Jimmy Thach and Jimmy Flately

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by Graham Boak

What happened over Darwin was linked to the unusually high altitude of the intercepts...

The Seafire Mk.IIIs that were successful against the A6M on the final day of the war were basically much the same airframes as those maligned over Darwin, but it seems rather less is made of that.

Hello Graham,

Thank you for your well-informed contribution. I've got a chance to respond at last!

'Darwin Spitfires' is a very good book, which is on my to-read list. Anthony Cooper, the author, also has a great companion website. One of the Appendices highlights the issue of CSU failure that you mentioned, see http://www.darwinspitfires.com/index...e-csu-failures . I wonder whether the Merlin 46 encountered other problems at high altitude, given that it had a single-stage supercharger. Cannon failure seems to have also occurred frequently on Spitfire Vs in the later stages of the Libyan campaign, it is mentioned several times in the second volume of 'Mediterranean Air War'. More broadly, there was an unusual combination of issues affecting the combat efficiency of the Darwin Spitfires, as you emphasised.

You are right about the Seafire III's, but I think you would agree that they were substantially improved versions of the basic Spitfire V design. According to my notes from Donald Nijboer's Osprey title, the Seafire L.III had a Merlin 55M with a cropped supercharger impeller, automatic boost control and a four-blade Rotol propeller, which substantially improved its performance at low and medium altitudes. It also had an improved 'c' wing with a streamlined design and belt-fed cannon, as well as the lighter Hispano Mk V, on later production airframes. These two sets of improvements made the L.III a rather better aircraft than the Vc, even if they shared a common airframe.

The basic point remains true, that even the Vc, with all its flaws, could fight the Zero and other Japanese fighters effectively, while the later Seafires were distinctly superior, at least at the altitudes at which they were designed to operate.

Regards,

Paul