Let us now praise Beverly Shenstone...

[Hauksbee 103]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/12/the-spy-behind-the-plane-that-saved-britain.html

 

A young man, Beverly Shenstone, (Canadian) goes to Germany in the 20's and gets a job with Junkers. After a few years, he moves on to Frankfurt and works with Alexander Lippish. The Lippish plant is described as "a Leonardo Da Vinci workshop". Eventually, he returns to England and gets hired at Supermarine. By now, Reginald Mitchell is recognized as a genius and has built the Supermarine Schneider Cup racers, but the day-to-day bread-and-butter work was seaplane design, pretty dull stuff after his work on the continent. When the Air Ministry put out a request for a new fighter (which would eventually become the Spitfire) Shenstone caught Mitchell's ear and explained what he had been doing in Germany...and the course of History shifted.

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Shenstone was said to avoid the limelight. No photo of him exists at Supermarine. This is all I could find on the 'net.

[Olham 164]

Interesting - I hadn't heard this name before.

[Hauksbee 103]

Interesting - I hadn't heard this name before.

Me neither. From what I gather from the article, he chose to work in complete anonymity.

[JimAttrill 24]

As the article says, the Spitfire was more difficult to make than the Spitfire.   In those days there was a shortage of skilled aircraft metal workers - the Hurricane wing was easier to make and was fabric covered in the early days.  It was also difficult to fit 8 machine guns into the Spitfire wing, whereas it was easy with the Hurricane.   The last mark of Hurricane, the IID was fitted with a 40mm cannon and was used for tank busting in the Western Desert - rather like the JU87G which had a 37mm Flak gun fitted. 

 

And yes, the Spitfire will for ever hold the record for the fastest piston-engined aircraft.   A PR Mk XI - with no guns, was flown in a dive to Mach .92 by Tony Martindale.  The prop and reduction gear flew off but he managed to land it (and the instruments that measured the speed) back at Farnborough.   The wings were sort of swept back by this time and the aircraft never flew again.  He went on to work for RR cars but unfortunately died in 1959 unlike his colleague Eric Brown who died this year.  Brown admits he could never fly the aircraft that fast as he was not strong enough to pull out of the dive, whereas Martindale was big and over six feet tall.  

[Hauksbee 103]

 In those days there was a shortage of skilled aircraft metal workers - the Hurricane wing was easier to make and was fabric covered in the early days.

Just watched a YouTube video on restoring WWII fighters. Where in WWII there was a shortage of metal workers, there was a plethora of skilled woodworkers building Hurricanes and Mosquitos. These days, it's just the reverse. All those skilled cabinet makers are gone and it's a real chore to restore a Hurricane.