HISTORY
Noel Pemberton Billing set
up a company,
Pemberton-Billing Ltd,
in 1913 to produce seagoing
aircraft. Its telegraphic
address, used for sending
telegrams and cables to the
company, was;
Supermarine, Southampton.
It produced a couple of
prototypes using quadruplane
designs to shoot down
zeppelins; the Supermarine
P.B.29 and the Supermarine
Nighthawk. The aircraft were
fitted with the recoilless
Davis gun and the Nighthawk
had a separate powerplant to
power a searchlight.
Upon election as an MP in
1916 Pemberton-Billing sold
the company to his factory
manager and longtime
associate Hubert Scott-Paine
who renamed the company
Supermarine Aviation Works
Ltd.
The company became famous
for its successes in the
Schneider Trophy for
seaplanes, especially the
three wins in a row of 1927,
1929 and 1931.
In 1928 Vickers-Armstrongs
took over Supermarine as
Supermarine Aviation Works
(Vickers) Ltd
and in 1938 all
Vickers-Armstrongs aviation
interests were reorganised
to become
Vickers-Armstrongs
(Aircraft) Ltd,
although Supermarine
continued to design, build
and trade under its own
name. The phrase
Vickers Supermarine
was applied to the aircraft.
The first Supermarine
landplane design to go into
production was the famous
and successful Spitfire. The
earlier Hawker Hurricane and
the Spitfire were the
mainstay of RAF Fighter
Command fighter aircraft
which fought off the
Luftwaffe
bombing raids with fighter
escorts during the Battle of
Britain in the summer of
1940. While the Hurricane
was available in larger
numbers and consequently
played a larger role, the
new Spitfire caught the
popular imagination and
became the aircraft
associated with the battle.
It went on to play a major
part in the remainder of the
war, in a number of variants
and marks, and it was the
only allied fighter aircraft
to be in production through
the entirety of World War
Two.
Other well-known planes from
World War II were the
Seafire (a naval version of
the Spitfire). Supermarine
also developed the Spiteful
and Seafang, the successors
of the Spitfire and Seafire,
resp., and the Walrus flying
boat.
The
Supermarine main works was
in Woolston, Southampton
which led to the city being
heavily bombed in 1940. This
curtailed work on their
first heavy bomber design,
the Supermarine B.12/36
which was replaced by the
Short Stirling.
After the end of World War
Two, the Supermarine
division built the Royal
Navy's first jet fighter,
the Attacker, which served
front line squadrons aboard
aircraft carriers and RNVR
squadrons at shore bases.
The Attacker was followed by
the more advanced Swift
which served in the fighter
and photo-reconnaissance
roles. The last of the
Supermarine aircraft was the
Scimitar.
After that, in the shakeup
of British aircraft
manufacturing,
Vickers-Armstrongs
(Aircraft) became a part of
the British Aircraft
Corporation and the
individual manufacturing
heritage names were lost.
Northshore Marine Motor
Yachts builds a range of
motorboats under the
Supermarine name in
Chichester, Portsmouth,
England.
Source:
Wikipedia
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