Marrying the Rolls-Royce Griffon powerplant with the already successful Merlin-engined Supermarine Seafire gave the Royal Navy a potent new carrier-borne fighter during the swansong of propeller warplanes at sea, as Malcolm V Lowe explains
Supermarine’s Seafire first entered service with Britain’s Royal Navy (RN) during 1942. At first basically a navalised Spitfire, there were several initial marks of Seafire that flew with the Rolls-Royce Merlin powerplant. These culminated with the Mk.III, and the type established a good record of service aboard RN aircraft carriers for the Fleet Air Arm (FAA). The type was still operational in the Pacific up to the end of the war against Japan during 1945.
Ever mindful of the need to upgrade its carrier-borne capabilities, the Admiralty examined several possibilities with a view to eventually replacing its Merlin Seafires. Some of this thinking was linked to the continuing evolution of the RAF’s land-based Spitfire, and the potential for ‘navalisation’.
The FAA’s operational Seafires were allied to the RAF’s Spitfire Mk.V series, which was supplanted in RAF operational units by the Spitfire Mk.IX in Europe and the Mk.VIII in the Far East. These later Merlin-powered…
