Formula 1, the Spitfire, and the Few
Rich people fun. Clever engineers. 20-somethings with nerves of steel.
April 2022
This is my third piece of writing to keep my brain engaged while I am recovering from spine surgery and undergoing chemotherapy for multiple myeloma diagnosed 28 days ago.
Spoiler alert: there will only be one mention of cancer in this writing, and it won’t be mine. This writing is inspired by chemotherapy, including steroids. Poor editing, bad grammar, and unfocused, rambling writing should be attributed to chemo brain fog…which means the chemo is working.
I’ve been watching Netflix’ Drive to Survive which profiles the team principals and drivers of modern Formula 1. Until this series, I have had no interest in motorsport or cars in general. I’ve still never watched a full race and maintain that watching someone else drive a car and make left turns for a couple hours is a waste of time. (“Who has time for this shit?” or “I got shit to do” frequently comes to mind.) I also thought that the whole enterprise is rather wasteful and a large and unnecessary carbon footprint, which the latter is true without question. Also, watching rich people partying it up in Monaco with premier motorsport as a sideshow isn’t my idea of human progress.
In full disclosure, while at the Naval Academy, I learned how to sail. It was mind-blowing for me to discover that sailboats could sail into the wind and make progress upwind after having grown up in landlocked Missouri. I joined the Varsity Offshore Sailing Team. This sport involved racing 44ft sailboats every afternoon with a crew of 8. We raced on weekends against the Annapolis fleet. We raced to Bermuda in the summer. We partied at fancy yacht clubs. During offshore ocean races, giant waves would crash over our heads in the middle of the night. I was cold, wet, and seasick for days on end. One of my crew mates reminded me that sailboat racing is standing in a cold shower ripping up $20 bills. Yes. Rich people's fun takes strange forms sometimes. I did learn a lot, and there are many life lessons to be learned on a small sailboat. I gained respect for the sea and learned seamanship and navigation. I am grateful for the Naval Academy’s sailing program and how it made me a better naval officer and human. I would also trace sailing back to the start of adventuring for me: gliding, flying, kiteboarding, climbing etc.
Back to Formula 1. I understand Formula 1 may not have made it onto your radars or Netflix binge watch queues yet. A brief summary: Every year between March and November, 10 teams each field 2 cars and drivers to compete in 20+ grand prix races around the world. Each team is led by a team principal, attracts sponsors, and/or is funded by a major auto manufacturer. It is both for pride and tradition to field a Formula 1 team. It is not cheap. The most successful teams like Mercedes and Red Bull will spend up to $500M per season, having a team of hundreds of design engineers, pit crew, marketing teams, and logisticians. Each car can cost between $15-20M. The steering wheel costs $100k.
$100k steering wheel. This is a typical going away gift for drivers.
Crashes and fender benders can instantly cost $5M. 7-time world champion Lewis Hamilton earns $40M per season. Somehow, through sponsorship, advertising sales, ticket revenues and prize money, most teams end up breaking even. A new $140M spending cap rule in 2022 attempts to level the playing field between the constructors’ teams. Either way- a rich man’s sport.
While Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motor sport, it is not unrestricted free form like the pod races of Star Wars Episode 1. The cars themselves have to obey design rules for both safety and fairness. The rules are carefully designed and enforced by race stewards. Teams are constantly pushing the edge of these rules to gain .1 seconds of lap time.
Compare my first car in 1996 with a 2021 Formula 1 car.
7 out of 10 Formula 1 teams are based out of England. Even German Mercedes, Swiss Red Bull, and French Renault teams choose to have their racing headquarters in England. This is no accident. England is the motorsport headquarters of the world, with 80% of the world’s automotive high performance engineers. How did this develop? Let’s examine the history of the Brooklands Racetrack.
Brooklands Racetrack
In 1907, the Brooklands Racetrack opened in England. The 2.75 mile track featured banked turns and seated 275,000 spectators at its peak. British motorsports fans love a good race. The track was the center of global motorport and attracted a surrounding village of mechanics, engineers, tinkering craftsmen, and manufacturers.The early British and French aviation pioneers set up shops and relied on the expertise of the motorsport ecosystem. When World War One broke out, racing stopped. Brookland shifted over to aircraft testing, production, and flight training. After the war, racing continued, as did aviation development. Some of the most famous British aerospace companies got their start at Brooklands. One of these, Hawker, developed a revolutionary monoplane fighter, the Hurricane, which first flew in 1935. With a single wing, it was much faster than the previous generation of biplanes. With a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, it had a top speed of 330 mph.
The Hawker Hurricane
It was relatively easy to construct with plywood structure and skin, and easy to maintain. A stubby workhorse, it was forgiving for pilots to learn and fly. It carried a respectable armament of eight .303 Browning machine guns. When World War II broke out in 1939, it was the front line British fighter.
A few months after the first flight of the Hurricane, another company, Vickers-Supermarine, flight tested their fighter: the Spitfire. It was faster, sleeker, and more advanced than Hurricane. It was also more expensive and difficult to build. It used the same Merlin engine and carried the same armament. At the peak of the Battle of Britain at the end of August 1940, there were 709 Hurricanes and 372 Spitfires in service. The Hurricane was the workhorse, attacking enemy bombers. The Spitfire was the hotrod, dogfighting with German fighters. Together they proved to be an effective high-low mix that won the Battle of Britain.
A Brief History of the Battle of Britain
In July 1940, the situation was dire. Hilter had just rolled through all of Western Europe in 3 months. The British Army was almost wiped out and pushed into the sea before being rescued by an improvised flotilla at Dunkirk, France. Hitler set his sights on invading England and started planning Operation Sealion. First, he needed to neutralize the British Navy and the Royal Air Force, or his amphibious forces would be sitting ducks in the English Channel. Here’s a timeline of the Battle of Britain.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) started the Battle of Britain with 644 fighters and 1259 fighter pilots, and faced over 2000 German aircraft. Over the next four months of the battle, 1,964 RAF pilots were killed or wounded, and 1,744 aircraft were lost. However, the British were able to train replacements and actually increase the number of active fighter pilots from 1,259 to over 1,600 by the end of October. They were also able to maintain around 750-1000 operational fighters during the conflict, replacing losses with new production. Of note, the Supermarine Spitfire factories were bombed in September 1940, prompting the Air Ministry to disperse production to hundreds of small shops across England. Mom and pop machine shops were making all sorts of aerospace components for England’s state-of-the-art fighter. Spitfires were assembled in dozens of locations and flight tested out of four main fields. This is an incredible wartime feat in supply chain organization. During this time, German combat aircraft losses exceeded their rate of replacement. Pilots were not trained fast enough to replace wounded and weary German aircrew. At this unsustainable loss rate, Hitler gave up invasion plans for England and turned to bombing cities in an effort to weaken British morale. It failed. Within a year, Germany focused on invading the Soviet Union, and stopped its attacks on British cities. This allowed allied forces to build up in Britain to attack German cities and industrial sites. After the allies achieved air superiority over the English Channel, they launched the Normandy invasion.
As we watch Ukrainians hold their ground against Russian armored columns, and listen to President Zelensky’s courageous words, we should revisit Churchill’s words in June of 1940 in his speech: “We Shall Fight on the Beaches”:
I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. … Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
I painted this Spitfire last winter, based on an original painting by Roy Grinnell. Note the elliptical wings.
The Few
A 20-year old Spitfire pilot arrives at his new squadron having completed basic flight training. His first flight in a Spitfire is a solo, as it is a single seat fighter. He revs up the 1000-hp Rolls-Royce Merlin 12-cylinder engine and rolls down the grass field in the Southern English countryside. By all accounts, the Spitfire is a joy to fly- absolutely responsive, stable, and full of power. It can climb at 3600 ft per minute, and turn 360 degrees in about 16 seconds pulling 4-5 Gs. The initial versions (Spitfire Mk I and II) had a top speed of 365 mph. The complex elliptical wing shape was not only aesthetically beautiful- it had complex curves which enhanced flyability. For example, the trailing (back) inner edge of the wing was curved slightly such that it would cause the inside of the wing to stall first when the pilot pulled back too hard on the stick. This usually happened in a turning dogfight. This would cause the airplane to start shaking, letting the pilot know to ease back on the stick before losing control. This is much preferable to the wingtip stall on most aircraft, which causes the aircraft to drop into a spin and require the pilot to do a spin recovery maneuver. This is being a sitting duck in air combat for 30 seconds.
After learning the aircraft for a few weeks, the squadron leader will take the new pilot as his wingman for his first few operational combat missions. This is the first time the pilot will be shot at by enemy gunners in bombers, and escorting German Luftwaffe fighters. The average survival time of a new pilot in the Battle of Britain was 4 weeks. Each squadron had 16 planes, 20 pilots, and was expected to scramble 12 planes when the phone rang from Fighter Command.
An average day during the Battle of Britain would go like this: Luftwaffe bombers and fighters would take off from occupied France and Netherlands after dawn. British “Chain Home” radar stations would detect these incoming formations after breakfast. These radars were primitive, and the Germans might be flying formations as decoys. They might split off to attack different targets. In the fighter command plot at Biggin Hill, the Operations Team would decide which airfields should scramble which fighter squadrons, knowing that waves of bombers might be unseen behind the first detected wave.
By now our RAF fighter pilots have finished breakfast and are sipping coffee in their operations rooms in their flight gear and sitting on their parachutes, reading the newspaper. The phone rings. Ground crews start up the engines, and pilots sprint out to their planes. They take off quickly, form up, and start climbing to combat altitude. The engines are running at 100% and burning maximum fuel. It takes 7-8 minutes to get to a combat altitude of 15,000 feet. Ground control vectors them to an intercept course, perhaps 100 miles away. In 20 minutes, they spot the enemy formation of bombers. In almost every single case, they are outnumbered 4 to 1, with German Me-109s fighters escorting overhead. Sometimes, other friendly Spitfire or Hurricane squadrons join in, or have already had their go. The fight starts with some coordinated attacks, but quickly devolves into a full on 3D melee. Leaders, wingmen, and flights try to keep track of each other, but are also in their own fight for survival while taking opportunistic runs at bombers. Much of this time was spent pulling 4-5 Gs in tight turns as dueling fighters struggled to put a stream of bullets in the path of their opponent. This was a full body workout without modern G-suits, requiring pilots to flex their core and leg muscles to prevent blacking out. Each of the Spitfire’s eight .303 Browning machine guns carries 15 seconds of ammunition, usually shot in 1-3 second bursts. Not much shooting time. When the ammunition was exhausted or the plane was damaged, our Spitfire pilot disengaged and returned to base or bailed out. Enemy fighters typically didn’t pursue as they needed to save fuel to protect the bombers and make it back across the Channel. This whole adrenaline filled experience might last 90 minutes. The pilot would land and hear about squadron mates who didn’t make it back. Ground crew would rearm and refuel his aircraft in 26 minutes. The phone might ring four more times that day until air operations ceased at dusk. At this point, our emotionally drained pilots would go to the pub and toast their lost comrades. Replacement pilots and planes would arrive in the coming days. This continued intensely for almost a year as British, Canadian, New Zealander, Polish, and American pilots repelled German attackers in 1940 and 1941.
On August 20, 1940, Churchill gave a speech (“Their Finest Hour”) and recognized the “Few:”
The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Those Elliptical Wings
At age 25, Reginald Joseph (RJ) Mitchell became the Chief Designer at the British aircraft manufacturer Supermarine. Over the next 16 years, he designed fighters, bombers, racing seaplanes, and other aircraft. He is best known as the chief designer of the Spitfire. The Spitfire was an innovation in fuselage, engine, and wing design. The fuselage was of semi-monocoque stressed aluminum skin. Instead of tubular frame construction covered by fabric, this light airframe of frames and stringers held together by riveted aluminum skin reduced weight while withstanding greater stresses. Flush rivets reduced drag. The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was the most powerful and reliable of its day. The elliptical wings were revolutionary in their handling, speed, and strength. Mitchell hired Beverly Shenstone to design the wings. The iconic elliptical wing, and the man who championed them, bears more exploration
Beverly Shenstone was a Canadian aeronautical engineer. After earning his master’s degree at age 23, Shenstone, a German speaker, went to Germany in 1929 to work for a leading German aircraft company Junkers. Never mind that in a decade, Junkers aircraft would be dive bombing Western Europe. An adventurous sort, Shenstone learned to glide at Wasserkuppe, the premier gliding and sailplane center in Europe. As a result of Versailles Treaty limitations from the first World War, Germany was limited in developing an Air Force and trained many pilots in gliding and soaring. At Wasserkuppe, Shenstone made friends with Alexander Lippisch, a brilliant wing designer of flying wings.At Junkers, he learned how to fabricate and rivet wing structures.He networked with some of the leading German aerodynamicists to understand the latest in wing theory. Among these ideas was the elliptical wing, first researched in 1918 by Ludwig Prandtl. Prandtle’s calculations showed that an elliptical wing distributed lift pressure most evenly, while minimizing the induced drag which slowed the wing down.
Shenstone returned to the UK in 1932 and interviewed with Sidney Camm of the Hawker corporation. Camm was designing the Hurricane. Camm was known to be a difficult, exacting sort. A misunderstanding ensued in the interview… and Shenstone walked out. Shenstone then interviewed with RJ Mitchell at Supermarine who was working on the Spitfire. Mitchell took a chance on the 26 year old Shenstone for his knowledge of aerodynamic theory. By 1934, the elliptical wing was incorporated into Mitchell’s state-of-the-art Spitfire.
The original Spitfire with straight wings… …and elliptical wings in 1934
The wings needed to accomplish these tasks:
Be large enough to create lift for the plane to fly and maneuver well at all altitudes
The thin in profile to enable high speed
Be stiff enough to withstand high-G loading turns, and support the landing gear
Be thick and strong enough to hold 8 machine guns and ammunition
Be light enough to not slow down the plane
Be not difficult to manufacture
Shenstone proved that the double elliptical wing could do all this, and the Spitfire’s iconic wings were born. RJ Mitchell recognized the merits of Shenstone’s wing proposal. He also incorporated the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine- the highest performing aircraft engine of its day at 1000hp. The combination of power, an effective wing, and streamlined fuselage gave the Spitfire a step up in performance. Sadly, RJ Mitchell died of rectal cancer in 1937, shortly after the Spitfire’s maiden flight.Throughout World War II, the Spitfire was modified 24 times with over 22,000 aircraft built, including upgrading to an 2340 hp Rolls-Royce Griffon engine. Even with an engine twice as powerful, the Spitfire kept Shenstone’s elliptical wing and tapered spar structure. Towards the end of the war, Hitler started launching V1 buzz bomb / cruise missiles at England. Upgraded Spitfires would dive at 400 mph to catch these flying bombs, fly alongside, and roll them offcourse by tipping their wings. The navigation gyros of the V1 would not be able to recover, and the V1s would crash in the English countryside.
Tipping V1 buzz bombs off course was preferable to shooting them
down and flying through the warhead explosion.
Wind Down
While there are a few more interesting threads to follow (Rolls-Royce engines, F1 driver performance, and aerodynamic design to optimize downforce while cornering), let’s call it a day. After the war, this small army of designers, engineers, and machinists turned their skills to motorsport. When I see those exquisite F1 cars screaming down the track at 200mph and the 1.82 second pit stops, I think of a 20 year old Spitfire pilot, outnumbered, pulling 5Gs in a fight for his life. I think of the hundreds of shops and thousands of machinists and engineers in England who assembled those planes, and made them incrementally better. I think of the chief designers and plucky upstarts like Shenstone who experimented with new ideas, but dug in deeply once they had found the solution. These men inspired generations of engineers, pilots, drivers, and tinkerers who gathered at pubs talking about the time they met the chief designer and worked through some knotty mechanical problem. I think of all the kids who grew up around machine tools and saw disassembled cars and engines in their garages. I think of the Few, who would strap themselves to a 1000 hp machine and take on whatever challenge was ahead until the job was done.