see that picture of the Zelo a sea lion part of southern England where they were going to land and the army said and by the way Navy we want to land at dawn when the Sun comes up just like we did at Normandy in 1944 you know the u.s. in the British and the Navy said are you crazy that means we'd have to cross a channel at night and that means the Royal Navy the greatest Navy in the world would cut us to pieces we wouldn't nobody would make it so now we get to start to get a picture of was this thing really possible for the Germans to do they wanted the British to think it was and there of course is the the planner the army planners at the table and radar looking on from the side like well you know this isn't gonna work and of course these are the German maps of you know the how the Luftwaffe is going to support the landings on the beach as well those maps were never used here are the leaders we know Churchill there's the Corporal from Austria from Bavaria saluting the people that loved him so much there's Keith Park head of 11 group Kesselring he was head of luffa to Goering horse head of the Luftwaffe sperrle he was head of whoo fought three the Lew fought two and three were the two in France and there's loofah loofah looked at 500 Atilla in Norway they did a couple of missions realize that hey there mr. Schmidt's didn't have range to escort the Bombers so they quickly stopped flying missions against northern England so basically it was between loofah the roof Lawton two and three and the hero of this piece was Hugh Dowding a fella in the lower right looks like a cartoon and actually what's funny is the famous germination World War one and a Hollywood stunt pilot he was the German guy in the movie Oh what was that movie with Robert Redford Waldo pepper he was a guy that was fictionalized in that as a German pilot but he was a great cartoonist as well so in the book fighter Len Deighton has added a few of who debts cartoons and caricatures of goring and Spira and the Kesselring and this sort of thing Kesselring always had a smile on his face they thought it was ridiculous because of that but he was obviously having a good time spare there was a Sybarite like Goering his fighter headquarters were they the palais de luxembourg in paris the most lavish hotel you could find in paris that's where spare Lissette of his headquarters okay blood toil tears what Churchill's speech 13 May 1940 the invasion is coming our army is decimated the Germans have swept everything before them France and then of course Norway Holland it was all over I have nothing to offer but blood toil tears and sweat Kennedy said that in his famous encapsulation of Churchill he mobilized the English language and took it to war between doubting Churchill and Park really the British had a winning team and they won actually their policy was not to win their policy was just to not to lose you ask what is our policy I will say it is to wage war by sea land and air with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us to wage war against a monstrous tyranny a monstrous tyranny that's trying to raise its head again I think if my recent news reports are any indication never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime that is our policy us what is our aim I can answer when one word victory victory at all costs victory in spite of all terror victory however long and hard the road may be for without victory there is no survival that was the darkest time in the history of Great Britain and here's this man saying these crazy things and backing them up with nothing but his courage there's more we shall fight on the beaches I won't go over this but this is for June 1940 we shall go on to the end and we shall fight in France we shall fight on the Seas and oceans we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be we shall fight on the beaches we shall fight on the landing grounds we shall fight in the fields and in the streets we shall fight in the Hills we shall never surrender and if which I do not for a moment believe the this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving than our empire beyond the seas armed and garen and guarded by the British fleet would carry on the struggle until in God's good time new world with all its power and might steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old ie the US had to come into the war to win it okay their finest hour now it's very interesting this is also Churchill addressing the House of Commons what general Hague and called the Battle of Francis over I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin there's where we get the title of this battle the Battle of Britain is about to begin upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire the whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us it's interesting that at the end of the war Hitler tried to crib Churchill's speeches to boy up the German people and of course the Allies listening in on the radio haven't we heard that before Hitler know this quoting churchill hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war if we can stand up to him all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad sunlit uplands but if we fail then the whole world including the United States including and of course we know we have German Maps now of their strategy to gradually in peacetime surround the US and then make them an offer including all that we have known and cared for will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and it's Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years men will say this was their finest hour now Churchill knew his history and he knew that that hair Hitler his hair Hitler's big campaign slogan was the rice will last a thousand years so Churchill was playing off Hitler's words by saying well with the British Empire last a thousand years he wasn't boasting about how it was going to but he said if it was if it does then this would be their finest hour his famous speech to House of Commons 20 August 1914 ever in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few all hearts go out to the fighter pilots whose brilliant actions we see it with our own eyes day after day but we must never forget that all the time night after night month after month our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill aim their attacks often under the heaviest fire often with serious loss etc etc so in this speech people forget that he also mentioned the the heroes of Bomber Command and the casualties in Bomber Command during the war were absolutely horrendous so here we have this as he was practicing his speech on the way to House of Commons with his friend general Hastings is may said originally a church it was going to say never in the course of history was so much owed by so many to so few and generalists may said wait a minute went Winston what about Jesus Christ and the Apostles so Winston said his may nickname was pug he said thank you pug I'm gonna change that line so here's the way the battle worked five main phases 26 June 22 I these were the store on griffa the nuisance raids scattered small stay of probing probing attacks both day and night armed reconnaissance mine laying from 4 July daylight and the Germans called this canal camp the channel battles basically trying to intimidate the British into not using London to unload their their ships the harbours there they weren't able to do it 17 July 12 August daylight canal count the tax on shipping they intensify increasing attacks on the ports and and coastal airfields night raised on the RAF and aircraft manufacturers 13 August 6 December this was the Eagle attack idler Griff the main assault attempt to destroy the RAF in southern England and they came close they thought but they didn't realize that for every airplane that they destroyed in the RAF airfields there were there was a replacement airplane ready the British were they had plenty of airplanes in store they had plenty of pilots to replace the pilots the only the only problem was the training of those pilots sometimes was not as good but they were not really in danger of destroying the RAF and the British didn't realize this they kept believing that the RAF had only so many airplanes we shot down this many today we shot through then and their intelligence officer Beppo Schmidt said hey you don't have to worry there are no more RAF fighters left so basically on 7 December the Blitz commences main focus of day and night attacks on London because of a navigational mistake when a German bomber dropped its bombs actually on London rather than the suburbs Winston Churchill said all right that does it we're gonna bomb Berlin so they bomb Berlin I think the next night or a few nights later and the Hitler was incensed and Hitler's chief of staff a Luftwaffe yes seanix said now can we start terror bombing London and typical of Hitler said no I'm the one who gets to say who tear bombs who they did start bombing London after the bombing raid the British raid on Berlin so September 15th they call Battle of Britain day is celebrated to this day basically the British claim they shot down 185 there were two major raids of 250 airplanes each the British actually shot down I believe 61 German airplanes they claimed 185 and that's what the newspaper said the bomber pilots were totally demoralized because wait a minute where did all these airplanes come from Beppo Schmidt told us there was no RAF left somewhere I was getting very low and the pilots in the RAF we're getting very tired but ever they carried on the last phase of the Babla britain was the night bombing raids the Blitz mostly on London daylight attacks were just small fighter bomber raids again the nuisance raids they tried to escort a couple of bombers to draw up the RAF they'd have a hundred fighters escorting a couple of bombers and to get the RAF to come up of course doubting in park we're not that dumb they knew that you know just two bombers they weren't going to be able to destroy anything so they didn't take the bait here's what we're looking at basically we've got a lot of German airplanes but they didn't have the production capacity to replace either their airplanes or their pilots whereas the British did we had basically two hurricanes - every Spitfire but many pilots said they preferred the hurricane the guns were closer together it was an excellent gun platform and had a better maneuverability than the Messerschmitt others preferred the Spitfire and of course the Spitfire became immortal but it's interesting you look at the total figures for example hurricanes on the books they had 463 actually the ones they could use that was serviceable ready to take off was a far lower number 347 and that's what that second number is for all those airplanes is the serviceability number Spitfires they had 286 on the books 160 would actually be able to take off at any any one time that were ready to go and the same for the Germans lower serviceability rates the British were not cowed these are some fun cartoons from Punch and then some some photos in the upper right you can see the home guard with sticks and shovels and things practicing how to capture a German tank you can see these housewives now the bridge the Germans dropped leaflets on the British and you can see it says last appeal to reason surrender to us and you can see these housewives looking at these pamphlets like oh come on and of course the cartoon and punch hair Hitler is standing outside the mode he can't get into the British castle and he's saying through his megaphone surrender or die and he's jumping up and down in frustration there's a the punch cartoon in the in the top centre you know it says complete panic and you can see that no they're actually following the usual procedure after work they're going to the pub but something that was would have been very serious for the Germans if the if the Navy had been able to get across the channel at all was a plan and they were implementing it to basically flood the beaches with petroleum and then set it on fire so I don't think that any German soldier would want to land on a beach that looked like that the women played a tremendous role this is the doubting system depending on radar filter centres plotting of groups you can see the plotting table there you can see upstairs you can see the commanders looking at the plots on the table and they really were able to keep track of the German raids and a big part was played by the Royal observer Corps later my dad in the 50s was part of the US air force's ground observer Corps before we had radars and things to cover low-level radars and that was I believe 58,000 people had stations were they reported to the air force airplanes flying through their sectors and it was the only time according the Smithsonian there was an article it was called the only the only time that civilian housewives could scramble u.s. fighter planes so anyway there's the radar the Germans knew about radar but they just could not destroy it because what look at that look at the radar the chain home radar system it's it's a bunch of lattices there's nothing the four bullets really to hit of course in the movies you see the the bullets always hit on those lattices because the the production people on movie have put those little charges there okay well this is the next-to-last chart so this is a true false test Britain was at the mercy of the Germans after Dunkirk true or false false they weren't Hitler hated the English and wanted to destroy them true or false that's kind of false he really wanted to intimidate them into joining him yeah the British people were United and defiant true false they were but there were a lot at the beginning that we're really wondering what's going on are we gonna because they weren't privy to all the information that doubting and Churchill etc had so there was a lot of problem people complaining about we want to know the truth the news this sort of thing later during the Blitz there's nothing like bombing somebody to make them wake up and and fight back you know it's not a good thing it's cool if you want it doesn't cow people into submission it basically makes them hate you more this is something that they realized in the bombing campaigns Churchill inspired everyone to fight on true or false the majority yes but there was a minority who said Churchill he's a crazy guy okay operation sea lion was a bluff by the way I originally the Germans the German army wanted to call this operation lion operation lion now a lion is something you know you're afraid of the British lion obviously they're gonna conquer the British lion Hitler came along and said but we're going across the water so I want to call it sea lion there's a big difference in intimidation factor between a lion just go to any zoo there's a big difference between intimidation between a lion and a sea lion so again the German General Staff went along with it but Hitler had the full support of the German military true false false they tried to kill him a few times before the war and the few times after after the war started this is interesting the American Eagle squadron volunteers played an important role in the Battle of Britain true false no actually not in September the first Eagle squadrons organized although there were seven Americans who were actually flew in the Battle of Britain one of whom was a boyfriend of my wife's aunt from Santaquin Utah Chesley Petersen he was a BYU graduate he became the first leader of the Eagle squadron and then the u.s. 4th Fighter Group youngest colonel in the Air Force that's Chesley Petersen she knew him in high school and had a crush on him okay so the next one the Luftwaffe vastly outnumbered the Royal Air Force true false actually false they were pretty evenly matched as were the capabilities of their airplanes the Spitfire and the Messerschmitt were pretty evenly matched yeah well here we go the Spitfire is far superior to the mission on her line well I already answered that depend on pilot skill so much depends on pilot skill the vast majority of German aircraft were shot down by Spitfires true-false actually false 2/3 were shot down by hurricanes the quality of intelligence estimates determined victory true false oh yes true there's Bevo Smith and his crazy intelligence estimates hey what's wrong with you guys the Luftwaffe doesn't exist anymore the pilots will come for a ride with us in our bomber the next time ultra played a big role in the Battle of Britain you know that was the code machine that captured by the British where they could in they could decode the German signals true-false actually that was false ultra didn't really play a big role in to him until later AI radar replaced carrots as a night fighter that's air intercept radar replaced carrots as a night fighter interception aid true/false I have to laugh because you know actually in the Battle of written there were Blenheim bombers with air intercept radars they weren't very effective but they were actually there they shot down a few German bombers but the British did not want to the Germans to know that they had air intercept radar on their aircraft so they went when asked you know they interviewed night fighter pilots and stuff like that the night fighter pilots they would say well how do you find those German airplanes at night they'd say well we eat a lot of carrots to get a lot of vitamin A before we go on a mission the hurricane was not liked by RAF pilots well we've already answered that one they did like it a lot morale was high among pilots of both air forces it started to get very low especially with the Germans the Blitz on London began as as a mistake kind of but it was it there was always part of the plan to terror bomb London just like they did with the cities in Belgium Holland in France they would tear bomb the cities so that the people would flee the bombing and clog up the roads so that the the German forces could could attack and the defending forces couldn't use the roads they were clogged with refugees so that was really their plan yes they were planning to bomb London that just happened before they wanted to do it the top RAF Battle of Britain ace was British true or false this is kind of controversial but according to most accounts the top British the top ace in the Battle of Britain was not British do you know do you recall who it was actually it was a Czech named Joseph frantisek he was in the Czech Air Force and you know in Munich the British Chamberlain and the French premier talked with Hitler and said sure you can have Czechoslovakia and Hitler said yeah I have know if you'll give me Czechoslovakia without a fight I have no more territorial ambitions cross my heart and hope to die this is Hitler talking you realize so when the Germans came into Munich frantisek was a fighter pilot he took off for Poland and on the way he strafe the Germans he landed in Poland just in time to join the Polish Air Force he fought the Germans in the Polish Air Force when they were when they were defeated he escaped to France he flew with the French shot down more Germans with French Air Force when they were defeated he went to England and he joined the RAF and he was still the top ace in the RAF in the Battle of Britain he was crazy because he had no air discipline when he was in a when he was in at formation you know you're supposed to work as a team right as soon as he saw a German he would take off no matter what they couldn't stop him he was scolded by the it didn't stop him so finally the Polish 303 squadron said we'll make you a guest of our squadron and you can fly any how you want fighter tactics of booth draft were superior to those of the RAF at the beginning yes RAF Bomber and coastal commands played a no rule in the Battle of Britain no actually you remember Churchill mentioned the Bomber Command specifically Coastal Command bombed the the barges on the coast they also protected the British shipping and of course bomber and they also laid mines around the Channel ports on the European side and of course Bomber Command bomb Germany didn't his whole time and they also bombed those barges the Germans were unaware of the British radar capability true-false actually that's false they were well aware of the German radar capability in 1937 Erhard milk the head of the German he was a general field of field marshal of the German Luftwaffe was visiting this is before the war he's visiting the RAF and then he was hobnobbing with the high command of the RAF and he asked a question how are you coming with a German accent of course how are you coming on your new radar experiments so of course they like to brag I don't think they told him much but just before World War two just before the Germans invaded Poland in September in August of 1939 the Graf Zeppelin 2 went on a goodwill flight this was a Zeppelin you know like the blimp went on a goodwill flight along the coast of England to show the Amity and friendship that the Germans had for the English for the British people and the RAF didn't fall for this at all that Graf Zeppelin was full of radio detective radio detection equipment this was what we would call today an e Lindt mission they were trying to with their in the with their instruments in the Graf Zeppelin figure out what frequencies the the chain home British radars were on you know what their strength was what coverage they had this sort of thing the RAF did not fall for that at all they turned off all the radars that Graf Zeppelin was making its goodwill tour women played a key role in the battle yes yes yes by the end of 1940 there were 100,000 women in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in Britain and they were heroines they gave their lives in this battle as well RAF survival hung by a thread as airfields were attacked well we know the answer to that not true the RAF big wing tactic convinced the Germans that they could not win this is a whole different topic but basically the big wing was not the thing to do because all the big wing could do because they had the big wing basically was Doug Douglas Badr and and Trafford leigh-mallory who was the head of 12 group which was north of 11 group where all the action was Mallory wanted to get into the action so did Badr so they said okay what we want to do is we want to gather a hundred airplanes together and then we'll go shoot you know then we'll go fight the shoot down the bombers and everything the only problem was by the time they get all those hundred bombers assembled at the altitude to attack the Germans the Germans had already dropped their bombs and they were hitting home whereas doubting and park said we're going to send up as many airplanes as we can in small numbers to attack those airplanes terribly outnumbered but in that attack we're gonna break up those bombers split them up they're gonna go every which way jettison their bombs head back and then we'll take on the fighters basically the Hurricanes took on the Bombers the Spitfires took on the fighter but the that was the basic flaw of the big wing tactic is well you have to bomb the Bombers after they've dropped the bombs and killed thousands of people so don't ever believe it when people say oh yeah the big thing it was right the big wing was right later Adolf Galland trying to defend Germany against the American bombers he came out he you know he resurrected the big wing idea and he was always talking to Goering about we need more fighters in the air at one time you know because there are thousands of arigon bombers so that was kind of resurrecting as that of course Galland is famous in the Battle of Britain when it was interviewed by Goering who was quite querulous about complaining about why aren't you protecting me why don't you fight her guys for taking the Bombers better Gallants famous response was and of course Goering said in his grandiose way I will give you anything you need to protect those bombers you know a gallant response was you're probably aware yes all right here Goering here lift off a Commodore general Marshall etc give me a squadron of Spitfires basically hue daddy's contribution to winning the Battle of Britain was acknowledged only much later yes as soon as the Battle of Britain was over he was fired retired actually was sent to to work on some training documents and then in 1918 1942 he was retired he was immediately replaced as the head of Fighter Command and park also head of eleven group these two guys won the Battle of Britain park was immediately dismissed show Sholto Douglas took his place Trafford leigh-mallory I believe became head of Fighter Command and park was sent to be head of Training Command and neither one of them were acknowledged doubting actually wrote a book let's see 12 angels on high anyway it was an account of the Battle of Britain that came out in 1942 or 43 and it was suppressed they didn't allow it to be published there was a government book on the Battle of Britain talk came out in 1942 you know the official government account of the Battle of Britain guess what doubting and park were not mentioned in that official book and last to false the most serious threat to Britain survival was not German bombers what do you think it was u-boats yes until 1943 actually Britain's survival hung on a thread so less chart I met these guys Adolphe gallant and Bob Chuck I was actually doing some paintings and they were in town in Salt Lake City and I thought well I for the Zions bookstore I knew the guy obviously I read a lot of books and I spent a lot of time at Zions bookstore he said they're coming it's a special program I said hey I'll do a newspaper picture for you so that's in the upper left and then they came and I presented two paintings to them so there they are that's that's me with Bob Chuck and without off : they were very grateful they said these things are gonna hang in our houses and Bob Chuck said you should meet my friend who's also an aviation artist and let's see I can't recall his name right now but he's no Frank Wooten he said you should meet my friend Frank Wooten he's also a aviation artist so that is pretty much it any questions [Applause] [Music] how many German aircraft were shot down over Britain especially London those numbers gosh I'd have to consult my notes but we're looking probably at about 1700 around that but again these are not you know they quote official figures don't really jive with a lot of research has been done but we're looking at you know about around 1500 2000 airplanes would the Spitfires have to close to a certain range before they could start shooting basically yes basically the Spitfires had eight machine guns and they were spread out in the wings so they were basically harmonized to converge at a certain point and this was usually about 300 yards any closer than that and you were gonna get shot up by Gunners probably but people got a lot closer and any further away in the bullets start to diverge again and so that was about the range with the hurricane you had those eight guns right in a row they were very close together so you didn't have that problem as much and by the way the Germans had a great Germans had a fuel-injected engine so they could do what's called a bunt but they were somewhere on their tail they could just go over like a go over a cliff the British couldn't do that when they tried to follow them and doing that bunt the float in the radiator would clog the engine and their engine would stop so they had to do a roll and then roll at to fire to take off after the airplanes interestingly enough a lady a woman who worked at rolls-royce one of the workers came up with an idea I don't think she was an engineer but she said why don't we put a little disk in the radiators of our engines so that when they do that bunt it won't flood the engine with fuel so they put that in there her name is Olga she Tilly or something but anyway she made a great contribute contribution to the performance of the Merlin engine and the crafted it powered any other questions in the movie Dunkirk it's implied or shown that that Churchill and the RAF are holding back their fighter planes from covering Dunkirk protecting Dunkirk because they don't want to lose them they're afraid that they'll lose their fighters and Hitler will be able to attack and they won't be able to defend themselves is that right that's kind of half true basically before the Battle of Britain and there's a French were suffering from the German attacks and the blitzkrieg the French premier asked the Churchill to send more British fighter planes to help to protect the French army well the French were losing big time they were totally disorganized Churchill was encouraged by you know his his cabinet things yes send more help the French send more Fighters here's where doubting came in and he was not liked for this doubting you know when Churchill asked doubting to send more Spitfires more fighters to the France doubting said no this is a losing battle and if we send the fighters you want to send we will not truly have enough to protect ourselves we'll be down below the squadron strength that we project would need to defeat the Luftwaffe that we know of it and they had pretty good intelligence but as far as covering Dunkirk I think the RAF really threw in everything they could any other questions was there a reason that they so immediately let go let doubting and part go yes the big wing theorist and a head of number 12 group Trafford leigh-mallory had a Squadron Leader I believe in in his group who was a minister of parliament and MP so he got the ear of the cabinet minister for air because you know they would meet in the House of Commons and said you know doubting and park are really bad guys they're doing it all wrong you've got to put to get this big winged thing going like my like a head of 12 group the Holy Saint Lee Mallory wants you to do so basically doubting was called in Parc was called in what are you doing why are you doing this they were grilled and this sort of thing and they gave the answers they you know and and that was that was what really got him in trouble is they caused well they they they they rocked the boat they made waves they said no we're not getting the support we need from 12 group ie st. Lee Mallory and interestingly enough after the battle written right after the Battle of Britain Lee Mallory of course became head of 12 group of 11 group took parks job that he was fired sent to training command they did a big war game simulation with Spitfires hurricanes you know millenniums and this sort of thing a big simulation to prove that the big wing theory would have won the Battle of Britain that it was sound and guess what you know you know in war games they have umpires and this sort of thing they ran this big simulation and the umpire said didn't work Kenley and big and Hill are already destroyed and you've lost you've lost the war so the simulation didn't even work so you could tell I'm not a proponent of the big wing theory any other questions or comments how does the elliptical wing enhance the performance overall performance on the Spitfire we're talking about again that coefficient of lift that is consistent the same throughout the entire span of the wing that doesn't mean there's more lift on the wingtips because there's not more lift there's more lift in the wing roots but the lift is consistent so that the airflow is is more efficient and predictable yeah yeah thank you there's an aerodynamicist in the audience and then of course they put the fill it's on there so that you don't get as much turbulence in the the joining of the fuselage with the wings the question was better turned performance and yes basically turn performance is also a function of wing loading and that means you know the total pounds that the wing has to support so the wing loading of the Spitfire was much lower than the Messerschmitt the Messerschmitt had a higher wing loading and you would think that it wouldn't it would have a poorer turn radius but the Messerschmitt on this high wing loading wing put moveable slats so that when you reached a certain lower you know in a turn when you reached a certain speed these and airflow these slats would automatically just come out and they would provide better lift more lift for the wing it's like if you're sitting in a window seat on a 747 you're gonna land you see all these things come out of the wings all of a sudden that was basically what those what those things were on the Messerschmitt swings that allowed it to turn the question was why was the main landing gear designed where it was so close together well it's kind of funny because in - in both Messerschmitt and Mitchell decided they wanted the fuselage to support the stress and strain you know the compression when they landed from the from the landing gear rather than the wings to have to do that so that's why it's there the Germans hated the Messerschmitt landing gear like that because they lost I think about 5% of their Messerschmitts just from landing accidents from the from the the landing gear collapsing they called it the the much the famous and much hated Messerschmitt because of its X by nough its knock knees they called it the knock-kneed Messerschmitt and they said you know we don't need the enemy we're losing our Messerschmitts to the landing gear and and basically the Spitfire had that same you know ground whooping problem this sort of thing but it wasn't as much of a problem as it was with the mr. Schmidt is there a location around here where there's a Spitfire on display you know a Spitfire I believe is going to be coming to the museum early next year as far as Spitfires on display there's there t no Camarillo Palm Springs yeah you've got us if you haven't seen one of those things on the ground they just look like a toy you see them out there and the closer you get the more you see like this is a beautiful piece of sculpture and yet it's a symbol of the courage of a people like Churchill who would not give up so thank you very much [Applause] [Music] thank you for watching Peninsula seniors out and about I'm Betty Wheaton see you next time [Music] you

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Keywords: WWII, Spitfire fighter, Battle of Britain, Nazi Germany, Hitler, Churchill, World War II, History, London, P-51 Mustang, Betty Wheaton, Western Museum of Flight, Messerschmitt, Dunkirk, Dowding, Royal Air Force, RAF, military history, radar, air show, aviation, strategy, air and space museum

Id: TPrOJm_--_I

Length: 91min 4sec (5464 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 16 2017