Referring to
Asturias56 post August 22nd. I respond with great respect. If you have quoted Wikipedia verbatim I suggest in some respects the extract is correct but in others it is not. I will mention a couple of details where I hold a different perspective.
The Castle Bromwich factory that Lord Nuffield commenced for the government in 1938 did not make good progress and I think your description of that infamous phone call is accurate. The Beaverbrook
V Nuffield telephone battle did happen but the first 10 Spitfires that came out of the CB factory some of us now accept they were Woolston built Mark l aircraft – NOT Mark ll and CB constructed.
Before September 1939 the government of the day allowed both Hawkers with the Hurricane and Supermarine with the Spitfire to accept contracts from a small number of UK friendly foreign governments for building under the designs under license and or for export sale. One Spitfire each was ordered by both Poland and France and Turkey ordered twelve. These were all completed and the Polish and French aircraft despatched. The French example was tested in France and there is a photo extant showing it partly disassembled in France when the airfield was over run by invading forces. The Polish one could not be unloaded from the ship and eventually it seems it probably came back to the UK. No one seems too certain!
The Turkish dozen were taken to Christchurch Dorset and export crated ready for sea dispatch when the Air Ministry stopped the shipment. They returned to Woolston or Eastleigh, for the Turkish changes to be reversed. The twelve Mark l Spitfires went to Castle Bromwich on the back of Supermarine's large flat back Thorneycroft lorry driven by one Mr. Ernie Grimes. We are fairly certain that two were disassembled and used as CB factory display patterns for the new CB staff to more quickly understand how the Spitfire was assembled from parts arriving from subcontractors across the Midlands and beyond.
There’s no documentary evidence for the twelve Spitfires. The information came to light verbally about 16 years ago when an old Supermarine employee and friend of mine bumped into Mr Grimes in Winchester and asked if he did indeed take the aircraft up to CB? He said yes, but was told never to mention it. Thus the published June 1940 CB production total of 10 (Mark l aircraft) entered into the statistics as the first Mark ll Spitfires.
Vickers-Armstrong's, (I’ll refer to them as V-A) you mention and bearing in mind that they purchased Supermarines in 1928, some say to acquire R.J. Mitchell! By 1937 the Brooklands V-A factory workers (aided and abetted by the Unions) were getting resentful of that minnow company in their company group ‘stealing’ their work, as they viewed it! V-A at Brooklands did produce a small single seat fighter prototype design prompted by the early outline specification F5/30. By 1936 after a series of developing specifications from the Air Ministry the Spitfire and Hurricane emerged. The Brooklands built Vickers Venom with a Bristol Aquila engine of 625 HP emerged as a result of that Air Ministry specification F.5/34. When tested the Venom did not reach design expectations and development ceased. V-A then concentrated on building the Wellington and the Wellesley for the RAF.
To placate the work force (and Unions) at Brooklands, V-A insisted that some of the Spitfire subcontract work should be placed with the Brooklands workshops. It included Spitfire undercarriage legs. The design was not difficult to produce but Brooklands had problem after problem with it and they were delivered too slowly and well outside the contract time. This was one of a number of contributory reasons that the Spitfire was late in going to the RAF. My father worked at Brooklands at that time and told me about this .
Lastly it is worth remembering that whilst Spitfires were built at CB in vast numbers, Woolston continued and there were satellite sites at Reading , at Salisbury (2700?) and other locations in southern England. Westland's produced Mark l and V's at Yeovil in quantity as well as Seafires.
To get an idea of the Supermarine’s management decisions and much more from 1926 a book,
Never A Dull Moment, by Denis Le P Webb although it is slightly flawed in places. Published by JKH Publishing. Also two books written by C.R. Russell
Spitfire Odyssey and
Spitfire Postscript. Curil Russell worked as a ‘wheeler’ from March 1936 on the ‘shop floor’ at Woolston and moved around around the satellite factories in the south of England during WW2. This is a complex topic but
Never A Dull Moment may help clear some the myriad of questions about this pre-war era.