The ultimate of the spitfire/seafire family.
I was reading an article about the Griffon engined Seafires from Mk15 to Mk47. I was amazed I read the following figures:
Spitfire Mk1 Seafire Mk47
Power 1030 hp 2350 hp
Speed 362 mph 452 mph
Weight 4306 lb 8680 lb
Wing area 242.1 ft2 243.6 ft2
What is amazing from the above is the huge development potential that Mitchell's design had, to more than double its installed power and weight and increase speed by abt 100mph without substantially altering the shape and structure of the plane and by a mere increase of the wing area by 1.4 ft2.
That is one hell of an engineering genius to me!