Comments
Dave,
There is a bigger and more impressive story. Great Britain won the Battle of Britain because of several things and they all appear in the video to a lesser degree. Of course one was the Spitfire....the other was the exploitation of RADAR and Radio which was just coming on the scene and finally the Fighter Command Organization. All 3 combined to form a unique and formidable counter-threat to the Luftwaffe.
carl,
1-The SR-71 was totally designed with a slide rule-no computers!!!
2-The SR-71 also had the first mach 3 drone mounted on top of the aircraft. It was used primarily for photo recon against China. The year 1958!!! After the mission the photo pod was ejected and picked up at sea, the drone did a fancy manuever that caused it to pick up a lot of drag which caused a lot of friction, which caused it to burn up the atmosphere undetected by the Chinese.
They did pretty good but at least as far as airplanes go, they weren't much different than everybody else. The first Spitfire flew in 1936 and the first production aircraft was delivered in 1938. The Spitfires and Hurricanes were available to match the ME-109s because of decisions made well before the war started. Nobody's R&D programs lasted all that long because the tech was just not that complex. I think if you are looking for innovation in the Battle of Britain the Chain Home radar stations is a better example and that also was the result of decisions made before the war and the tech was paralleled by the Germans.
That is not to say we haven't tanglefooted ourselves beyond belief in the last few decades. We have, but things still took some time in WWII and if the proper decisions weren't made some time before the war started, there was hell to pay.
A good example of how process has bollixed us up in post war decades is the SR-71 story. I think the first one flew 3 years after the contract was actually let. Just three years. And that airplane was truly revolutionary. If we tried to make an equivalent today it would be a decade before it flew...badly.
Point taken, but in the context of the times (Britain with it's back against the wall) I would submit that the Brit's were both innovative and creative with the available tech and $. They did not have the luxury of a decades-long R&D program infused with cost overruns and bureaucratic in-fighting - they had a Battle of Britain to win and, by God, they did it.
Not to throw too much cold water on the romance of the Spitfire but it had the same configuration, was powered by the same type of engine, was constructed in the same way out of the same materials and had the same general performance as most of its contemporaries. There was innovation and creative thinking but not much more or less than everything else.
Not far from where I live is the former Spitfire factory at Castle Vale, Birmingham, England at the entrance to the housing estate there is a stunning piece of modern architecture / art - a memorial to the Spitfire. Try a search on Google Images with "spitfire island" + Birmingham.
Far more evocative, but rare is he opportunity to see and hear the 'Battle of Britain Memorial Flight'. A Hurricane fighter, a Spitfire fighter and a Lancaster bomber. Humbling. Which of course feature on YouTube.