Supermarine Spiteful

The Supermarine Spiteful was a British fighter aircraft that Supermarine designed during the Second World War as a successor to the Spitfire. It was powered by a Rolls-Royce Griffon engine and had a radical new laminar flow wing, developed to Air Ministry specification F.1/43, along with an inward-retracting undercarriage and a larger fin to improve the marginal stability of Griffon Spitfires. The wing work began in 1942 to improve the Spitfire's rolling characteristics, because the elliptical wing flexed too much above about 480 miles per hour. The first prototype was flown by Jeffrey Quill on 30 June 1944. By the time it was ready for production the war was ending, it offered only marginal improvements over existing types and jets were overtaking it, so only 19 of an order for 150 were built. The Royal Navy chose a navalised version, the Seafang, and the Spiteful wing went on to the Attacker jet.