R.J. Mitchell: Father of the Spitfire

Reginald Mitchell died at the age of 42. In his short working life, he had achieved astonishing engineering success with Schneider Trophy victories and the design of more than 20 aeroplanes, and he had put together a team which would create the Spitfire, arguably the most iconic aeroplane in the world.

Mitchell is an engineer with a genius parallel to other great British engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, his friend Sir Henry Royce or steam engine developer Robert Stephenson. He started his professional life, as so many did before the First World War, in the railway industry. The best engineering apprenticeships were in locomotive design and construction in the Midlands and the north of England. In Mitchell’s case, it was Stoke-on-Trent, once a powerhouse of the industrial revolution.

Coming from an artisan family, Mitchell was encouraged to design and build his own flying glider models. He devoured the aeronautical journals of the day and learned all he could about flying machines. By 1916, he was ready to build on that knowledge, and he answered an advertisement for an assistant to the owner of a small marine aeroplane builder in Southampton.

Supermarine had been established on the River Itchen opposite Southampton just before the war, and had pioneered the concept of ‘boats that flew’, hence ‘super marine’. Its owner was the rather eccentric Hubert Scott-Paine. It was 1916, and his small firm of craftsmen were busy working on Admiralty contracts to build single-seat fighter flying boats and to provide spares for them.

During his early years at Southampton, Mitchell found time to marry his sweetheart, former school headmistress Florence. They had no time for a honeymoon!

R.J. Mitchell

Struggling to find business when the war ended, Scott-Paine decided to enter the hugely prestigious Schneider Trophy competition for racing seaplanes with a modified Admiralty design. Mitchell was soon showing his skill as an engineer, designing modified fuselage accommodation for passengers in anticipation of the birth of commercial seaplane operations.

Supermarine wanted to capture a slice of the cross-Channel business from Southampton, but it had to keep its people employed, so scarce government contracts were keenly fought over. Mitchell’s first great achievement, before he was 30 years old, was the Supermarine Southampton, a twin-engined long-range maritime patrol flying boat. So confident of its reliability was the Royal Air Force that it planned the first long-range ‘cruise’ to Egypt, then another to Hong Kong and even Australia. This certainly put Supermarine on the map and orders followed from Argentina and other maritime nations.

Showing his amazing capacity for work, Mitchell was also designing revolutionary racing seaplanes so that Supermarine could battle the Italians, French and Americans for the Schneider Trophy – three straights wins would mean keeping the trophy for ever. In 1924, the Supermarine S4 was perhaps too far ahead of its time but the S5 in 1927 and then the S6 series were winners. Despite politics and some aeronautical challenges, Mitchell created a small team to win the Trophy outright in 1931.

The Air Ministry in London saw the innovation of design and revolutionary in-line engines from Rolls-Royce. Within three weeks of that victory – watched by a million people on the shores of the Solent – Supermarine was one of several companies to receive a request for a design for an all-metal fighter aeroplane. Mitchell strengthened his team with new players including a wing aerodynamicist called Beverely Shenstone. The first attempt at a fighter was a disaster; the Type 224 did not cut the mustard.

Mitchell, never easily deterred, brought his trusted team together – including design team leader Alf Faddy, Mitchell’s assistant Alan Clifton, chief draughtsman Joe Smith and Shenstone – and started to create another, better design. The powerhouse of Supermarine was the drawing office which employed 150 keen young men and a few talented women, while the works was churning out military flying boats. Mitchell directed the general arrangement of the Type 300, which would become the Spitfire. But he knew something was wrong: he had advanced cancer. Undeterred, he passed design leadership to Faddy and set about working on a new project to keep himself active: ‘the Bomber’.

By the time the Type 300 first flew on 5 March 1936, Mitchell had had a wooden mock-up made for a four-engined, high flying, high-speed bomber. He was also aware that he would soon die. Despite receiving the best available medical care at the time, in Austria and in London, Mitchell’s cancer was terminal. He kept working as long as he could. He died in 1937 before the Spitfire entered service. Just imagine what this great engineer could have created with a jet engine.

Paul Beaver is the author of Mitchell: Father of the Spitfire, published in hardback on 4th September.