Talk:Supermarine Seafire

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Aviation: Aircraft C‑class

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C

This article has been rated as C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion not met Coverage and accuracy: criterion met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met

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Military history: Aviation / British / European / World War II C‑class

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C

This article has been rated as C-class on the project's quality scale.

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion not met Coverage and accuracy: criterion met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met

Associated task forces:
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	Military aviation task force
	British military history task force
	European military history task force
	World War II task force

Vague

"For various reasons Winston Churchill who was First Lord of the Admiralty cancelled the order, writing to Lord Beaverbrook:[3]"

any reason in particular, maybe it was "so as not to divert production away from the land based Spitfire, Winston Churchill, ect." (Fdsdh1 (talk) 17:06, 3 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

The reason for the cancellation was the planned build-up of RAF Fighter Command for Home Defence in preparation for what was expected to follow in case of the possible Fall of France and any subsequent Battle of Britain. It was for this reason that Dowding resisted the sending of more Spitfires and Hurricanes to France.

In this case production of Spitfires for Fighter Command over-rode everything else, and that's why Fulmars were continued-with as they were already in production and where available 'now'.

Assessment:

The final sentence reads:

"In spite of these problems the Seafire, especially the L. Mk II and III with their low altitude rated Merlin engines found a role as a low to medium altitude interceptor able to protect the RAN carrier fleet."

Should this read "...to protect the RN carrier fleet." as the Royal Australian Navy Fleet Air Arm, AFAIK, didn't operate these aircraft? (203.26.122.12 (talk) 05:22, 24 February 2010 (UTC))[reply]

Yep, the RAN operated Sea Furies...postwar. In fact there's no really no need for the RN to be mentioned either. Minorhistorian (talk) 23:39, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Name

the article says the name was abbreviated from "Sea Spitfire". There is no documentation that "Sea Spitfire" was ever part of the naming process. I think this is pure conjecture. Rsduhamel (talk) 16:59, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Documented or not, it's unlikely it was derived from anything else. I could be wrong, and it was derived from "Sea Hurricane", but I doubt it. - BilCat (talk) 17:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Buttler (British Secret Projects 1935-1950 p175) mentions the Admiralty officially asking the Air Ministry if they could have some Spitfires with folding wings and arrester hook in 1940. The disruption to Spitfire production is given as the reason for not proceeding. Buttler uses the phrase Sea Spitfire in single quotes which in the style of the text usually means the text comes from some written document. His books also touches upon other navalised aircraft suggestions from the ministries or manufacturers as developments of existing aircraft (Hawker P.1009 'Sea Typhoon', Boulton Paul P.85 'Sea Defiant'). GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:32, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Cite added to Andrews and Morgan's Supermarine Aircraft since 1914 - p. 247 "The contraction Seafire from Sea Spitfire (c/f Sea Hurricane) was suggested by Mrs Freda Clifton, wife of Alan Clifton of Suoermarine".Nigel Ish (talk) 21:23, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like solid documentation that "Sea Spitfire" was ever part of the naming process - and that is was the source of the "Seafire" name. Kyteto (talk) 19:41, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Before such an aircraft existed the natural way of asking for one, and to frame an operational requirement for such an aircraft, would be to make a request for a "Sea Spitfire", so it is almost certain that early documentation would refer to the aircraft as-such before the official service name of "Seafire" was allocated.

Naval FAA variants of British land-based aircraft had the word "Sea" added as a prefix to the normal RAF service name, "Sea Hurricane", "Sea Vampire", "Sea Fury", etc., and "Seafire" is actually one of the few exceptions to this rule.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.0 (talk) 09:04, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]