Supermarine Seafire 47 Superprop!

The Supermarine Seafire 47 was one of the earliest Superprops, it wasn't the best British Superprop, in fact it wasn't even the best Superprop from Supermarine, but it's a beautiful plane with great performance and some interesting technical features.

A large portion of this video covers the Rolls Royce Griffon series of engines.

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Note: A couple errors I need correct.

1. It was the FRENCH Navy, Not the British Navy that replaced all Seafires with Hellcats in 1950. In regards to the British Navy, Seafire 47's were operating from HMS Triumph. These didn't hold up and when she returned to England the Seafires were replaced with Boulton Paul Balliols because she went into use for cadet training.

2. Yes, the Mk8 came out after the Mk9. The point is that every Spitfire I know of in numerical order after the 8 has the earlier type of non self sealing fuel tank. These include the 9, 11, 16, 19, 21, 22, and 24. As some of these are post Mk8, Supermarine went "back" to the earlier non self sealing design. In regards to the Mk9, yes it came out before the 8, but I'm not sure when the design work started on the 8 vs. the 9. In any case, the most numerous marks have non self sealing upper tanks.

3. The wing on the Seafire 47 is not "the same" as the early Spitfire model, nor did I say that in the video. Obviously it's different. As mentioned in the video it has a folding mechanism and the entire structure is beefed up relative to early airplanes. However the wing areas of the Seafire 47 and early Spitfires are within ONE percent of each other. The wingspans are within ONE inch. The wing profiles are EXACTLY the same NACA numbers for the main section and the tips. All this stuff is the same, yet the weight of the plane doubled.