I was just looking at a Canadian Forces book and came across a Seafire that looked just like a Spitfire but was painted like a Sea Fury?? Did I have too much "brownies" for lunch?? This would be a great war bird to build any one know of any plans out there for the Seafire if it really exists?

Thanks for all your help.

Rubbie,

The Seafire was for all intents and purpose a sea going Spitfire. IIRC the Seafire was a MK-V Spitfire with an arestor hook and beefed up struts for carrier operations.

Scott

Rubbie, one of the interesting things about the sea fire is that it had the same pneumatic flaps as the land based spit. For carrier take offs they needed about 15 degrees of flap. So.. the standard spit gives you full or no flaps, its either/ or. To solve this problem at sea, they made wood wedges and inserted them under the flap.. the pilot took off and climed out where he proceeded to give a momentary full flap, jetison the wedges and close the flaps.. Kinda neat!.. BobH.

Other than strengthening a few parts for the arrester hook and cat spools, they were identical to land based fighters. most land versions had a sea version with a different mark number.
Depending on the version, the arrester hook may have been under the fuse or a sting.

andy

The Canadian Seafires carried the same two tone grey color scheme as Canadian Sea Furies. A book that covers the subject really well is The Supermarine Seafire in the Royal Canadian Navy by Leo Pettipas. Do a search at ABE Books or Bookfinder.com and you might find a used copy. They are not cheap! Canadians used the Seafire XV. You could convert an existing spitfire plan but it would involve a lot of research as the XV was a hybird of several Spitfire marks.

Do we have any picures? I would like to make one of those!

Vic

Here are som pictures of the seafire

Ketil

Vic, I gotta agree. That would be one sexy Spit!.. That and the Shark mouthed spit.. way kewl!!!!! lol.. FYI Garland Hamilton flew a Yellow spit several years ago painted in the Fleet Air Arm colors. They used his plane as the pace plane for some of the early Giant RC Races going back about 10 years ago. His looked really good except he had an OS Twin for power, cylinders stuck out. lol.... BobH.

Hi Vic,

I like the idea of the Seafire.
But I think that it would be difficult to build a folded wing isn't it?
Where can I find more information about folded wings?

A few sites here.
http://www.odyssey.dircon.co.uk/pacspitfire.htm
http://users.belgacom.net/aircraft1/.../156.html#1872
http://mitglied.lycos.de/hornc/Seafire_Ib.htm
http://frenchnavy.free.fr/aircraft/s...seafire_fr.htm

Tom

Tom, who says the wing gotta fold? I mean you can do that if you like but is it necessary?.. Would be Kewl thought for sure!! Earl Aunne had folding wings on his corsair.. He said it was pretty simple to do and it looked great when he would taxi out and the wings would unfold.. BobH.

IIRC only most seafires with folding wings were manual. very late ones like the Mk.46/47's were power.

andy

The Seafire XV, which is the version used by the Canadians and seen in the first and last of the above photos, is essentially a navalised MkXII Spitfire. The MkXII was the first production version of the Spit to use the Griffon engine and was a very limited production airplane. Despite that, Dave Platt saw fit to build a MkXII and his 1/5 scale plans/short kit are for that particular Mark so it would be a great place to start if you wanted to build a Seafire XV. You could also take the same basic airframe and stick a bubble canopy on it to make a Seafire XVII (which is the one I'd like to do).

ok, heres the breakdown
Seafire IB Spitfire VB fuse bottom hook non folding wings
IIC VC as above
III VC as above
XV XII either fuse or sting hook, folding wings
also less the small bulge behind the spinner on the
top cowl.
XVII XII stinger hook, folding wings teardrop fuse.
45 21 stinger hook, folding wing
47 24 as above + contra props

no where is there mention of power folding, only manual.

andy

Chad, I was wondering if you took Brian Taylor's 83" Spitfire VIII and put a Griffon engine nose on it would you have a Seafire XV? My reasoning is as follows The fuselage for the MK V and the VIII are nearly identical and the Seafire XV is based on the MK V fuselage with a Griffon engine. At least that was what my reasearch showed but I'm no Spitfire expert. So I figured you could reverse engineer Taylor's Mk VIII into a MK V and add the appropriate cowl?? I had considered going that route at one time.

Lake flyer, some of the later MK's have Griffon power as well and the top of their nose is different. You can see the blisters on the cowl to make room for the valve covers (?). Not sure the Sea fire has that mod or not?.. BobH.

Lake, the MKXII ( which is what the Seafire MKXV fundementally was) was built on the MKV (early MKXII) and MKVIII frames so the BT Spit would be a great starting point. Just remember that length of the Spitfire mkVIII was 11.5 inches less than the Seafire XV due to the Gryphon engine. The Spitfire MKXII was some five inches less than the Seafire MKXV so the difference would probably be in the rudder/arrestor area. The Seafire MKXV was built with both types of arrestor hooks, the V type and later the Superior sting type and all had the retractable tailwheel. Hey Chad, the last 30 MKXV Seafires were built with the bubble canopy. The main external distinction between the XVII and these late XV's were the strengthened main undercarriage so it would be as easy to build either variant.
Good luck
Paul

Lake Flyer, as Paul indicates, it would not be impossible to make the Taylor MkVIII into a Seafire XV. I would get a set of Platt's MkXII plans and shrink them a bit to get the nose contours for building the Griffon cowl. I know the MkXII retained the assymetrical oil cooler/radiator of the MkV but I think the Seafire XV used the symetrical units per the MkXIV Spit (I'm not sure of that though). Also, as Paul indicated above, the Seafire may have used the broad chord rudder and possibly even a different vertical stab entirely. There again, I'm not sure as I have not researched the Seafire XV very much.

If you look at a pic of the 12/15/17, the cowl is notably shorter than later griffon engined cowls. the rear of the cowl is vertical not partly inclined as later ones. this is due to Griffon IV having only a single stage blower.

andy