Spitfire

[Splitpin]

[Charl]

A nice study - always good when the pilot takes note of the camera ship!
I wonder why RJ Mitchell drew an elliptical wing?
Perhaps because it "looked right".
The clipped one certainly isn't as pretty.

[Bugdani]

Agree with Charl for the wing.
Anyway, a wonderful plane in the superb pic !

dani.

[Splitpin]

Thanks for looking gentlemen ....I, myself like the clipped wing. The pointy one was .... well ... a bit pointy, but it was nice

You, of course, know, that the clipped wing was "clipped" for a reason ....not because they ran out of pointy bits.

"This removed something in the region of 4 feet from the wingspan of a normal-span Spitfire, improving its roll moment (one area where the Fw190 completely outperformed it) considerably and increasing its speed at low level."
So, the aesthetics may not appeal, but back then it wasn't about what looked nice.....

[Charl]

It's quite likely Mitchell did not "invent" the elliptical wing for the Spitfire.
Like many things, it had a convoluted gestation.
Beverley Shenstone was a Canadian engineer who worked for Supermarine in 1932.
Previously he worked for Junkers in Germany.
There he met Ludwig Prandtl.
Prandtl had in 1918 published a paper describing the benefits of the elliptical wing.
The Spitfire double-ellipse wing planform is identical to the one shown in that paper.
So it's a German design!
Like just about every other revolutionary rocket, plane or machine you can think of in the west (and east) after WW2!

Main feature of the wing was very low induced drag at altitude.
Shenstone said:
"The ellipse was simply the shape which allowed us the thinnest possible wing with
sufficient room inside to carry the necessary structure and things we wanted to cram in.
And it looked nice.”

Your dose of daily trivia; so there you go.

[Splitpin]

"Your dose of daily trivia; so there you go."

[Charl]

... and finally: what was the the first Spitfire kill?

[chopper_nut]

Blenheim?

[jankees]

Hurricane?

anyway, beautiful shot!
and yes, I like the square tips too, I like all spitfires