Reginald Joseph Mitchell (20 May 1895 – 11 June 1937) was a British aircraft designer who worked for the Southampton aviation company Supermarine from 1916 until 1936. He is best known for designing racing seaplanes, such as the Supermarine S.6B, and for leading the team that designed the Supermarine Spitfire.
Born in the village of Butt Lane, Staffordshire, Mitchell attended Hanley High School and afterwards worked as an apprentice at a locomotive engineering works, whilst also studying engineering and mathematics at night. In 1916 he moved to Southampton to join Supermarine. He was appointed Chief Engineer in 1920 and Technical Director in 1927. Between 1920 and 1936 he designed 24 aircraft, including flying boats and racing seaplanes, light aircraft, fighters and bombers. From 1925 to 1929 he worked on a series of racing seaplanes, built by Supermarine to compete in the Schneider Trophy competition, the final entry in the series being the Supermarine S.6B. The S.6B won the trophy in 1931. Mitchell was authorised by Supermarine to proceed with a new design, the Type 300, which became the Spitfire.
In 1933, Mitchell underwent surgery to treat rectal cancer. He continued to work and earned his pilot's licence in 1934, but in early 1937, he was forced, by a recurrence of the cancer, to give up work. After his death that year, he was succeeded as chief designer at Supermarine by Joseph Smith.
Reginald Joseph Mitchell was born on 20 May 1895 at 115 Congleton Road, in the village of Butt Lane, in Staffordshire, England. He was the second eldest of five children, and the eldest of three brothers. His father Herbert Mitchell was a Yorkshireman who became headmaster of three Staffordshire schools in the Stoke-on-Trent area, before he retired from teaching. He then helped to establish a printing business, Wood, Mitchell and C. Ltd, in Hanley. Herbert Mitchell's wife Eliza Jane Brain was the daughter of a cooper. When Reginald was a child, the family lived in Normacot, now a suburb of Stoke-on-Trent.
Reginald (known to his family as "Reg") attended Queensberry Road Higher Elementary School from the age of eight, before moving on to Hanley High School. There he developed an interest in making and flying model aircraft. In 1911, after leaving school at the age of 16, he worked as an apprentice for Kerr Stuart & Co. of Fenton, a railway engineering works. After completing his apprenticeship he worked in the drawing office at Kerr Stuart, whilst studying engineering and mathematics at a local technical college, where he displayed a talent for mathematics.
After leaving Kerr Stuart in 1916, Mitchell worked for a period as a part-time teacher. He applied to join the armed forces on two occasions, but was on each occasion rejected because of his training as an engineer.
Reginald had a nephew; J. W. Mitchell, an artist who painted several scenes involving his uncle's Spitfires; profits from his sales of his work were donated to the RAF Benevolent Fund.
Mitchell married Florence Dayton in 1918 in Caverswall, Staffordshire, England. They had one son, Kenneth Gordon Brent Mitchell, born in 1920.
In 1916, Mitchell joined the Supermarine Aviation Works at Southampton, possibly for a probationary period. Since its formation in 1912, the company had specialised in building flying boats, producing its first aircraft, the Pemberton-Billing P.B.1, in 1914. During the First World War, Supermarine was taken over by the British Government, and during this period the company produced the first British single-seat flying boat fighter, the Supermarine Baby.
On joining the company, Mitchell was given the opportunity to develop skills in a number of roles, so as to gain experience of the aircraft industry. His basic engineering training would have helped him to become established, as he adjusted from working with locomotives to understanding aeroplanes. A competent mathematician, Mitchell's ability to think creatively and use his intuition when looking at a design was soon recognised. The earliest record of his work at Supermarine is as a draughtsman, and dates from 1916. By 1917, he had become assistant to the company's owner and designer, Hubert Scott-Paine. He is likely to have played a role in the development of the Baby when in 1919 it was adapted for racing for the Schneider Trophy, and was renamed the Supermarine Sea Lion.
In 1918, Mitchell was promoted to become the works manager's assistant. When Supermarine's chief designer William Hargreaves left the company in the summer of 1919, he was replaced by Mitchell, who took up his new duties later that year, leading a team that had in 1918 consisted of six draughtsmen and a secretary. Following his promotion, the 19-year-old returned to Staffordshire and married his fiancée Florence Dayson, an infant school headmistress, who was 11 years his senior. By 1921 he had become Supermarine's chief engineer. Following the departure of Scott-Paine in November 1923, Mitchell was able to negotiate a new contract, which led to greater influence in the company. The 10-year contract was a sign of his indispensability to Supermarine.
It is unclear how it was that Mitchell was so quickly promoted when he was still a young man, as few documents relating to his early career have survived. However, his early promotion was not unusual at that time; other men of Mitchell's age held similar positions in other aircraft companies. Decades after his death, when approached for information about him, those surviving Supermarine colleagues who had known Mitchell were reluctant to divluge their personal memories.
1920s civilian and military aircraft designs
Between 1920 and 1936, Mitchell designed 24 aeroplanes. His early projects often involved adapting Supermarine's earlier aircraft; in June 1920 the Air Ministry announced a civilian aircraft competition, and Supermarine's entry for the competition was the Commercial Amphibian, an adaptation by Mitchell of the company's Supermarine Channel. The Amphibian finished second, but was judged the best of the three entrants in terms of design and reliability. His redesigned Supermarine Baby, renamed the Supermarine Sea King, was exhibited the Olympia International Aero Exhibition in 1920, the first international exhibition to be held in the UK since the end of World War I. In 1922, the Chilean government bought a Channel, modified by Mitchell. That year he redesigned a version of the Commercial Amphibian, the Supermarine Sea Eagle.
Mitchell produced new designs for aircraft early in his career; he designed the Supermarine Seal II in 1920, and the triplane Flying Boat Torpedo Carrier the following year. The historian Ralph Pegram notes that the unbuilt Torpedo Carrier reveals the "first true indication of Mitchell's thoughts as a designer". In 1921 work began on the Supermarine Swan, a commercial carrier, but only the prototype was built. The Supermarine Seagull II—later used as the basis for future designs—began to receive production orders in 1922. The Amphibian Service Bomber was designed by Mitchell in 1924. Renamed the Supermarine Scarab, 12 aircraft were bought by the Spanish Navy; they remained in service until 1928.
Supermarine's first design for a land aircraft, the Supermarine Sparrow, competed unsuccessfully during the Air Ministry's Light Air Competition of 1924, and subsequently failed to gain orders. A variant, the Supermarine Sparrow II, was used by Mitchell to test his different airfoil designs.
Work on the Supermarine Southampton started in March 1924. It flew for the first time the following March, and entered service in July 1925. By the end of 1925, Mitchell's team had designed the Southampton II—the Southampton but with a metal hull. The plane, more powerful, lighter, and more durable than its predecessor, flew for the first time in 1927. A paper by Mitchell on the use of the Southampton appeared in the March 1926 edition of Flight magazine. In 1928, a flight of Supermarine Southampton IIs left Felixstowe on 14 October for Australia, and returned to the UK on 11 December. The expedition provided Mitchell's design team with valuable information about operating aircraft in the tropics. The Southampton was one of the most successful flying boats of the between-war period, and established Britain as a leading developer of maritime aircraft. It was used to equip six RAF squadrons up to 1936.