HOLY GIANT CHAPTER, BATMAN!
Intermission #3
The dawn of time for military aviation is clearly World War One. Only here did both pilots and planes prove that they were more than the personal playthings for European monarchs. In the beginning though, recce flights with unarmed planes were the norm, only later did the flying aces we know emerge. The Royal Flying Corps was at the end of the war equipped with biplanes, that, while superbly manoeuvrable, were hampered by for even that time low speeds. In the inter-war years, after forming the Royal Air Force, Fighter Command was hampered by meagre defence spending and an Air Ministry that demanded 'save', unconventional, easy to produce and foremost cheap designs, as Britain was strapped for cash in the inter-war years. The Great Depression only made matters worse, for the War Office and the Air Ministry were even more reluctant to release any funds for the services. In effect the crisis stopped all development of military aviation in the United Kingdom, forcing Fighter Command to rely on aircraft like the Hawker Fury and the Gloster Gauntlet, all planes in the spirit of the Great War, but soon to be outpaced by their contemporaries. Times were changing, slowly but surely. When Prime Minister Baldwin visited the United States in early 1932, he was appalled by the state of the nation, and remarked upon returning that in his opinion the United States were 'like a block of sugar soaked with tea: still holding form but ready to dissolve at any moment.'. He would eventually be proven right, and when the United States of America fell into chaos, a very, very reluctant Baldwin saw himself forced to release funds to further the development of British military aviation for the sky grew darker as new threats began to materialize. Even though both sides in the war only deployed limited Air Forces for the simple lack of Aircraft, mainly relying on what the small USAAC had, and what the Communists had captured respectively. Even so, it showed that the age of the bi-plane was coming to an end, as the few P-26 Peashooters on both sides ruled the skies wherever they appeared. In the Unired Kingdom however the generally conservative and slow-acting Air Ministry insisted on another 'save' model, the Gloster Gladiator, and so the gap between Fighter Command and it's contemporaries in other nations widened for much of the early 1930s. However, once Germany started the re-armament in earnest, even the most cautious, staunch fans of 'splendid isolation' could no longer deny that something needed to be done, as Britain was falling ever farther behind. In 1936, when the UAPR militias and regulars were still cleaning up the last remnants of surviving US units, the Air Ministry therefore issued Specification F.36/34, or, for the uninformed a specification for a 'monoplane, all-metal fuselage fighter with eight guns and a retractable undercarriage. Many designs were presented to the Air Ministry, and the Ministry, suddenly desperate to make up for the lost time, and accepted various designs, among them also an obscure design by struggling seaplane maker Supermarine. In the end the Hawker design won out and was rushed into production at an unprecedented speed, after the long search for a suitable engine was answered by Rolls Royce, having ironed out the problems with the PV12 that was soon to become the iconic Merlin Engine.
The first production Hurricanes with No. 157 Squadron
While the Hurricane was introduced in service in mid 1937, it would still take almost two years until the last units re-equipped from the Gloster Gladiator and it's contemporaries to the Hurricane. The Air Ministry was satisfied and returned to business as usual. However by mid 1938 Fighter Command had realized that while the Hurricane was a good workhorse and superbly suited to intercept unescorted Bombers, was a bit on the slow side compared to contemporary models in Germany, the UAPR and the Soviet Union, and that a faster plane was needed. The Air Ministry, and be extension the Treasury met this demand with horror and claimed that the RAF was trying to secure funds it did not need in order to surpass the other services in importance. While this was utter rubbish of course, Hugh Dowding, just having taken over Fighter Command, was convinced that the Air Ministry would release funds for a new development only with 'the utmost reluctance', even in the spirit of the slow re-armament the Government had started. A development from scratch was therefore out of the question. However a chance encounter on an Air Ministry corridor would change the matter and re-shape the face of Fighter Command forever. Three representatives from a small company called Supermarine were so desperate to accquire funds for their ailing company they seized the opportunity to talk directly to the AOCinC Fighter Command when he just happened to be coming down their way. Being shown pictures of the mock-up prototype and projected performance figures given the installation of an mid-range performance power plant, he eventually and very reluctantly agreed to a demonstration once the prototype was finished and released a small sum from Fighter Commands budget to keep the company afloat until the work could be finished. In his last years he was asked why he had done so and compared the difficulties for new designers and companys to get a foot in the door with the Ministry as even bigger than those that had faced the Royal Navy when HMS Warspite was moved from Bermuda back to London in 1966. Supermarine stayed alive and on 13th October began the long and fruitful friendship between Fighter Command, Supermarine and Rolls-Royce, and laying the foundation of the continued Existence of Supermarine beyond the post-war industry rationalisations.
When the Supermarine Spitfire first took to the air, it's speed, good looks and manoeuvrability dazzled many of those present, including Dowding, and once he and also Present Minister for Aircraft production had convinced the Prime Minister, the three men together circumvented the Ministerial Bureaucracy and had the Spitfire put into almost immediate production. The Air Ministry was not pleased, but as Beaverbrook was a Minister without actual Ministry, the Civil Service was powerless to do anything about it and could not prevent the proceedings which were the beginning of the end for the Air Ministry as a whole. The Spitfire entered Squadron service just in time for the beginning of the War, and so, whilst the Squadrons in France were equipped with the new Hurricane Mk.II, Home Defence rested on the shoulders of the Spitfire. Or at least it would, as Supermarine had nowhere near the capacity needed to equip the majority of Fighter Command with the plane. In a case of Irony that was even the subject of a film in 1974, Vickers was therefore commissioned to use most of it's shadow factories to produce the Spitfire, a plane that could have brought the company great wealth had they decided to go through with the deal and bought Supermarine in the 1930s. Even whilst the almost dead company was roaring into life again, Supermarine's chief Designer R.J. Mitchell was working on what would eventually become the Spitfire Mk.II. In the meantime however, the Second World War started. The Hurricane Squadrons in France were immediately faced with overwhelming numbers of German, Soviet and a smaller number of Czech Bombers, but superior tactics and aircraft, along with the significant French Air Force, enabled the Fighters in France to keep the Axis Air Forces at bay. It did however show that the Hurricane, even with revisions and the new Merlin Engine that had been introduced was becoming obsolescent when faced with the new generation of enemy fighters, namely the Bf-109F and the Soviet LaGG-3 that both started to appear over France in great numbers at that time. Hawker was therefore pressed to either improve the design further or loose the contract to Supermarine, something that the company could ill-afford. The team therefore went about improving the Hurricane, but much to their regret, they soon had to admit to themselves that it would be extraordinarily difficult, if not downright impossible to extract the needed performance from an Airframe that had almost been rejected by the Air Ministry on the grounds that it was too conservative!
With a heavy heart it was therefore decided to send the well-loved 'Hurry' to it's deserved retirement and start afresh. By February 1940, after a mere month of design time, the Hawker Typhoon was ready for production, except that it faced a problem similar to the one the Spitfire had faced: the lack of a suitable Power Plant. The Merlin was out of the Question, as Rolls-Royce was more than busy with deliveries as they were, and the only others immediately available were radial engines or did not have the needed performance. In the end it was decided to use an upgraded Napier Sabre, which, whilst only slightly more powerful than the contemporary Merlin and less than the new Merlin III, was more than able to give the performance needed. The Hawker Typhoon, just like it's 'mother', the Hurricane, was born out of need, and rushed into production far sooner than anticipated, and therefore the design had many faults that normally would have been ironed out in a lengthy testing process. When the first planes were sent to France in early May 1940, there was no time to do anything about it, as the Axis launched Case Yellow. The Typhoon fought, and fought well, but by the time Operation Morning Fury began, several faults had emerged. None of them were life-threatening to the pilots or impeded combat performance as long as the planes were handled properly. The main problem was the feeding mechanism for the two Hispano 20mm cannons in each wing that supplemented the four .303 Machine Guns. When the pilot was forced to manoeuvre quickly, it could happen that the feeding mechanism jammed, a problem that also plagued the Spitfire Mk.III that was equipped with two of the same cannons each. When it was finally made to work, the Typhoon proved to be a formidable foe for the Axis Aircraft that tried to wrestle control of the skies of France from the Allies, so feared that Adolf Hitler was furious and ordered a German version to be developed which would eventually lead to the Focke-Wulf FW 190. For the next few years the Typhoon Squadrons would take considerable weight of the shoulders of the Spitfire, although the latter was in service in much higher numbers, but especially during the Battle of Britain, when Fighter Command was heavily outnumbered, both Aircraft defended the skies over the United Kingdom with unprecedented ferocity.
Unidentified Hawker Typhoon Mk.Ic, the first version with 'pure' cannon armament
The Typhoon served for many years with Fighter Command, but in late 1942 Hawker, ever desperate to keep ongoing contracts with the RAF, proposed an 'upgraded' version of the Typhoon, with more power, a heavier armament and longer endurance. Initially named 'Typhoon Mk.II' while in development, the plane became more and more different from the original, and eventually the Air Ministry, in a last act of defiance, insisted that the plane be re-named lest it be confused with the Typhoon. Introduced in mid 1943, the Hawker Tempest was a formidable aircraft, and soon was the fear of the few Axis Bomber crews that still dared to venture into British Airspace at the time. Powered with a Napier Sabre II that produced 2,180 hp the Tempest shouldered most of the Air Defence of the United Kingdom in these later years of the war, when many of the Spitfire Squadrons were moved to other fronts, where the longer range was more important than over Europe. Like the Hurricane it did not fetch as much of the public attention and glory of the Spits and their Fleet Air Arm brethren, the service was essential, both as a CAS plane and as a fighter for it kept Britain save and the damages at a minimum. It served only for a limited time, because by the end of the year, it was already eclipsed in performance by the Gloster Meteor Mk.I, despite attempts to re-engine it with the new Napier Sabre V, making it the last piston-engined Interceptor to be accepted for Fighter Command.
Returning to the Spitfire, when we last left it, it was being re-worked into the Mk.II. This particular model was supposed to be the definitive Spitfire for at least the next two years, following estimates by both MI6 and Fighter Command itself that the Axis powers had nothing comparable in their arsenals. They were in for a rude awakening in January 1940, as a Squadron of Mk.IIs was pounced and almost obliterated by a similar number of Bf-109Fs and LaGG-3s, which clearly outperformed the Mk.II. Once again emergency measures were taken, and once again Supermarine rode to the rescue. The Mk.III was standing by. Whilst it closed the performance gap somewhat, the heavier guns and superior communication technologies gave it an edge over it's adversaries. The Mk.II and III are explained in much more detail in the later chapters of this book, but by the time the Mk.III was introduced, Prime Minister Churchill, fed up with the constant emergency measures and the ( perceived ) incompetence and slowness of the Air Ministry, took drastic action. By promoting Sir Hugh Dowding to the Chief of the Air Staff and cutting the competences of the Air Ministry even further, he made it clear that he expected that something was to be done about this situation. Backed by the King, he said during a conversation with Dowding that the British Empire would never have the numbers on it's side, therefore superior technology had to do the job, a policy that in a way is still in effect today. Much to his surprise, he was informed by Dowding that a new version of the Spitfire was already close to production. Dubbed the Spitfire Mk.V, it would replace the Mk.III in a few months, and using the new Merlin XXI, would give Fighter Command a 'dastardly fast' and 'bloody good' plane that was to be faster than anything the Axis had. And indeed, when the Mk.V was introduced, the performance gap between the Mk.V and the contemporary Axis Fighters was so great that Fighter Command managed to win the Battle of Britain despite being heavily outnumbered. Together with the Hawker Typhoon, the Spitfire Mk.V is rightfully credited as the saviour of Britain in the darkest hour the British Empire has ever faced. For this reason the Battle of Britain Memorial south of Biggin Hill consists of a Spitfire Mk.V and a Typhoon, carved out of stone, side by side guarding British Airspace. With the Mk.V Fighter Command finally had the edge, and would not loose it again for the rest of the War. The Spitfire Mk.V was a revelation and set the tone for British Fighter planes for years to come, a combination between good endurance thanks to tanks under the wings, heavy armament and great speed. Pilots that tested both the Mk.III and the Mk.V claimed that the Mk.V was not as manoeuvrable as the Mk.III, but that was only to be expected as the new Merlin Engine was somewhat heavier than it's predecessor, but this was offset by the greater speed and the high endurance that allowed the Spitfire to fly almost as far as Rostock when every hard-point had a tank instead of guns or rockets. The price for this endurance was that the wing needed to be re-designed. Mitchell was hard pressed to fit the new machinery, especially the pumps for the new tanks, into the old C-Type wing, and eventually decided that it could not be done. The wing of the plane was completely re-designed, which was the cause of the initial delays in the programme, and in the end all that remained of the old wing were the metal parts that gave it it's characteristic elliptical form. Plans to remove them to improve low-altitude performance had been shot down, as it was claimed that the old Mk.IIIs had performed well enough low down and that the increased power of the Merlin XXI was more than enough to set off the drag. There was also a ground-attack version of the Mosquito, operating in small, freely hunting packets over the entire front, so a optimized, low-altitude version of the Spitfire was deemed unnecessary. At the same time the Fleet Air Arm finally recieved the navalized 'Seafire' variant that soon became the scourge of the enemy Carrier fighters.
The Mk.V was also adapted for desert use and for service in the Far East. These depot-level modifications were known as the Mk.VI and VII respectively, but they were only Mk.Vs with filters and other specialized Equipment. The Mk.V served with distinction for many years and went through many revisions of the basic model, but just like it's contemporary, the Hawker Typhoon it met the end of it's useful service life by 1943. R.J. Mitchell, still weakened by the Influenza he had contracted while in the Desert, was fast back at work, and he and his team decided that a complete overhaul of the regular design was needed. To improve the pilot's area of vision, the rear fuselage was dropped and a 'bubble' canopy installed (although this would not be implemented in series production until the Mk,XII). The wing was lengthened to raise high-altitude performance, while the traditional form of the wing was kept, armament increased with the newest version of the 20mm cannons that had a higher rate of fire. The biggest change however was the introduction of the Merlin Mk.II ( not to be confused with the Merlin II ) as the powerplant. There had been talk of equipping a version of the Spitfire with this engine as early as 1939, but problems with the development and the fact that Rolls-Royce had little resources left for development, had delayed the engine. In the end the Merlin Mk.II had only one part in common with the 'normal' version: the screws that held the manufactures plate in place. The new Spitfire Mk.X was unveiled in May 1943, and equipped the first Squadrons on the front later that same year. Once again the 'definitive' model was to be the last piston-engined fighter, and the Mk.X, along with it's versions, the Marques XI through XVIII, was replaced by the Gloster Meteor Mk.III in summer 1944. Photo-reconnaissance versions served for many years after the war, with the last Spitfire mission flown by a PR.154 during the Indonesian Emergency in 1956.
Spitfire Mk.XII in January 1945
“Fighter Command through the Ages, Volume #2 of 4, “World War Two”, Kenia Imperial Press, 2001”
[Notes: Merlin Mk.II = OTL Griffon Engine. Also El Pip, I fear my Air Porn will never be as good as yours. I have decided to completely dispense with the tech tree from the game, as it does not make any sense at all in terms of the story of this AAR, especially so in the later years. This does not mean that you will see Challenger 2 tanks in 1942, I simply replace technologies from the game with those that make more sense in my opinion. The Seafire is one such example. And in case you want to know, HMS Warspite will take the place of HMS Belfast. I've seen this done with Hood, and according to the author, Warspite would well fit in the space. In these post-war rationalisations ( I haven't yet fully worked them out, but I know they are needed. ) independent companies will most likely be 'encouraged' by the Government to merge many of the smaller companies in to several bigger firms that can compete internationally. So far these are: Supermarine, Avro, de Havilland, Vickers and perhaps Farey. This list, or rather the last two entries are most likely subject to changes in the future. My idea for the BoB memorial is a central spire of about four feet height, with two arms going left and right from the top, with a Typhoon and a Mk.V fastened to the end of each respectively.]