Solent Sky, Southampton
Run by the R.J. Mitchell Memorial Museum charity. Holds the S.6A N248, which competed in the 1929 Schneider contest, and a Spitfire F.24.
The types
Supermarine aircraft you can see
| Type | First flew | Built | UK museums |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supermarine Southamptonfuselage | 1925 | 83 | 1 |
| Supermarine S.6ASchneider racer | 1929 | 2 | 1 |
| Supermarine Walrus & Seagull | 1933 | ~740 | 3 |
| Supermarine Stranraer | 1934 | 57 | 1 |
| Supermarine SpitfireMks I–24 & Seafire | 1936 | 20,351 + 2,334 | 23 |
| Supermarine Attacker | 1946 | 185 | 1 |
| Supermarine Swift | 1948 | 197 | 6 |
| Supermarine ScimitarF.1 | 1956 | 76 | 3 |
The firm
Supermarine in brief
Supermarine seaplanes won the Schneider Trophy in 1922, 1927, 1929 and 1931. The 1931 win kept the trophy for Britain outright. Vickers bought the company in 1928. Mitchell’s Spitfire followed, alongside the Walrus and Stranraer flying boats. German raids in September 1940 destroyed the Woolston works. Production was dispersed to about 60 workshops, and design moved to Hursley House.
Joe Smith led design from 1941, developing the Spitfire through many marks and then the Attacker, Swift and Scimitar jets. Headquarters moved to South Marston in Wiltshire in 1957. The name was dropped when Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft) joined BAC in 1960.
Where to go
Museums holding Supermarine aircraft
| Museum | Supermarine types | Adult entry | Airframes | Headline exhibit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fleet Air Arm MuseumYeovil, Somerset | 5 | £21 | 97 | Concorde 002 (G-BSST), the first British-assembled Concorde, which made her maiden flight from Filton in 1969 and now headlines a hall of… |
| Solent SkySouthampton, Hampshire | 4 | £14 | 23 | Supermarine S.6A N248, the 1929 Schneider Trophy racer from the bloodline that begat the Spitfire — parked beneath its descendant for… |
| Royal Air Force Museum LondonLondon, Greater London | 3 | Free | 88 | Avro Lancaster R5868 'S-Sugar' — 137 operations, the RAF's highest-scoring surviving heavy — under the same roof as a Vulcan, a… |
| Boscombe Down Aviation CollectionSalisbury, Wiltshire | 2 | £13.50 | 49 | The Lancaster cockpit reproduction tour, and a test-and-evaluation pedigree collection you can physically inhabit rather than admire… |
| IWM DuxfordCambridge, Cambridgeshire | 2 | £29 | 146 | Concorde 101 (G-AXDN), the pre-production development aircraft and the fastest Concorde of them all at Mach 2.23 — plus an SR-71A… |
| Tangmere Military Aviation MuseumChichester, West Sussex | 2 | £15 | 23 | Hawker Hunter WB188 in one-off scarlet, in which Neville Duke took the world air speed record to 727.63 mph off this coast in 1953;… |
| Battle of Britain BunkerUxbridge, Greater London | 1 | £12.50 | 2 | The actual 11 Group operations bunker at Uxbridge, 77 steps down, restored to its Battle of Britain configuration — Churchill watched the… |
| Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight Visitors CentreLincoln, Lincolnshire | 1 | £12.50 | 11 | Lancaster PA474 — one of only two airworthy Lancasters on Earth — when she's home (she periodically visits Duxford for deep maintenance,… |
| Biggin Hill Heritage HangarWesterham, Greater London | 1 | £49 | 17 | A rotating dozen-ish airworthy and in-rebuild Spitfires plus a Hurricane and Buchón; the 'Sit in a Spitfire' add-on is the affordable… |
| Brooklands MuseumWeybridge, Surrey | 1 | £24–£27 | 32 | Concorde G-BBDG, the British production-test aircraft, bookended by a Wellington bomber dredged out of Loch Ness in 1985 and the only… |
| City of Norwich Aviation MuseumNorwich, Norfolk | 1 | £9 | 33 | City of Norwich Aviation Museum at Horsham St Faith: Norfolk's largest, ~30 airframes including a Vulcan and Nimrod with bookable… |
| Hooton Park HangarsEllesmere Port, Cheshire | 1 | £9 | 45 | Hooton Park's 1917 Belfast-truss hangars — among the finest WWI aviation buildings surviving — hold aircraft, buses and a printing museum… |
| Langham DomeHolt, Norfolk | 1 | £7 | 1 | Langham Dome is a one-building wonder: a 1942 concrete gunnery-training dome where projected aircraft taught AA gunners to shoot —… |
| Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage CentreSpilsby, Lincolnshire | 1 | £13.50 | 11 | Lancaster NX611 (taxiing now, returning to flight one day, they swear) and Mosquito NF.II HJ711 — the only running Mosquito in Europe.… |
| Montrose Air Station MuseumMontrose, Angus | 1 | £10 | 14 | The 1913 fabric itself, plus the resident ghost stories (Montrose is Britain's most famously haunted airfield, a claim the volunteers… |
| National Museum Of FlightNorth Berwick, East Lothian | 1 | £15 | 47 | Concorde G-BOAA, which flew British Airways' first commercial supersonic service in 1976 and arrived here by barge and giant road-crawl… |
| Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation MuseumBungay, Suffolk | 1 | £10 | 65 | Depends who you ask — the joy is the oddities. Come for the Bloodhound missiles and decoy rarities; stay for volunteer flight-simulator… |
| North East Land, Sea and Air MuseumsSunderland, Tyne and Wear | 1 | £7.50 | 46 | NELSAM in Sunderland mixes Vulcan XL319 (flew in when the airport still existed), a Pucará from the Falklands, trams, buses and a… |
| Royal Air Force Museum MidlandsShifnal, Shropshire | 1 | Free | 78 | TSR-2 XR220, one of two survivors of the most gifted aircraft Britain ever cancelled, sharing floor space with the stainless-steel… |
| South Wales Aviation MuseumBarry, Vale of Glamorgan | 1 | £10 | 73 | The resident Harrier and a growing VC10/Tornado-era collection, most with steps and open canopies. Kids exit wearing thousand-yard grins. |
| Spitfire & Hurricane Memorial Museum, ManstonRamsgate, Kent | 1 | Free | 3 | Free-entry memorial museum holding Spitfire TB752 and Hurricane LF751 plus a dense Manston story — the emergency runway where crippled… |
| Spitfire Visitor Centre, Hangar 42, BlackpoolBlackpool, Lancashire | 1 | £12 | 6 | The Ops Room recreation and the £5 sit-in-a-Spitfire photography session — the cheapest Spitfire seat time in the country. |
| The Potteries Spitfire Gallery (RW388)Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire | 1 | Free | 1 | The Potteries Museum's Spitfire Gallery gives RW388 a purpose-built glass hall in Hanley — Stoke's tribute to local boy Reginald Mitchell… |
| The Shuttleworth CollectionBiggleswade, Bedfordshire | 1 | £19.50 | 55 | The 1934 DH.88 Comet 'Grosvenor House', winner of the MacRobertson England–Australia air race, restored to fly; and the Edwardians —… |
| Ulster Aviation Society (Maze Long Kesh)Lisburn, County Antrim | 1 | By appointment | 63 | The Shorts family — SC.1 vertical take-off research aircraft included — plus a Buccaneer, Phantom, Wildcat, and a newly arrived AV-8… |
| Welsh Spitfire MuseumHaverfordwest, Pembrokeshire | 1 | £2 | 1 | The Welsh Spitfire Museum: a genuine 1944 Mk VIII being restored to flight in the back of a Haverfordwest charity shop, funded by the… |
| Yorkshire Air MuseumYork, North Yorkshire | 1 | £17 | 54 | Halifax 'Friday the 13th' — the world's only complete Halifax reconstruction, honouring the type that flew from this very field —… |
Questions
Frequently asked
Who designed the Spitfire?
R.J. Mitchell, Supermarine’s chief designer. After his death in 1937, Joe Smith led its development through later marks.
Where was Supermarine based?
At Woolston, on the River Itchen in Southampton. After the 1940 bombing, work was dispersed across Hampshire, Wiltshire and Berkshire.
What was the Schneider Trophy?
A speed contest for seaplanes. Supermarine won it four times, and the 1931 victory gave Britain the trophy outright.