Supermarine Seafire Mk.45

A brief history of Seafir Mk.45

Supermarine Type 388

Supermarine Seafire Mk.45 was only a very slightly updated version of the ground Spitfire Mk.21. It was powered by a Griffon 60 series engine, which was supercharged by a two-stage two-speed compressor.
If we talk about a slight navalization of the aircraft, in practice it meant: installing a landing hook under the tail, installing a radio used by the naval air force and adding a protective bar in front of the spur wheel.

The wing was taken over from the ground Spitfire Mk. 21, so it was not tiltable and was equipped with modified end arches (its floor plan resembled the wing of a fighter Hawker Tempest). Due to the fact that the wing could not be folded, the aircraft took up too much space on board. Seafires Mk.45 got an old cabin, which means that the fuselage behind the cabin was not lowered.

The production aircraft was powered by a liquid-cooled twelve-cylinder Rolls-Royce Griffon 61 with an output of 1,529 kW, the engine transmitted its power to the five-bladed Rotol at a constant speed, which means that the pitch angle of the propeller blades changed completely automatically, depending on flight mode. Furthermore, tests were performed with counter-rotating propellers (thus removing the gyroscopic torque of the propeller), for these tests a Griffon 85 engine with the appropriate gearbox (reducer) was installed.

The armament corresponded to the ground Spitfire - four Hispano Mk.II cannons with a supply of 175 grenades for internal cannons and external cannons carried a supply of "only" 150 grenades. The bomb load was carried on a hanger under the fuselage, on which it was possible to hang a bomb weighing 227 kg or a depth charge type Mk. IX.

Naval pilots did not like these machines at all, if they had reservations about the Seafire Mk.15, so with this aircraft, everything was still escalating. The aircraft showed poor longitudinal stability and placed great demands on the pilot during the flight. Seafire Mk. 45 was, unlike the Spitfire Mk.21, an unsuccessful type of aircraft, for service on board aircraft carriers was insufficiently equipped and did not have good flight characteristics. By the end of 1945, 50 Seafires of this version were produced.

Several aircraft were modified to perform reconnaissance tasks and for this purpose carried two F.24 cameras in the fuselage behind the cabin. These machines were marked as Seafire FR Mk.45.

Sources used:
Cyril R. Russell, Spitfire Odyssey, My Life At Supermarines 1936-1957, Kingfisher Railway Productions, UK 1985, ISBN: 0 946184 186
Richard Ward, Supermarine Spitfire Mk. XII-24, Supermarine Seafire Mk.I-47., Aircam Aviation Series No.8, Arco Pub, 1969, ISBN-13: 978-0668021098
Pavel Berger and Zdeněk Svoboda, Spitfire fighters with Griffon engine, Our Army, year 1994, ISBN 80-206-0489-8
Peter Caygill, Fighting Legends, Spitfire Mk.VI-F.24, Jan Vašut Publishing House s.r.o., Prague 8, year 2005, ISBN 80-7236-396-4
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