• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Spitfire Trivia

PRB

PRB

Administrator
Staff member
The first flight of the Spitfire (flown by "Mutt" Summers) took place on what day..? Yes, it's (potentially) a trick question, but maybe not so much to this crowd...
 
OK, the trick presumably is that the recognised first flight by Summers, on 05/03/36 (British dating) was in the Type 300, or F7/30. The Spitfire name was not approved until 10th June, after which it was piloted by several people including Quill and Edwardes-Jones.

So I'm not really sure what the correct answer to your question really is !
 
Interesting. That really would make it a trick question! I'm reading Quill's book “Spitfire, A Test Pilot's Story”, and of the first flight he writes:

“... On 6 March I flew the Falcon from Brooklands to Martlesham to take Mutt Summers from there to Eastleigh. Popular folklore has it that the first flight of the Spitfire took place on 5 March 1936, but I flew Mutt to Eastleigh for the particular purpose of making that first flight on 6 March....”

So I Googled and looked in a another Spitfire book I have and everyone seems to agree on 5 March. Except for Quill. Maybe Quill made a type-o in his diary!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top