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Noel Pemberton Billing set up
a company, Pemberton-Billing Ltd, in 1913 to produce sea-going
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.
Other planes from World War II include the Seafire (a naval version
of the Spitfire). Supermarine also developed the Spiteful and
Seafang, the successors of the Spitfire and Seafire, respectively,
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, developed from
the final Spitfire type. It 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. 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 now builds a range of motorboats
under the Supermarine name in Chichester, Portsmouth, England |
