Reginald Joseph Mitchell was just eight years old when the Wright Brothers made the first powered flight in America in 1903. During these youthful days Mitchell spent many hours in his bedroom in his Stoke-on-Trent home, making model aircraft. Was this the start of a very promising career as an aircraft designer and engineer?
Mitchell left school at 16 years of age and started work as an apprentice at Kerr Stuart and Company, a locomotive engineering works in Stoke-on-Trent. After becoming a skilled engineer he transferred to the company’s drawing office.
In 1917, aged 22, Mitchell left the locomotive works and Stoke-on-Trent to live and work in Southampton. He started work in the drawing office of the little known Supermarine Aviation Works based on the River Itchen at Woolston, Southampton. Within two years of joining the company, and aged only 24, Mitchell was promoted to Chief Designer and his knowledge of seaplanes was nearing its peak.
It was obvious to the bosses at Supermarine that "R.J." was more than an aircraft designer and in 1920 he became Supermarine’s Chief Engineer. In 1922 Supermarine entered their Sea-Lion Mk II aircraft in the Schneider Trophy air races and won the event for Britain. The Sea Lion was built under the direction of R.J. Mitchell. It was to Mitchell, obvious that to increase the speed of an aircraft the drag has to be reduced. So he set about designing a seaplane with only one wing, virtually no rigging lines and a very powerful engine. To decrease the drag even more the pilot would have to be seated in a lying down position; this would enable the fuselage to be as narrow as possible but was very uncomfortable for the pilot.
After the successful results with the S.4, S.5 and S.6 series of seaplanes and eventually winning the Schneider Trophy outright "R.J." turned his thoughts towards designing a fighter for the Royal Air Force.
In 1930 the Air Ministry issued specification F7/30 calling for a four-gunned day and night fighter. Mitchell and his team then set about utilising their skills and came up with the Supermarine Type 224. This Rolls Royce Goshawk engined aircraft with a gull-winged effect Monoplane first flew in July 1934, but it failed to meet the requirements of both the Air Ministry and the designer. So it was back to the drawing board.
Mitchell decided to straighten the wings, fit a retractable under-carriage and enclose the cockpit with a sliding canopy. When Rolls Royce developed the Merlin engine "R.J." realised that this was the engine for his new private venture. K5054, the Spitfire prototype, was rolled out of the hangar at Hampshire’s Eastleigh Airfield and took to the air on its maiden flight on the 5th March 1936.
Three years before the flight of K5054, in 1933, Mitchell had an operation for cancer in his abdomen. This proved unsuccessful and in 1937 he went to the American Cancer Clinic in Vienna for further treatment. The clinic could do nothing for him so he returned to England within a month of arriving in Vienna.
Reginald Joseph Mitchell died, aged only 42 on June 11th 1937. His aircraft, the Spitfire, lived on to become the most famous fighter of all time. Over 22,500 were to be built in various marks and models, including the Seafire and Seafang.
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