title: Juan Carlos I

text: In October 1990, Juan Carlos visited the Chilean city of Valdivia amidst the beginning of the Chilean transition to democracy. While he and the Queen were cheered by some, groups of indigenous Mapuches approached the king some to protest past colonialism and others to have the King ratify past Mapuche-Spanish treaties. According to "El País" political infighting between Mapuches prevented Juan Carlos from hosting an official meeting with Mapuche representatives.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In July 2000, Juan Carlos was the target of an enraged protester when former priest Juan María Fernández y Krohn, who had once attacked Pope John Paul II, breached security and attempted to approach the king.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: When the media asked Juan Carlos in 2005 whether he would endorse the bill legalising same-sex marriage that was then being debated in the "Cortes Generales", he answered ""Soy el Rey de España y no el de Bélgica"" ("I am the King of Spain, not of Belgium")a reference to King Baudouin of Belgium, who had refused to sign the Belgian law legalising abortion. The King gave his Royal Assent to Law 13/2005 on 1 July 2005; the law legalising same-sex marriage was gazetted in the "Boletín Oficial del Estado" on 2 July, and came into effect on 3 July.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: According to a poll in the newspaper "El Mundo" in November 2005, 77.5% of Spaniards thought Juan Carlos was "good or very good", 15.4% "not so good", and only 7.1% "bad or very bad". Even so, the issue of the monarchy re-emerged on 28 September 2007 as photos of the king were burnt in public in Catalonia by small groups of protesters wanting the restoration of the Republic.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In November 2007, at the Ibero-American Summit in Santiago de Chile, during a heated exchange, Juan Carlos interrupted Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, saying, ""¿Por qué no te callas?"" ("Why don't you shut up?"). Chávez had been interrupting the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, while the latter was defending his predecessor and political opponent, José María Aznar, after Chávez had referred to Aznar as a fascist and "less human than snakes". The King shortly afterwards left the hall when President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua accused Spain of intervention in his country's elections and complained about some Spanish energy companies working in Nicaragua. This was an unprecedented diplomatic incident and a rare display of public anger by the King.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Juan Carlos detailed for the first time in 2011 the yearly royal budget of €8.3 million, excluding expenses such as the electricity bill, paid by the State.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In April 2012, Juan Carlos faced criticism for an elephant-hunting trip in Botswana. The public found out about the trip only after the King injured himself and a special aircraft was sent to bring him home. Spanish officials stated that the expenses of the trip were not paid by taxpayers or by the palace, but by Mohamed Eyad Kayali, a businessman of Syrian origin. Cayo Lara Moya of the United Left party said the King's trip "demonstrated a lack of ethics and respect toward many people in this country who are suffering a lot" while Tomás Gómez of the Socialist party said Juan Carlos should choose between "public responsibilities or an abdication". In April 2012, Spain's unemployment was at 23% and nearly 50% for young workers. "El País" estimated the total cost of a hunting trip at €44,000, about twice the average annual salary in Spain. A petition called for the king to resign from his position as honorary president of the Spanish branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature. The WWF itself responded by asking for an interview with the King to resolve the situation. In July 2012, WWF-Spain held a meeting in Madrid and decided with 226 votes to 13 to remove the King from its honorary presidency. He later apologised for the hunting trip.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Up until the Botswana elephant trip, Juan Carlos had enjoyed a high level of shielding from media scrutiny, described as "rare among Western leaders".


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Spanish news media speculated about the King's future in early 2014, following public criticism over his taking an elephant hunting safari in Botswana and an embezzlement scandal involving his daughter Cristina, and her husband Iñaki Urdangarin. The King's chief of staff denied in a briefing that the "abdication option" was being considered. On the morning of 2 June 2014, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy made a televised announcement that the King had told him of his intention to abdicate. Later, the King delivered a televised address and announced that he would abdicate the throne in favour of the Prince of Asturias. Royal officials described the King's choice as a personal decision which he had been contemplating since his 76th birthday at the start of the year. The King reportedly said, "No queremos que mi hijo se marchite esperando como el príncipe Carlos." (English: "We do not want my son to wither waiting like Prince Charles.") As required by the Spanish constitution, any abdication would be settled by means of an organic law. A draft law was passed with 299 in favour, 19 against and 23 abstaining. On 18 June, he signed the organic law passed by parliament several hours before his abdication took effect. Felipe was enthroned on 19 June 2014, and Juan Carlos's granddaughter Leonor became the new Princess of Asturias. Juan Carlos was the fourth European monarch to abdicate in just over a year, following Pope Benedict XVI (28 February 2013), Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands (30 April 2013), and King Albert II of Belgium (21 July 2013).


title: Juan Carlos I

text: The Spanish constitution at the time of the abdication did not grant an abdicated monarch the legal immunity of a head of state, but the government changed the law to allow this. However, unlike his previous immunity, the new legislation left him accountable to the supreme court, in a similar type of protection afforded to many high-ranking civil servants and politicians in Spain. The legislation stipulates that all outstanding legal matters relating to the former king be suspended and passed "immediately" to the supreme court.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: The Spanish press gave the announcement a broadly positive reception, but described the moment as an "institutional crisis" and "a very important moment in the history of democratic Spain". Around Spain and in major cities (including London) the news was met by republican celebration and protests, calling for the end of the monarchy.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Catalan leader Artur Mas said that the news of the King's abdication would not slow down the process of independence for Catalonia. Iñigo Urkullu, the President of the Basque government, concluded that the King's reign was "full of light yet also darkness" and said that his successor Felipe should remember that "the Basque Question has not been resolved". Other regional leaders had more positive evaluations of Juan Carlos following his decision to abdicate: Alberto Núñez Feijóo of Galicia called him "the King of Democracy" who "guaranteed the continuation of constitutional monarchy" and Alberto Fabra of the Valencian Community said that Spaniards are proud of their king who had been "at the forefront of protecting our interests inside and outside of our borders".


title: Juan Carlos I

text: British Prime Minister David Cameron stated: "I would like to use this opportunity to make a tribute to King Juan Carlos, who has done so much during his reign to aid the successful Spanish transition to democracy, and has been a great friend of the United Kingdom." The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said that Juan Carlos was a "believer in Europeanism and modernity...without whom one could not understand modern Spain".


title: Juan Carlos I

text: The Spanish public also gave a broadly positive opinion not only of the abdication but of his reign as a whole. According to a poll taken by "El Mundo", 65% saw the King's reign as either good or very good, up from 41.3%. Overall, 55.7% of those polled in the 3–5 June survey by Sigma Dos supported the institution of the monarchy in Spain, up from 49.9% when the same question was posed six months prior. 57.5% believed the Prince could restore the royal family's lost prestige. An overwhelming majority of Spaniards believed the new King, Felipe VI, would make a good monarch and more than three-quarters believed King Juan Carlos had been right to hand over the throne to his son.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Juan Carlos continued to have a role as institutional representative. In December 2015, Juan Carlos attended the inauguration of Mauricio Macri as President of Argentina as top Spanish representative. He announced by a letter to his son Felipe that his intention to retire from public life on 2 June 2019. In June 2019, the former King announced his retirement from official duties.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Recordings of the former King's alleged mistress Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn speaking with a former police chief were leaked to the press in mid-2018. Sayn-Wittgenstein claimed that Juan Carlos received kick-backs from commercial contracts in the Gulf States – particularly in the late-2000s construction of the €6.7 billion Haramain high-speed railway in Saudi Arabia – and maintained these proceeds in a bank account in Switzerland. She alleged that he purchased properties in Monaco under her name to circumvent the tax treatment of lawful residents, stating "[not] because he [loved] me a lot, but because I reside in Monaco." She further claimed the head of the Spanish intelligence service warned her that her life, and those of her children, would be at risk if she spoke of their association. The allegations drew demands for Juan Carlos to be investigated for corruption in early June 2019.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Swiss authorities began investigating Juan Carlos in March 2020 in relation to a $100 million gift to Sayn-Wittgenstein in 2012. This donation was linked to alleged kick-back fees from Saudi Arabia. Sayn-Wittgenstein reportedly told the head Swiss prosecutor on 19 December 2018 that Juan Carlos had given her €65 million out of "gratitude and love", to guarantee her future and her children's, because "he still had hopes to win her back". A letter written by Juan Carlos to his Swiss lawyers in 2018 stated the gift was irrevocable, despite his having asked in 2014 for the return of the money. On 14 March 2020, "The Telegraph" reported that his son Felipe, King of Spain since 2014, appeared as second beneficiary (after Juan Carlos) of the Lucum Foundation, which had received a €65 million donation by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. On 15 March 2020, the Royal Household declared that Felipe VI would renounce any inheritance from his father. Additionally, the Household announced that the former king would lose his public stipend from the State's General Budget.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In June 2020, the public prosecutor's office of the Supreme Court of Spain agreed to investigate Juan Carlos's role as facilitator in Phase II of the high speed rail connecting Mecca and Medina, intending to determine the criminal relevance of events that took place after his abdication in June 2014. As King of Spain, Juan Carlos was immune from prosecution from 1975 to 2014 by sovereign immunity.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: A further investigation by Swiss authorities was undertaken regarding €3.5 million paid from the Lucum Foundation to the Bahamas-based bank Pictet & Ciein for a society called Dolphin, which was controlled by the lawyer Dante Canónica, who also controlled Lucum.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In December 2021, the Swiss prosecutors dropped all cases due to the impossibility of proving any illegality.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Spanish prosecutors opened an investigation into the use by Juan Carlos and other members of the royal family of credit cards used between 2016 and 2018 which were paid for by an overseas account to which neither Juan Carlos nor any member of the royal family were signatories, leading to accusations that the funds are undisclosed assets of Juan Carlos, and as the card drawings exceeded €120,000 in one year, comprised undisclosed income and was therefore a tax offence in Spain. Mexican millionaire and investment banker Allen Sanginés-Krause has been named as the owner of the cards, a friend of Juan Carlos to whom he donated sums of money using Air Force Colonel Nicolás Murga Mendoza as an intermediary.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In December 2020, Juan Carlos reportedly paid 678,393.72 euros to Spain's tax agency for the concept of defrauded money in an affair of "opaque credit cards" used between 2016 and 2018 by himself, his wife and some grandchildren, intending to avoid further scrutiny from the Supreme Court's prosecutor, the payment being an admission of fraud.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Swiss and Spanish prosecutors also investigated several accounts related to the former King, such as an account in Switzerland with almost €8 million and an attempt to withdraw nearly €10 million from Jersey, possibly from a trust set up by or for Juan Carlos in the 1990s. Juan Carlos claims he is "not responsible for any Jersey trust and never has been, either directly or indirectly".


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In March 2022, Spanish prosecutors closed all cases against him following the same decision from Swiss prosecutors in December 2021.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Founded in Liechtenstein in 2003 and owned by Álvaro de Orleans-Borbón, a distant cousin of Juan Carlos who lives in Monaco received a large sum of money from Switzerland, Juan Carlos is named as the third beneficiary. In 2009 Álvaro de Orleans-Borbón paid a cheque from Mexico for €4.3 million into the account which the Swiss adjudicated belonged to Juan Carlos. Juan Carlos appears to have drawn down funds from the Zagatka foundation to spend €8 million between 2009 and 2018 on private flights, with Air Partner receiving around €6.1 million. Zagatka used commissions due to Juan Carlos and paid to Zagatka to invest millions, mainly in Ibex35 companies between 2003 and 2018.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: On 25 February 2021, Juan Carlos paid 4 million euros to the Spanish Tax Agency to avoid new tax offenses in relation with these flights.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: A Panamanian Lucum foundation had Juan Carlos as the first beneficiary and King Felipe VI as a named second beneficiary, although King Felipe VI has subsequently relinquished any inheritance from his father Juan Carlos. Lucum received $100 million from the Saudi royal house in 2008. Swiss prosecutors are concerned about who at the Swiss bank, Mirabaud & Cie, knows who the account was for and what was discovered about the source of the funds from the Ministry of Finance of Saudi Arabia. They are also concerned about a transfer of €3.5m from Lucum to an account held by Dante Canónica in the Bahamas. In 2012 the Mirabaud bank, which had concealed from its employees the beneficial owner of the account, asked for the account to be closed, due to possible adverse publicity; this was when the bulk of the funds were transferred to Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: On 3 August 2020, the Palace of Zarzuela announced Juan Carlos wished to relocate from Spain because of increased media press about his business dealings in Saudi Arabia and left a letter to his son saying so. By the time the letter had been made public, he had already left the country. Journalists speculated that he might have fled to the Dominican Republic, Portugal, France, and Italy, and, later, as of 7 August, the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. The Royal Household initially declined requests to publicly disclose Juan Carlos's location; on 17 August, the Royal Household confirmed that, since 3 August, Juan Carlos was in the United Arab Emirates, where he arrived by taking a private plane from Vigo Airport.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Juan Carlos is also the alleged father of Alberto Solà Jimenez, born in Barcelona in 1956, also of a woman born in Catalonia in 1964, and of Ingrid Sartiau, a Belgian woman born in 1966 who has filed a paternity suit, but complete sovereign immunity prevented that suit prior to his abdication. Juan Carlos had several extramarital affairs, which adversely affected his marriage.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In 1972, Juan Carlos, a keen sailor, competed in the Dragon class event at the Olympic Games, finishing 15th. During their summer holidays, the whole family spends time at Marivent Palace (Palma de Mallorca) and on the yacht Fortuna, where they would take part in sailing competitions. The king has manned the Bribón series of yachts. In winter, the family often went skiing in Baqueira-Beret and Candanchú (Pyrenees). At present, his hobbies include classic sailing boats.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: Juan Carlos also hunts bears; in October 2004, he angered environmental activists by killing nine bears in central Romania, one of which was pregnant. It was alleged by the Russian regional authorities that in August 2006 Juan Carlos shot a drunken tame bear (Mitrofan the Bear) during a private hunting trip to Russia; the Office of the Spanish Monarchy denied this claim.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: A benign 17–19 mm tumour was removed under general anaesthetic from King Juan Carlos's right lung in an operation carried out in the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona in May 2010. The operation followed an annual check-up, and Juan Carlos was not expected to need any further treatment.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In April 2012, the King underwent surgery for a triple fracture of the hip at the San Jose Hospital, Madrid, following a fall on a private elephant-hunting trip to Botswana. He also underwent a hip operation in September 2013 at Madrid's Quirón hospital. In April 2018, Juan Carlos was admitted to hospital for a surgery on his right knee.


title: Juan Carlos I

text: As of 2021, there are 4 simultaneous television projects in development set to portray the former king, some of which span along a wider time period of the Royal Household: "Palacio real. Brillo y tragedia de la monarquía española" (Diagonal TV), "El rey" (The Mediapro Studio), "El emérito" (Mandarina Producciones) and "XRey" (Starzplay, Sony Pictures TV and The Weekend Studio).


title: Juan Carlos I

text: In 1969, Juan Carlos was named as General Franco's successor and was given the title of 'Prince of Spain'. Upon the death of Franco in 1975, Juan Carlos acceded to the throne of Spain. The current Spanish constitution refers to the monarch by the simple title "King of Spain". Aside from this title, the constitution allows for the use of other historic titles pertaining to the Spanish monarchy, without specifying them. This was also reiterated by a decree promulgated on 6 November 1987 concerning titles of members of the royal family. Since his abdication in 2014, King Juan Carlos has retained, by courtesy, the title and style of king that he enjoyed during his reign.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: A round-robin tournament (or all-go-away-tournament) is a competition in which each contestant meets every other participant, usually in turn. A round-robin contrasts with an elimination tournament, in which participants/teams are eliminated after a certain number of losses.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: The term "round-robin" is derived from the French term "ruban", meaning "ribbon". Over a long period of time, the term was corrupted and idiomized to "robin".


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In a "single round-robin" schedule, each participant plays every other participant once. If each participant plays all others twice, this is frequently called a "double round-robin". The term is rarely used when all participants play one another more than twice, and is never used when one participant plays others an unequal number of times (as is the case in almost all of the major United States professional sports leagues – see AFL (1940–41) and All-America Football Conference for exceptions).


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In the United Kingdom, a round-robin tournament has been called an American tournament in sports such as tennis or billiards which usually have knockout tournaments, although this is now rarely, if ever, done.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In Serbian it is called the Berger system (, ), after chess player Johann Berger. In Brazil it is called (), referring to the accumulation of accounted points as the determinant of each participant's final performance, once all participants have played their games.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In sports with a large number of competitive matches per season, double round-robins are common. Most association football leagues in the world are organized on a double round-robin basis, in which every team plays all others in its league once at home and once away. This system is also used in qualification for major tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup and the continental tournaments (e.g. UEFA European Championship, CONCACAF Gold Cup, AFC Asian Cup, CONMEBOL Copa América and CAF Cup of Nations). There are also round-robin bridge, chess, draughts, go, ice hockey, curling, and Scrabble tournaments. The World Chess Championship decided in 2005 and in 2007 on an eight-player double round-robin tournament where each player faces every other player once as white and once as black.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In a more extreme example, the KBO League of baseball plays a 16-fold round robin, with each of the 10 teams playing each other 16 times for a total of 144 games per team.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: LIDOM (Baseball Winter League in the Dominican Republic) plays a 18-fold round robin as a semi final tournament between four classified teams.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Group tournaments rankings usually go by number of matches won and drawn, with any of a variety of tiebreaker criteria.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Frequently, pool stages within a wider tournament are conducted on a round-robin basis. Examples with single round-robin scheduling include the FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Football Championship, and UEFA Cup (2004–2009) in football, Super Rugby (rugby union) in the Southern Hemisphere during its past iterations as Super 12 and Super 14 (but "not" in its later 15- and 18-team formats), the Cricket World Cup along with Indian Premier League, major Twenty-20 Cricket tournament, and many American Football college conferences, such as the Big 12 (which currently has 10 members). The group phases of the UEFA club competitions and Copa Libertadores are contested as a double round-robin, as are most basketball leagues outside the United States, including the regular season of the EuroLeague (as well as its former Top 16 phase); the United Football League has used a double round-robin for both its 2009 and 2010 seasons.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: The champion in a round-robin tournament is the contestant that wins the most games, except when draws are possible.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In theory, a round-robin tournament is the fairest way to determine the champion from among a known and fixed number of contestants. Each contestant, whether player or team, has equal chances against all other opponents because there is no prior seeding of contestants that will preclude a match between any given pair. The element of luck is seen to be reduced as compared to a knockout system since one or two bad performances need not ruin a competitor's chance of ultimate victory. Final records of participants are more accurate, in the sense that they represent the results over a longer period against the same opposition.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: The system is also better for ranking all participants, not just determining the winner. This is helpful to determine the final rank of all competitors, from strongest to weakest, for purposes of qualification for another stage or competition as well as for prize money.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In team sport the (round-robin) major league champions are generally regarded as the "best" team in the land, rather than the (elimination) cup winners.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Moreover, in tournaments such as the FIFA or ICC World Cups, a first round stage consisting of a number of mini round robins between groups of 4 teams guards against the possibility of a team travelling possibly thousands of miles only to be eliminated after just one poor performance in a straight knockout system. The top one, two, or occasionally three teams in these groups then proceed to a straight knockout stage for the remainder of the tournament.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In the circle of death (see below), it is possible that no champion emerges from a round-robin tournament, even if there is no draw. However, most sports have tie-breaker systems which resolve this.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Round-robins can suffer from being too long compared to other tournament types, and with later scheduled games potentially not having any substantial meaning. They may also require tiebreaking procedures.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Swiss system tournaments attempt to combine elements of the round-robin and elimination formats, to provide a worthy champion using fewer rounds than a round-robin, while allowing draws and losses.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: The main disadvantage of a round robin tournament is the time needed to complete it. Unlike a knockout tournament where half of the participants are eliminated after each round, a round robin requires one round less than the number of participants. For instance, a tournament of 16 teams can be completed in just 4 rounds (i.e. 15 matches) in a knockout (single elimination) format; a double elimination tournament format requires 30 (or 31) matches, but a round-robin would require 15 rounds (i.e. 120 matches) to finish if each competitor faces each other once.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Other issues stem from the difference between the theoretical fairness of the round robin format and practice in a real event. Since the victor is gradually arrived at through multiple rounds of play, teams who perform poorly, who might have been quickly eliminated from title contention, are forced to play out their remaining games. Thus games are played late in the competition between competitors with no remaining chance of success. Moreover, some later matches will pair one competitor who has something left to play for against another who does not. It may also be possible for a competitor to play the strongest opponents in a round robin in quick succession while others play them intermittently with weaker opposition. This asymmetry means that playing the same opponents is not necessarily completely equitable.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: There is also no scheduled showcase final match unless (by coincidence) two competitors meet in the last match of the tournament, with the result of that match determining the championship. A notable instance of such an event was the 1950 FIFA World Cup match between Uruguay and Brazil.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Further issues arise where a round-robin is used as a qualifying round within a larger tournament. A competitor already qualified for the next stage before its last game may either not try hard (in order to conserve resources for the next phase) or even deliberately lose (if the scheduled next-phase opponent for a lower-placed qualifier is perceived to be easier than for a higher-placed one).


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Four pairs in the 2012 Olympics Women's doubles badminton, having qualified for the next round, were ejected from the competition for attempting to lose in the round robin stage to avoid compatriots and better ranked opponents. The round robin stage at the Olympics was a new introduction, and these potential problems were readily known prior to the tournament; changes were made prior to the next Olympics to prevent a repeat of these events.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Another disadvantage, especially in smaller round-robins, is the "circle of death", where teams cannot be separated on a head-to-head record. In a three-team round-robin, where A defeats B, B defeats C, and C defeats A, all three competitors will have a record of one win and one loss, and a tiebreaker will need to be used to separate the teams. This famously happened during the 1994 FIFA World Cup Group E, where all four teams finished with a record of one win, one draw, and one loss. This phenomenon is analogous to the Condorcet paradox in voting theory.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: If formula_1 is the number of competitors, a pure round robin tournament requires formula_2 games. If formula_1 is even, then in each of formula_4 rounds, formula_5 games can be run concurrently, provided there exist sufficient resources (e.g. courts for a tennis tournament). If formula_1 is odd, there will be formula_1 rounds, each with formula_8 games, and one competitor having no game in that round.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: The circle method is the standard algorithm to create a schedule for a round-robin tournament. All competitors are assigned to numbers, and then paired in the first round:


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Next, one of the competitors in the first or last column of the table is fixed (number one in this example) and the others rotated clockwise one position


title: Round-robin tournament

text: To see that - with an even number formula_1 of competitors - this algorithm realizes every possible combination of them (equivalently, that all pairs realized are pairwise different), we argue as follows.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: First, the algorithm obviously realizes every pair of competitors if one of them equals formula_10 (the non-moving competitor).


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Next, for pairs of non-formula_10 competitors, let their distance be the number formula_12 of times the rotation has to be carried out in order that one competitor arrives at the position the other had.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In the example given (formula_13), formula_14 has distance formula_10 to formula_16 and to formula_17 and it has distance formula_18 to formula_19 and to formula_20.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: In a round, a non-leftmost position (not including formula_10) can only be taken by competitors of a fixed distance. In round formula_10 of the example, in the second position competitor formula_14 plays against formula_24, their distance is formula_14. In round formula_14, this position is held by competitors formula_17 and formula_28, also having distance formula_14, etc. Similarly, the next position (formula_16 against formula_28 in round formula_10, formula_14 against formula_34 in round formula_14, etc.) can only hold distance-formula_36 competitors.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: For every formula_12, there are exactly formula_38 pairs of distance formula_39. There are formula_38 rounds and they all realize one distance-formula_39 pair at the same position. Clearly, these pairs are pairwise different. The conclusion is that every distance-formula_39 pair is realized.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: If there are an odd number of competitors, a dummy competitor can be added, whose scheduled opponent in a given round does not play and has a bye. The schedule can therefore be computed as though the dummy were an ordinary player, either fixed or rotating.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Instead of rotating one position, any number relatively prime to formula_44 will generate a complete schedule. The upper and lower rows can indicate home/away in sports, white/black in chess, etc.; to ensure fairness, this must alternate between rounds since competitor 1 is always on the first row. If, say, competitors 3 and 8 were unable to fulfil their fixture in the third round, it would need to be rescheduled outside the other rounds, since both competitors would already be facing other opponents in those rounds. More complex scheduling constraints may require more complex algorithms.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: This schedule is applied in chess and draughts tournaments of rapid games, where players physically move round a table. In France this is called the Carousel-Berger system (Système Rutch-Berger).


title: Round-robin tournament

text: The schedule can also be used for "asynchronous" round-robin tournaments where all games take place at different times (for example, because there is only one venue). The games are played from left to right in each round, and from the first round to the last. When the number of competitors is even, this schedule performs well with respect to quality and fairness measures such as the amount of rest between games. On the other hand, when the number of competitors is odd, it does not perform so well and a different schedule is superior with respect to these measures.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Alternatively Berger tables, named after the Austrian chess master Johann Berger, are widely used in the planning of tournaments


title: Round-robin tournament

text: . Berger published the pairing tables in his two "Schach-Jahrbücher" (Chess Annals), with due reference to its inventor Richard Schurig.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: This constitutes a schedule where player 14 has a fixed position, and all other players are rotated counterclockwise formula_45 positions. This schedule is easily generated manually. To construct the next round, the last player, number 8 in the first round, moves to the head of the table, followed by player 9 against player 7, player 10 against 6, until player 1 against player 2. Arithmetically, this equates to adding formula_45 to the previous row, with the exception of player formula_1. When the result of the addition is greater than formula_44, then subtract formula_44 from the sum.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: This schedule can also be represented as a (n-1, n-1) table, expressing a round in which players meets each other. For example, player 7 plays against player 11 in round 4. If a player meets itself, then this shows a bye or a game against player n. All games in a round constitutes a diagonal in the table.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Both the graph and the schedule were reported by Édouard Lucas in as a recreational mathematics puzzle.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Lucas, who describes the method as "simple and ingenious", attributes the solution to Felix Walecki, a teacher at Lycée Condorcet. Lucas also included an alternative solution by means of a sliding puzzle.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: For an even number formula_1 or an odd number formula_51 of competitors, Schurig builds a table with formula_52 vertical rows and formula_38 horizontal rows. Then he populates it starting from the top left corner by repeating the sequence of numbers from 1 up to formula_38. Here is an example table for 7 or 8 competitors:


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Then to get the opponents a second table is constructed. Every horizontal row formula_55 is populated with the same numbers as row formula_56 in the previous table (the last row is populated with numbers from the first row in the original table), but in the reverse order (from right to left).


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Then the first column is updated: if the number of competitors is even, player number formula_1 is alternatingly substituted for the first and second positions, whereas if the number of competitors is odd a bye is used instead.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: The pairing tables were published as an annex concerning the arrangements for the holding of master tournaments.


title: Round-robin tournament

text: Schurig did not provide a proof nor a motivation for his algorithm. For more historical details, see Ahrens.


title: Melora Hardin

text: Melora Hardin (born June 29, 1967) is an American actress, known for her roles as Jan Levinson on NBC's "The Office" and Trudy Monk on USA Network's "Monk", and Tammy Cashman on Amazon Prime Video's "Transparent", for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Hardin starred as magazine editor-in-chief Jacqueline Carlyle on the Freeform comedy-drama "The Bold Type", which aired from June 2017 to June 2021.


title: Melora Hardin

text: Hardin was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of acting manager, coach, and retired actress Diane (née Hill) and actor Jerry Hardin. She is the sister of former Flock CEO Shawn Hardin. She moved to San Francisco, California at age five and later attended middle and high school in the San Fernando Valley at Patrick Henry Junior High School and Ulysses S. Grant High School, respectively. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.


title: Melora Hardin

text: Hardin started her acting career as the young star of the television series "Thunder" (1977–1978), and has appeared in over 70 movies and television programs since, including episode 39 of "The Love Boat" in 1978, two episodes of the medical drama "Quincy, M. E." (as Amanda in the 1979 episode "Never a Child" and as Abagail "Abby" Garvin in the infamous 1982 anti-punk rock episode "Next Stop, Nowhere"), two 1981 "Little House on the Prairie" episodes (as Belinda Stevens in "The Reincarnation of Nellie", Parts 1 and 2) as well as playing Michele Pierson in the 1983 television movie "Little House: Look Back to Yesterday". Hardin appeared as Whitney Dunbar, opposite C. Thomas Howell, in the 1986 film, "Soul Man". She starred as Baby in the short-lived 1988 television series "Dirty Dancing" (based on the 1987 film of the same name) and two 1992 episodes of "Quantum Leap" (as Abigail in "Trilogy", Parts 2 and 3). She co-starred in the 1990 dance movie "Lambada" as Sandy. She appeared in "Absolute Power" (1997) as Christy Sullivan and played Ross's dirty-talking love interest in the season 1 "Friends" episode "The One with the Stoned Guy".


title: Melora Hardin

text: She was also originally cast in "Back to the Future" (1985) as Jennifer Parker alongside Eric Stoltz, who starred as Marty McFly. Stoltz was fired shortly after filming began and was replaced with Michael J. Fox. Hardin was deemed too tall to star alongside Fox, and she was later replaced by Claudia Wells.


title: Melora Hardin

text: Hardin played a nightclub singer in Disney's "The Rocketeer" (1991), where she can be heard singing "Begin the Beguine". She also played a major role in the TV movie "Tower of Terror", where she sings "Boy of My Dreams".


title: Melora Hardin

text: Hardin starred in the 2000–2001 series "", and she played the recurring role of Trudy Monk, the title character's deceased wife, on the USA Network series "Monk" (2004-2009). She appeared on the series "NCIS" as former Petty Officer Erin Toner in the episode "The Curse". In 2005, Hardin portrayed Linda Evans in "", a fictionalized television movie based on the creation and behind the scenes production of the 1980s primetime soap opera "Dynasty". Hardin played Jan Levinson in "The Office" (2005–2013), a former corporate manager and love interest of Michael Scott.


title: Melora Hardin

text: Hardin appeared in the 2006 film "Thank You for Smoking", and appears in "" as the love interest of Billy Ray Cyrus's character. The film premiered on April 10, 2009. She played the role of Fantine in the Hollywood Bowl's concert of "Les Misérables" in Summer 2008. Hardin appeared in several episodes of the popular web show "Elevator" on YouTube.


title: Melora Hardin

text: Hardin made her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in the revival of "Chicago: The Musical" on December 29, 2008. She stayed with the show until February 12, 2009. Also in 2009, Hardin was cast as Principal Jane Masterson in the popular comedy film 17 Again. Hardin was cast as a major character in "Outlaw", playing a powerful senior partner of an elite law firm, and the main love interest to the series' protagonist, played by Jimmy Smits. Hardin played the role of Isabelle Palmer's mother Nancy in "".


title: Melora Hardin

text: Hardin sang the U.S. national anthem at the Anaheim Ducks’ season opening hockey game on October 13, 2010, and did the same for the Phoenix Coyotes three days later. She also sang the anthem at the Dover International Speedway for the AAA 400 on October 2, 2011.


title: Melora Hardin

text: In September 2021, Hardin was announced as one of the celebrities competing on season 30 of "Dancing with the Stars". She and her professional dance partner, Artem Chigvintsev, made it to the semifinals and ultimately finished in 6th place.


title: Melora Hardin

text: Hardin has been married to actor Gildart Jackson since 1997. They have two daughters, Rory and Piper.


title: George Lazenby

text: George Robert Lazenby (; born 5 September 1939) is an Australian actor. He was the second actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969). Having appeared in only one film, Lazenby's tenure as Bond is the shortest among the actors in the series.


title: George Lazenby

text: Beginning his professional career as a model, Lazenby had only acted in commercials when he was cast to replace original Bond actor Sean Connery. He declined to return in subsequent Bond films and instead pursued roles in films throughout the 1970s that included "Universal Soldier" (1971), "Who Saw Her Die?" (1972), "The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss" (1974), "The Man from Hong Kong" (1975) and "The Kentucky Fried Movie" (1977). After his career stalled during this period, he moved into business and invested in real estate.


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby later appeared in roles that parodied the James Bond character. In 2017, a Hulu docudrama film, "Becoming Bond", featured Lazenby recounting his life story and portrayal of Bond.


title: George Lazenby

text: George Robert Lazenby was born on 5 September 1939 in Goulburn, New South Wales, at Ovada Private Hospital, to railway worker George Edward Lazenby and Sheila Joan Lazenby (née Bodel), who worked at Fosseys. He went to Goulburn Public School in his primary years, and Goulburn High School until 1954. His sister, Barbara, was an accomplished dancer. When he was young he spent 18 months in hospital after having an operation which left him with only half a kidney.


title: George Lazenby

text: When Lazenby was about 14 he moved with his family from Goulburn to Queanbeyan, where his father ran a store. He served in the Australian Army, then afterwards worked as a car salesman and mechanic.


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby moved to London in 1963 to pursue a woman with whom he'd fallen in love. He became a used-car salesman in Finchley, and subsequently sold new cars in Park Lane, where he was spotted by a talent scout who persuaded him to become a model. He was soon earning £25,000 a year (£ today). He was widely known for an advertisement for Fry's chocolate bars. In 1966, he was voted Top Model of the Year.


title: George Lazenby

text: In 1968, after Sean Connery had left the role of James Bond, producer Albert R. Broccoli met Lazenby for the first time while they were getting their hair cut at the same barbershop. Broccoli later saw him in the Big Fry commercial and felt he could possibly be a Bond, on which basis he invited him to do a screen test.


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby dressed for the part by sporting several sartorial Bond elements such as a Rolex Submariner wristwatch and a Savile Row suit, which had been ordered, but not collected, by Connery.


title: George Lazenby

text: Broccoli offered him an audition. The position was consolidated when Lazenby accidentally punched a professional wrestler, who was acting as stunt coordinator, in the face, impressing Broccoli with his ability to display aggression. Director Peter R. Hunt later said:


title: George Lazenby

text: In July 1969, after making "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", Lazenby returned home to Queanbeyan to see his parents. He said he had 18 films to consider. "But it's all commercial rubbish, such as the guy getting the girl at the end of the "Battle of Britain"," he said. "I'll just have to wait and see." He also told the press "I don't think I'm ready for anything like Hamlet yet but I'd love to play Ned Kelly."


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby said he intended to make the next Bond film, which was to be "The Man with the Golden Gun". However, by November 1969, and prior to the release of "OHMSS", Lazenby said he no longer wished to play another Bond role, saying, "The producers made me feel like I was mindless. They disregarded everything I suggested simply because I hadn't been in the film business like them for about a thousand years." His co-star Diana Rigg was among many who commented on this decision:


title: George Lazenby

text: Rigg was also quoted as saying, "I can no longer cater for his obsession with himself. He is utterly, unbelievably ... bloody impossible."


title: George Lazenby

text: "I draw a veil over the chap," said Desmond Llewelyn (who played Q in 17 Bond films). "How can you expect someone who's never acted before ... to take on a leading role?"


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby grew a beard and long hair. "Bond is a brute ... I've already put him behind me. I will never play him again. Peace – that's the message now," he announced.


title: George Lazenby

text: At the time of the release of "OHMSS", Lazenby's performance received mixed reviews. Some felt that, while he was physically convincing, some of his costumes were inappropriate – "too loud" according to some – and that he delivered his lines poorly.


title: George Lazenby

text: Others, however, have developed differing views in the decades since the film. In the 1998 book "The Essential James Bond", Lee Pfeiffer and Dave Worrell write:


title: George Lazenby

text: Roger Moore made reference to Lazenby in his commentary for a 2007 DVD release of "The Man with the Golden Gun": Lazenby was told by Connery in a restaurant "you were good".


title: George Lazenby

text: Although Lazenby had been offered a contract for seven movies, his agent, Ronan O'Rahilly, convinced him that the secret agent would be archaic in the liberated 1970s, and as a result he left the series after the release of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" in 1969. After this role Lazenby is claimed to have begun studying drama at Durham University's College of the Venerable Bede. though this was not reported on at the time.


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby has portrayed James Bond several times over the years in numerous parodies and unofficial 007 roles, notably the 1983 television film "The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E." (in which his character is identified only by the initials J.B.), 1996 video game "Fox Hunt" (parts of which were reedited into a feature film) and an episode of "The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents", entitled "Diamonds Aren't Forever". In 2012 Lazenby made a guest appearance on the Canadian sketch comedy series "This Hour Has 22 Minutes", spoofing the 007 series in a skit called "Help, I've Skyfallen and I Can't Get Up". Lazenby was complimentary of the finished film in later years; "In retrospect it was well done. I can’t say I was Richard Burton, or a great actor in it because it was my first acting experience, but I did carry the role. It was tough carrying the role after Sean Connery because he was good. I liked him. You’ve got to understand the story was good, and it had some substance while most of them, I hate to say, don’t."


title: George Lazenby

text: For a time there was some talk Lazenby would appear in a western, "Deakin". He talked to the press about his use of LSD and marijuana and was involved in a well-publicised incident helping a friend who was arrested in Germany. He grew his hair and a moustache and talked about rejecting the "trappings of materialism".


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby made another film a year after "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" – "Universal Soldier" (1971), which he helped write. He said the movie was "anti-guns and anti-Bond... a [comedy] with no plot. It is really just a series of happenings which keep the audience entertained. This is the kind of film which is coming out in Europe now."


title: George Lazenby

text: "After the Bond fiasco nobody would touch me," admitted Lazenby. "Harry Saltzman had always said, 'If you don't do another Bond you'll wind up doing spaghetti westerns in Italy. But I couldn't even get one of those. My agent couldn't believe it. But the word was out – I was 'difficult'."


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby next appeared in the 1972 Italian giallo film "Who Saw Her Die?" opposite Anita Strindberg, a performance for which he lost 35 pounds and received positive reviews. He spent the next 15 months sailing around the world with Chrissie Townson which ended when she became pregnant with their first child, prompting Lazenby to settle down and try to re-activate his career as an actor.


title: George Lazenby

text: In February 1973, he revealed that he had spent all of the money he had earned from playing Bond, had experienced two nervous breakdowns and had become an alcoholic. He said if he had not left the role he would have been "locked up by now... You need mental conditioning to play Bond", he added. "I burnt some bridges behind me, and it was fun, really. I'm sort of glad I did it and I know I won't have to do it again. I can look back and laugh because I didn't hurt anyone — except myself."


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby played a role in the BBC's "Play For Today" series in 1973, starring in Roger Smith's "The Operation". He was meant to follow it with an Anglo-Italian western made in Turkey, followed by a film about rioting students in pre-Castro Cuba, but neither was made.


title: George Lazenby

text: In 1973, Lazenby said he was "flat broke" when he went to Hong Kong to meet Bruce Lee and producer Raymond Chow. They ended up offering him $10,000 ($ today) to appear in a film with Lee, which was going to be the Golden Harvest film "Game of Death". However this collapsed after Lee's sudden death – Lazenby was actually meant to meet Lee for lunch on the day Lee died.


title: George Lazenby

text: Instead it was announced Lazenby would make "The Golden Needles of Ecstasy" for Golden Harvest. "I'm excited to be able to concentrate on just acting in this film," he said. "On "Universal Soldier" I was involved in the production, the writing and even a bit in direction. I don't think I'm a good enough actor to get fragmented like that on a job. Now I can give my full concentration to acting. I hope it will be good and lead to other roles."


title: George Lazenby

text: He revealed he had been consulting an astrologer for four years. "Even before I made the Bond picture she said I would become famous, and that there would be big problems for a couple of years," he said. "Then she assured me that I would be back at the top of my profession by the end of 1973. It's absolutely fantastic, because everything she has told me has happened."


title: George Lazenby

text: In the end, Lazenby did not make "Golden Needles" but shot three other films for Golden Harvest, "Stoner" (1974) (aka "The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss"), "The Man from Hong Kong" (1975) (also known as "The Dragon Flies"), and "A Queen's Ransom" (1976).


title: George Lazenby

text: In the mid-1970s, he appeared in a number of television movies shot in his native Australia, and an episode of the local police drama series "Matlock Police". He also returned to modelling, appearing in a number of advertisements for Benson and Hedges cigarettes.


title: George Lazenby

text: A few years later he told an Australian magazine, "I got a few roles but nothing spectacular, yet I was ready, willing and able to work. I just don't think I'm going to make it here. If something good came along I'd stay, though."


title: George Lazenby

text: In the late 1970s Lazenby moved to Hollywood where he started taking acting lessons and set about trying to reactivate his career. "I enjoy the States, to be quite honest about it," he said. "I've got an American wife and green card so I have the best of both worlds."


title: George Lazenby

text: In 1978 Broccoli described casting Lazenby as "my biggest mistake in 16 years. He just couldn't deal with success. He was so arrogant. There was the stature and looks of a Bond but Lazenby couldn't get along with the other performers and technicians." Sean Connery came to Lazenby's defence saying "I have known George for many years and arrogance is not in his character. Alas I cannot say the same for Cubby Broccoli."


title: George Lazenby

text: "The interesting thing about that is – I've never met Sean," said Lazenby. "I don't know him at all. Once, years ago, he came to pick up someone who was staying at my house and I saw him through the door. That's all. But I always admired him. I tried to copy him when I played Bond because, after all, I wasn't an actor so I thought my best chance would be to try and be as close to Connery as I could."


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby went on to add:It hasn't been easy, trying to climb back... I admit I acted stupidly. It went to my head, everything that was happening to me. But remember, it was my first film... Now what I've got to do is live down my past; convince people I'm not the same person who made a fool of himself all those years ago. I know I can do it. All I need is the chance.


title: George Lazenby

text: In 1978, he took out an advertisement in "Variety", offering himself for acting work. "If I could get a TV series or a good movie, I swear I'd do it for nothing," he told a journalist. "People ask me if the Bond movie wasn't worth it if it got me into acting. It's true that it got me in, but it wasn't worth the ten years it cost me." The following year, he had a substantial supporting role in "Saint Jack" (1979), directed by Peter Bogdanovich.


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby was particularly keen to do "The Thorn Birds". but that project was not made until a number of years later and without Lazenby. He did manage to secure roles in "Hawaii 5-0" and "Evening in Byzantium". The latter was seen by Harry Saltzman who offered Lazenby a leading role in a proposed science fiction film "The Micronauts". "When I tossed Bond in after one movie he said he'd make sure I never got another job," said Lazenby. "Now he's offering me one. It seems that the 10-year sentence is up. Harry saw me in a TV show I'd recently made for NBC. He rang me up out of the blue and said, 'Now that was a damn lousy show, but one thought that you were ger-reat.' " However the movie was never made.


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby made a guest appearance on the television series "Superboy", as an alien disguised as Jor-El, in a two-part episode during the series' second season in 1990. He appeared with Sylvia Kristel in several new "Emmanuelle" films in 1993, many of which appeared on cable television. In 1993, Lazenby had a part in the film "Gettysburg" as Confederate General Johnston Pettigrew.


title: George Lazenby

text: On 19 September 2013, comedian Jim Jefferies announced on Twitter that Lazenby would be playing his father in the upcoming second season of his FX network sitcom "Legit".


title: George Lazenby

text: In 2019, Lazenby starred as Dr. Jason Love in an audiobook version of James Leasor's spy novel "Passport to Oblivion".


title: George Lazenby

text: Lazenby's single portrayal of the iconic Bond character, and his lack of standing as a favourite in the series, has resulted in his name being used as a metaphor for forgettable, non-iconic acting efforts in other entertainment franchises, and for entities that are largely ignored. In his review of "Batman & Robin", widely regarded as the weakest and least successful film in the "Batman" film franchise, Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" said that George Clooney "should go down in history as the George Lazenby of the series". Actor Paul McGann has described himself with good humour as "the George Lazenby of "Doctor Who"" because, although he has continued in the role of the Eighth Doctor in other media, he made only two appearances on television as the eponymous Time Lord. In a September 2006 episode of "The Daily Show", comedian John Oliver suggested that Pope Benedict XVI is the George Lazenby of the papacy, in comparison to "John Paul II's Sean Connery".


title: George Lazenby

text: In 2009, Sondre Lerche released a song called "Like Lazenby" on his album "Heartbeat Radio", in which he laments squandered opportunities wishing for a "second try". Lerche wrote the song after receiving a VHS of the film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" as a child, after sending away for a free copy of the movie only to find he had joined a James Bond film club. He got into trouble when his mother was contacted to pay for the membership. Years later, watching the movie again on DVD (with Lazenby's interviews), he found it to be "a perfect metaphor for life's disappointments".


title: George Lazenby

text: In 2010, Roger Moore, who also played James Bond, provided the voice of a talking cat character named Tab Lazenby in the film "", which contained .


title: George Lazenby

text: In 1973, Lazenby married his girlfriend of three years, Chrissie Townson, a member of the Gannett family. They subsequently had two children, Zachary and Melanie. Zachary was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour when he was eleven and died at 19. Melanie became a real estate broker in New York.


title: George Lazenby

text: In 2002 Lazenby married former tennis player Pam Shriver. In August 2008, it was reported that Shriver had filed for divorce from Lazenby. Documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court cite "irreconcilable differences" for the end of the couple's six-year marriage. The couple have three children, including twins born in 2005. Their divorce was finalized in May 2011.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, from the Mk 1 to the Rolls-Royce Griffon engined Mk 24 using several wing configurations and guns. It was the only British fighter produced continuously throughout the war, and the Spitfire remains popular among enthusiasts, around 70 remain airworthy, and many more are static exhibits in aviation museums throughout the world.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The Spitfire was designed as a short-range, high-performance interceptor aircraft by R. J. Mitchell, chief designer at Supermarine Aviation Works, which operated as a subsidiary of Vickers-Armstrong from 1928. Mitchell developed the Spitfire's distinctive elliptical wing with innovative sunken rivets (designed by Beverley Shenstone) to have the thinnest possible cross-section, achieving a potential top speed greater than that of several contemporary fighter aircraft, including the Hawker Hurricane. Mitchell continued to refine the design until his death in 1937, whereupon his colleague Joseph Smith took over as chief designer, overseeing the Spitfire's development through .


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: During the Battle of Britain (July–October 1940), the public perceived the Spitfire to be the main RAF fighter. In fact the more numerous Hurricane shouldered more of the burden of resisting the Luftwaffe. The Spitfire was a better fighter aircraft than the Hurricane. Spitfire units had a lower attrition rate and a higher victory-to-loss ratio than those flying Hurricanes, probably because of the Spitfire's higher performance. During the battle, Spitfires were generally tasked with engaging Luftwaffe fighters—mainly Messerschmitt Bf 109E-series aircraft, which were a close match for them.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: After the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire superseded the Hurricane as the principal aircraft of RAF Fighter Command, and was used in the European, Mediterranean, Pacific, and South-East Asian theatres. Much loved by its pilots, the Spitfire operated in several roles, including interceptor, photo-reconnaissance, fighter-bomber, and trainer, and it continued to do so until the 1950s. The Seafire was an aircraft-carrier-based adapted version of the Spitfire, used in the Fleet Air Arm from 1942 until the mid-1950s. The original airframe was designed to be powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine producing 1,030 hp (768 kW). It was strong enough and adaptable enough to use increasingly powerful Merlins and, in later marks, Rolls-Royce Griffon engines producing up to 2,340 hp (1,745 kW). As a result, the Spitfire's performance and capabilities improved over the course of its service life.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In 1931 the Air Ministry released specification F7/30, calling for a modern fighter capable of a flying speed of . R. J. Mitchell designed the Supermarine Type 224 to fill this role. The 224 was an open-cockpit monoplane with bulky gull-wings and a large, fixed, spatted undercarriage powered by the , evaporatively cooled Rolls-Royce Goshawk engine. It made its first flight in February 1934. Of the seven designs tendered to F7/30, the Gloster Gladiator biplane was accepted for service.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The Type 224 was a big disappointment to Mitchell and his design team, who immediately embarked on a series of "cleaned-up" designs, using their experience with the Schneider Trophy seaplanes as a starting point. This led to the Type 300, with retractable undercarriage and a wingspan reduced by . This design was submitted to the Air Ministry in July 1934, but was not accepted. It then went through a series of changes, including the incorporation of an enclosed cockpit, oxygen-breathing apparatus, smaller and thinner wings, and the newly developed, more powerful Rolls-Royce PV-XII V-12 engine, which was later named the "Merlin". In November 1934 Mitchell, with the backing of Supermarine's owner Vickers-Armstrong, started detailed design work on this refined version of the Type 300.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: On 1 December 1934, the Air Ministry issued contract "AM 361140/34", providing £10,000 for the construction of Mitchell's improved Type 300, design. On 3 January 1935, they formalised the contract with a new specification, F10/35, written around the aircraft. In April 1935, the armament was changed from two .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers machine guns in each wing to four .303 in (7.7 mm) Brownings, following a recommendation by Squadron Leader Ralph Sorley of the Operational Requirements section at the Air Ministry.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: On 5 March 1936, the prototype ("K5054"), fitted with a fine-pitch propeller to give more power for takeoff, took off on its first flight from Eastleigh Aerodrome (later Southampton Airport) At the controls was Captain Joseph "Mutt" Summers, chief test pilot for Vickers, who is quoted as saying "don't touch anything" on landing. This eight-minute flight came four months after the maiden flight of the contemporary Hurricane.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: "K5054" was fitted with a new propeller, and Summers flew the aircraft on 10 March 1936; during this flight, the undercarriage was retracted for the first time. After the fourth flight, a new engine was fitted, and Summers left the test flying to his assistants, Jeffrey Quill and George Pickering. They soon discovered that the Spitfire was a very capable aircraft, but not perfect. The rudder was oversensitive, and the top speed was just 330 mph (528 km/h), little faster than Sydney Camm's new Merlin-powered Hurricane. A new and better-shaped two bladed wooden propeller allowed the Spitfire to reach 348 mph (557 km/h) in level flight in mid-May, when Summers flew "K5054" to RAF Martlesham Heath and handed the aircraft over to Squadron Leader Anderson of the Aeroplane & Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE). Here, Flight Lieutenant Humphrey Edwardes-Jones took over the prototype for the RAF. He had been given orders to fly the aircraft and then to make his report to the Air Ministry on landing. Edwardes-Jones' report was positive; his only request was that the Spitfire be equipped with an undercarriage position indicator. A week later, on 3 June 1936, the Air Ministry placed an order for 310 Spitfires, before the A&AEE had issued any formal report. Interim reports were later issued on a piecemeal basis.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The British public first saw the Spitfire at the RAF Hendon air display on Saturday 27 June 1936. Although full-scale production was supposed to begin immediately, numerous problems could not be overcome for some time, and the first production Spitfire, "K9787", did not roll off the Woolston, Southampton assembly line until mid-1938.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In February 1936 the director of Vickers-Armstrongs, Sir Robert MacLean guaranteed production of five aircraft a week, beginning 15 months after an order was placed. On 3 June 1936, the Air Ministry placed an order for 310 aircraft, at a cost of £1,395,000. Full-scale production of the Spitfire began at Supermarine's facility in Woolston, but the order clearly could not be completed in the 15 months promised. Supermarine was a small company, already busy building Walrus and Stranraer flying boats, and Vickers was busy building Wellington bombers.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The initial solution was to subcontract the work. Although outside contractors were supposed to be involved in manufacturing many important Spitfire components, especially the wings, Vickers-Armstrongs (the parent company) was reluctant to see the Spitfire being manufactured by outside concerns, and was slow to release the necessary blueprints and subcomponents.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: As a result of the delays in getting the Spitfire into full production, the Air Ministry put forward a plan that its production be stopped after the initial order for 310, after which Supermarine would build Bristol Beaufighters. The managements of Supermarine and Vickers were able to convince the Air Ministry that production problems could be overcome, and a further order was placed for 200 Spitfires on 24 March 1938. The two orders covered the K, L, and N prefix serial numbers.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The first production Spitfire came off the assembly line in mid-1938 and was flown by Jeffrey Quill on 15 May 1938, almost 24 months after the initial order. The final cost of the first 310 aircraft, after delays and increased programme costs, came to £1,870,242 or £1,533 more per aircraft than originally estimated. A production aircraft cost about £9,500. The most expensive components were the hand-fabricated and finished fuselage at roughly £2,500, then the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine at £2,000, followed by the wings at £1,800 a pair, guns and undercarriage, both at £800 each, and the propeller at £350.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In 1935, the Air Ministry approached Morris Motors Limited to ask how quickly their Cowley plant could be turned to aircraft production. In 1936, this informal request for major manufacturing facilities was replaced by a formal scheme, known as the shadow factory plan, to boost British aircraft production capacity under the leadership of Herbert Austin. He was given the task of building nine new factories, and to supplement the British car manufacturing industry by either adding to overall capacity or increasing the potential for reorganisation to produce aircraft and their engines.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In 1938, construction began on the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory (CBAF), next to the aerodrome, and the installation of the most modern machine tools then available began two months after work started on the site. Although Morris Motors, under Lord Nuffield (an expert in mass motor-vehicle construction), managed and equipped the factory, it was funded by the government. By the beginning of 1939, the factory's original estimated cost of £2,000,000 had more than doubled, and even as the first Spitfires were being built in June 1940, the factory was still incomplete, and suffering from personnel problems. The Spitfire's stressed-skin construction required precision engineering skills and techniques that were beyond the capabilities of the local labour force, and some time was required to retrain them. There were difficulties with management, who ignored Supermarine's tooling and drawings in favour of their own, and the workforce continually threatened strikes or "slow downs" until their demands for higher wages were met.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In spite of promises that the factory would be producing 60 per week starting in April, by May 1940 Castle Bromwich had not yet built its first Spitfire. On 17 May, Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook telephoned Lord Nuffield and manoeuvred him into handing over control of the Castle Bromwich plant to his ministry. Beaverbrook immediately sent in experienced management staff and workers from Supermarine, and gave control of the factory to Vickers-Armstrong. Although resolving the problems took time, in June 1940, 10 Mk IIs were built; 23 rolled out in July, 37 in August, and 56 in September. By the time production ended at Castle Bromwich in June 1945, a total of 12,129 Spitfires (921 Mk IIs, 4,489 Mk Vs, 5,665 Mk IXs, and 1,054 Mk XVIs) had been built, at a maximum rate of 320 per month, making CBAF the largest Spitfire factory in the UK and the largest and most successful plant of its type during the 1939–45 conflict.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: During the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe made concerted efforts to destroy the main manufacturing plants at Woolston and Itchen, near Southampton. The first bombing raid, which missed the factories, came on 23 August 1940. Over the next month, other raids were mounted until, on 26 September 1940, both factories were destroyed, with 92 people killed and a large number injured. Most of the casualties were experienced aircraft production workers.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Fortunately for the future of the Spitfire, many of the production jigs and machine tools had already been relocated by 20 September, and steps were being taken to disperse production to small facilities throughout the Southampton area. To this end, the British government requisitioned the likes of Vincent's Garage in Station Square, Reading, which later specialised in manufacturing Spitfire fuselages, and Anna Valley Motors, Salisbury, which was to become the sole producer of the wing leading-edge fuel tanks for photo-reconnaissance Spitfires, as well as producing other components.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: A purpose-built works, specialising in manufacturing fuselages and installing engines, was built at Star Road, Caversham in Reading. The drawing office in which all Spitfire designs were drafted was moved to Hursley Park, near Southampton. This site also had an aircraft assembly hangar where many prototype and experimental Spitfires were assembled, but since it had no associated aerodrome, no Spitfires ever flew from Hursley.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Four towns and their satellite airfields were chosen to be the focal points for these workshops: Southampton's Eastleigh Airport; Salisbury and the High Post and Chattis Hill aerodromes; Trowbridge and RAF Keevil; and Reading's Henley and Aldermaston aerodromes. Completed Spitfires were delivered to the airfields on Commer "Queen Mary" low-loader trailers, there to be fully assembled, tested, then passed on to the RAF. An experimental factory at Newbury was the subject of a Luftwaffe daylight raid, but the bombs missed their target and hit a nearby school.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: All production aircraft were flight tested before delivery. During the Second World War, Jeffrey Quill was Vickers Supermarine's chief test pilot, in charge of flight testing all aircraft types built by Vickers Supermarine. He oversaw a group of 10 to 12 pilots responsible for testing all developmental and production Spitfires built by the company in the Southampton area. Quill devised the standard testing procedures, which with variations for specific aircraft designs operated from 1938. Alex Henshaw, chief test pilot at Castle Bromwich from 1940, was placed in charge of testing all Spitfires built at that factory. He co-ordinated a team of 25 pilots and assessed all Spitfire developments. Between 1940 and 1946, Henshaw flew a total of 2,360 Spitfires and Seafires, more than 10% of total production.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: After a thorough preflight check, I would take off and, once at circuit height, I would trim the aircraft and try to get her to fly straight and level with hands off the stick ... Once the trim was satisfactory, I would take the Spitfire up in a full-throttle climb at 2,850 rpm to the rated altitude of one or both supercharger blowers. Then I would make a careful check of the power output from the engine, calibrated for height and temperature ... If all appeared satisfactory, I would then put her into a dive at full power and 3,000 rpm, and trim her to fly hands and feet off at IAS (Indicated Air Speed). Personally, I never cleared a Spitfire unless I had carried out a few aerobatic tests to determine how good or bad she was.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The production test was usually quite a brisk affair; the initial circuit lasted less than ten minutes and the main flight took between twenty and thirty minutes. Then the aircraft received a final once-over by our ground mechanics, any faults were rectified and the Spitfire was ready for collection.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: I loved the Spitfire in all of her many versions. But I have to admit that the later marks, although they were faster than the earlier ones, were also much heavier and so did not handle so well. You did not have such positive control over them. One test of manoeuvrability was to throw her into a flick-roll and see how many times she rolled. With the Mark II or the Mark V one got two-and-a-half flick-rolls but the Mark IX was heavier and you got only one-and-a-half. With the later and still heavier versions, one got even less. The essence of aircraft design is compromise, and an improvement at one end of the performance envelope is rarely achieved without a deterioration somewhere else.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: When the last Spitfire rolled out in February 1948, a total of 20,351 examples of all variants had been built, including two-seat trainers, with some Spitfires remaining in service well into the 1950s. The Spitfire was the only British fighter aircraft to be in continuous production before, during, and after the Second World War.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In the mid-1930s, aviation design teams worldwide began developing a new generation of fighter aircraft. The French Dewoitine D.520 and the German Messerschmitt Bf 109, for example, were designed to take advantage of new techniques of monocoque construction, and the availability of new, high-powered, liquid-cooled, in-line aero engines. They also featured refinements such as retractable undercarriages, fully enclosed cockpits, and low-drag, all-metal wings. These advances had been introduced on civil airliners years before, but were slow to be adopted by the military, who favoured the biplane's simplicity and manoeuvrability.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Mitchell's design aims were to create a well-balanced, high-performance fighter aircraft capable of fully exploiting the power of the Merlin engine, while being relatively easy to fly. At the time, with France as an ally, and Germany thought to be the most likely future opponent, no enemy fighters were expected to appear over Great Britain. German bombers would have to fly to the UK over the North Sea, and Germany did not have any single-engine fighters with the range to accompany them. To carry out the mission of home defence, the design was intended to allow the Spitfire to climb quickly to intercept enemy bombers.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The Spitfire's airframe was complex. The streamlined, semi-monocoque, duralumin-skinned fuselage featured a number of compound, vertical curves built up from a skeleton of 19 formers, also known as frames, starting from frame number one, immediately behind the propeller unit, to the tail unit attachment frame. The first four frames supported the glycol header tank and engine cowlings. Frame five, to which the engine bearers were secured, supported the weight of the engine and its accessories. This was a strengthened double frame which also incorporated the fireproof bulkhead, and in later versions of the Spitfire, the oil tank. This frame also tied the four main fuselage longerons to the rest of the airframe. Behind the bulkhead were five U-shaped half-frames which accommodated the fuel tanks and cockpit. The rear fuselage started at the 11th frame, to which the pilot's seat and (later) armour plating were attached, and ended at the 19th, which was mounted at a slight forward angle just forward of the fin. Each of these nine frames was oval, reducing in size towards the tail, and incorporated several lightening holes to reduce their weight as much as possible without weakening them. The U-shaped frame 20 was the last frame of the fuselage proper and the frame to which the tail unit was attached. Frames 21, 22 and 23 formed the fin; frame 22 incorporated the tailwheel opening and frame 23 was the rudder post. Before being attached to the main fuselage, the tail unit frames were held in a jig and the eight horizontal tail formers were riveted to them.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: A combination of 14 longitudinal stringers and four main longerons attached to the frames helped form a light, but rigid structure to which sheets of alclad stressed skinning were attached. The fuselage plating was 24, 20, and 18 gauge in order of thickness towards the tail, while the fin structure was completed using short longerons from frames 20 to 23, before being covered in 22 gauge plating.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The skins of the fuselage, wings, and tailplane were secured by dome-headed rivets, and in critical areas such as the wing forward of the main spar where an uninterrupted airflow was required, with flush rivets. From February 1943 flush riveting was used on the fuselage, affecting all Spitfire variants. In some areas, such as at the rear of the wing and the lower tailplane skins, the top was riveted and the bottom fixed by brass screws which tapped into strips of spruce bolted to the lower ribs. The removable wing tips were made up of duralumin-skinned spruce formers.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: At first, the ailerons, elevators, and rudder were fabric-covered, but once combat experience showed that fabric-covered ailerons were impossible to use at high speeds a light alloy replaced the fabric, enhancing control throughout the speed range.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In 1934, Mitchell and the design staff decided to use a semi-elliptical wing shape to solve two conflicting requirements; the wing needed to be thin to avoid creating too much drag, but it had to be thick enough to house the retractable undercarriage, armament, and ammunition. An elliptical planform is the most efficient aerodynamic shape for an untwisted wing, leading to the lowest amount of induced drag. The ellipse was skewed so that the centre of pressure, which occurs at the quarter-chord position, aligned with the main spar, preventing the wings from twisting. Mitchell has sometimes been accused of copying the wing shape of the Günter brothers-designed Heinkel He 70, which first flew in 1932, but as Beverley Shenstone, the aerodynamicist on Mitchell's team, explained: "Our wing was much thinner and had quite a different section to that of the Heinkel. In any case, it would have been simply asking for trouble to have copied a wing shape from an aircraft designed for an entirely different purpose."


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The wing section used was from the NACA 2200 series, which had been adapted to create a thickness-to-chord ratio of 13% at the root, reducing to 9.4% at the tip. A dihedral of 6° was adopted to give increased lateral stability.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: A wing feature that contributed greatly to its success was an innovative spar boom design, made up of five square tubes that fitted into each other. As the wing thinned out along its span, the tubes were progressively cut away in a similar fashion to a leaf spring; two of these booms were linked together by an alloy web, creating a lightweight and very strong main spar. The undercarriage legs were attached to pivot points built into the inner, rear section of the main spar, and retracted outwards and slightly backwards into wells in the non-load-carrying wing structure. The resultant narrow undercarriage track was considered an acceptable compromise as this reduced the bending loads on the main-spar during landing.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Ahead of the spar, the thick-skinned leading edge of the wing formed a strong and rigid, D-shaped box, which took most of the wing loads. At the time the wing was designed, this D-shaped leading edge was intended to house steam condensers for the evaporative cooling system intended for the PV-XII. Constant problems with the evaporative system in the Goshawk led to the adoption of a cooling system which used 100% glycol. The radiators were housed in a new radiator-duct designed by Fredrick Meredith of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough, Hampshire. This used the cooling air to generate thrust, greatly reducing the net drag produced by the radiators. In turn, the leading-edge structure lost its function as a condenser, but it was later adapted to house integral fuel tanks of various sizes— a feature patented by Vickers-Supermarine in 1938.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The airflow through the main radiator was controlled by pneumatic exit flaps. In early marks of the Spitfire (Mk I to Mk VI), the single flap was operated manually using a lever to the left of the pilot's seat. When the two-stage Merlin was introduced in the Spitfire Mk IX, the radiators were split to make room for an intercooler radiator; the radiator under the starboard wing was halved in size and the intercooler radiator housed alongside. Under the port wing, a new radiator fairing housed a square oil cooler alongside of the other half-radiator unit. The two radiator flaps were now operated automatically by a thermostat.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Another wing feature was its washout. The trailing edge of the wing twisted slightly upward along its span, the angle of incidence decreasing from +2° at its root to -½° at its tip. This caused the wing roots to stall before the tips, reducing tip-stall that could otherwise have resulted in a wing drop, often leading to a spin. As the wing roots started to stall, the separating air stream started to buffet (vibrate) the aircraft, warning the pilot, allowing even relatively inexperienced pilots to fly it to the limits of its performance. This washout was first featured in the wing of the Type 224, and became a consistent feature in subsequent designs leading to the Spitfire. The complex wing design, especially the precision required to manufacture the vital spar and leading-edge structures, caused some major delays in the production of the Spitfire at first. The problems increased when the work was put out to subcontractors, most of whom had never dealt with metal-structured, high-speed aircraft. By June 1939, most of these problems had been resolved, and production was no longer held up by a lack of wings.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: All the main flight controls were originally metal structures with fabric covering. Designers and pilots felt that having ailerons which required a degree of effort to move at high speed would avoid unintended aileron reversal, throwing the aircraft around and potentially pulling the wings off. Air combat was also felt to take place at relatively low speeds and high-speed manoeuvring would be physically impossible. Flight tests showed the fabric covering of the ailerons "ballooned" at high speeds, adversely affecting the aerodynamics. Replacing the fabric covering with light alloy dramatically improved the ailerons at high speed. During the Battle of Britain, pilots found the Spitfire's ailerons were far too heavy at high speeds, severely restricting lateral manoeuvres such as rolls and high-speed turns, which were still a feature of air-to-air combat.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The Spitfire had detachable wing tips which were secured by two mounting points at the end of each main wing assembly. When the Spitfire took on a role as a high-altitude fighter (Marks VI and VII and some early Mk VIIIs), the standard wing tips were replaced by extended, "pointed" tips which increased the wingspan from to . The other wing-tip variation, used by several Spitfire variants, was the "clipped" wing; the standard wing tips were replaced by wooden fairings which reduced the span by . The wing tips used spruce formers for most of the internal structure with a light alloy skin attached using brass screws.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The light alloy split flaps at the trailing edge of the wing were also pneumatically operated via a finger lever on the instrument panel. Only two positions were available; fully up or fully down (85°). Flaps were normally lowered only during the final approach and for landing, and the pilot was to retract them before taxiing.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The ellipse also served as the design basis for the Spitfire's fin and tailplane assembly, once again exploiting the shape's favourable aerodynamic characteristics. Both the elevators and rudder were shaped so that their centre of mass was shifted forward, reducing control-surface flutter. The longer noses and greater propeller-wash resulting from larger engines in later models necessitated increasingly larger vertical, and later, horizontal tail surfaces to compensate for the altered aerodynamics, culminating in those of the Mk 22/24 series, which were 25% larger in area than those of the Mk I.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: As the Spitfire gained more power and was able to manoeuvre at higher speeds, the possibility that pilots would encounter aileron reversal increased, and the Supermarine design team set about redesigning the wings to counter this. The original wing design had a "theoretical" aileron reversal speed of , which was somewhat lower than that of some contemporary fighters. The Royal Aircraft Establishment noted that, at indicated airspeed, roughly 65% of aileron effectiveness was lost due to wing twist.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The new wing of the Spitfire F Mk 21 and its successors was designed to help alleviate this problem. Its stiffness was increased by 47%, and a new aileron design using piano hinges and geared trim tabs meant the theoretical aileron reversal speed was increased to . Alongside the redesigned wing, Supermarine also experimented with the original wing, raising the leading edge by 1 inch (2.54 cm), with the hope of improving pilot view and reducing drag. This wing was tested on a modified F Mk 21, also called the F Mk 23, (sometimes referred to as "Valiant" rather than "Spitfire"). The increase in performance was minimal and this experiment was abandoned.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Supermarine developed a new laminar-flow wing based on new aerofoil profiles developed by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in the United States, with the objective of reducing drag and improving performance. These laminar-flow airfoils were the Supermarine 371-I used at the root and the 371-II used at the tip. Supermarine estimated that the new wing could give an increase in speed of over the Spitfire Mk 21. The new wing was initially fitted to a Spitfire Mk XIV. Later, a new fuselage was designed, with the new fighter becoming the Supermarine Spiteful.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Early in its development, the Merlin engine's lack of fuel injection meant that Spitfires and Hurricanes, unlike the Bf 109E, were unable to simply nose down into a steep dive. This meant a Luftwaffe fighter could simply "bunt" into a high-power dive to escape an attack, leaving the Spitfire behind, as its fuel was forced out of the carburettor by negative "g". RAF fighter pilots soon learned to "half-roll" their aircraft before diving to pursue their opponents. Sir Stanley Hooker explained that the carburettor was adopted because it "increased the performance of the supercharger and thereby increased the power of the engine".


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In March 1941, a metal disc with a hole was fitted in the fuel line, restricting fuel flow to the maximum the engine could consume. While it did not cure the problem of the initial fuel starvation in a dive, it did reduce the more serious problem of the carburettor being flooded with fuel by the fuel pumps under negative "g". Invented by Beatrice "Tilly" Shilling, it became known as "Miss Shilling's orifice". Further improvements were introduced throughout the Merlin series, with Bendix-manufactured pressure carburettors, designed to allow fuel to flow during all flight attitudes, introduced in 1942.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Due to a shortage of Brownings, which had been selected as the new standard rifle calibre machine gun for the RAF in 1934, early Spitfires were fitted with only four guns, with the other four fitted later. Early tests showed that, while the guns worked perfectly on the ground and at low altitudes, they tended to freeze at high altitude, especially the outer wing guns, because the RAF's Brownings had been modified to fire from an open bolt. While this prevented overheating of the cordite used in British ammunition, it allowed cold air to flow through the barrel unhindered. Supermarine did not fix the problem until October 1938, when they added hot air ducts from the rear of the wing-mounted radiators to the guns, and bulkheads around the gunbays to trap the hot air in the wing. Red fabric patches were doped over the gun ports to protect the guns from cold, dirt, and moisture until they were fired.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The decision on the arming of the Spitfire (and the Hurricane) is told in Captain C. H. Keith's book "I Hold my Aim". Keith held various appointments with the RAF dealing with designing, development and technical policy of armament equipment. He organised a conference, with Air Commodore Tedder in the chair, on 19 July 1934. He says "I think it can be reasonably contended that the deliberations of that conference made possible, if not certain, of the winning of the Battle of Britain, almost exactly six years later". At that meeting, scientific officer Captain F. W. "Gunner" Hill presented charts based on his calculations showing that future fighters must carry no less than eight machine-guns, each of which must be capable of firing 1,000 shots a minute. Hill's assistant in making his calculations had been his teenage daughter.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Even if the eight Brownings worked perfectly, pilots soon discovered that they were not sufficient to destroy larger aircraft. Combat reports showed that an average of 4,500 rounds were needed to shoot down an enemy aircraft. In November 1938, tests against armoured and unarmoured targets had already indicated that the introduction of a weapon with a calibre of at least 20 mm was urgently needed. A variant on the Spitfire design with four 20 mm Oerlikon cannon had been tendered to specification F37/35, but the order for prototypes had gone to the Westland Whirlwind in January 1939.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In June 1939, a Spitfire was fitted with a drum-fed Hispano in each wing, an installation that required large blisters on the wing to cover the 60-round drum. The cannon suffered frequent stoppages, mostly because the guns were mounted on their sides to fit as much of the magazine as possible within the wing. In January 1940, P/O George Proudman flew this prototype in combat, but the starboard gun stopped after firing a single round, while the port gun fired 30 rounds before seizing. If one cannon seized, the recoil of the other threw the aircraft off aim.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Nevertheless, 30 more cannon-armed Spitfires were ordered for operational trials, and they were soon known as the Mk IB, to distinguish them from the Browning-armed Mk IA; they were delivered to No. 19 Squadron beginning in June 1940. The Hispanos were found to be so unreliable that the squadron requested an exchange of its aircraft with the older Browning-armed aircraft of an operational training unit. By August, Supermarine had perfected a more reliable installation with an improved feed mechanism and four .303s in the outer wing panels. The modified fighters were then delivered to 19 Squadron.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The operational history of the Spitfire with the RAF began with the first Mk Is "K9789", which entered service with 19 Squadron at RAF Duxford on 4 August 1938. The Spitfire achieved legendary status during the Battle of Britain, a reputation aided by the "Spitfire Fund" organised and run by Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Aircraft Production.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In fact, the Hurricane outnumbered the Spitfire throughout the battle, and shouldered the burden of the defence against the Luftwaffe; however, because of its higher performance, the overall attrition rate of the Spitfire squadrons was lower than that of the Hurricane units, and the Spitfire units had a higher victory-to-loss ratio.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The key aim of Fighter Command was to stop the Luftwaffe's bombers; in practice, whenever possible, the tactic was to use Spitfires to counter German escort fighters, by then based in northern France, particularly the Bf 109s, while the Hurricane squadrons attacked the bombers.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: Well-known Spitfire pilots included "Johnnie" Johnson—34 enemy aircraft (e/a) shot down—who flew the Spitfire right through his operational career from late 1940 to 1945. Douglas Bader (20 e/a) and "Bob" Tuck (27 e/a) flew Spitfires and Hurricanes during the major air battles of 1940. Both were shot down and became prisoners of war, while flying Spitfires over France in 1941 and 1942. "Paddy" Finucane (28–32 e/a) scored all his successes in the fighter before disappearing over the English Channel in July 1942. Some notable Commonwealth pilots were George Beurling (31 e/a) from Canada, "Sailor" Malan (27 e/a) from South Africa, New Zealanders Alan Deere (17 e/a) and C F Gray (27 e/a) and the Australian Hugo Armstrong (12 e/a).


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The Spitfire continued to play increasingly diverse roles throughout the Second World War and beyond, often in air forces other than the RAF. For example, the Spitfire became the first high-speed photo-reconnaissance aircraft to be operated by the RAF. Sometimes unarmed, they flew at high, medium, and low altitudes, often ranging far into enemy territory to closely observe the Axis powers and provide an almost continual flow of valuable intelligence information throughout the war.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In 1941 and 1942, PRU Spitfires provided the first photographs of the "Freya" and "Würzburg" radar systems, and in 1943, helped confirm that the Germans were building the V1 and V2 "Vergeltungswaffen" ("vengeance weapons") rockets by photographing Peenemünde, on the Baltic Sea coast of Germany.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: In the Mediterranean, the Spitfire blunted the heavy attacks on Malta by the Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe, and from early 1943, helped pave the way for the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy. On 7 March 1942, 15 Mk Vs carrying 90-gallon fuel tanks under their bellies took off from off the coast of Algeria on a flight to Malta. Those Spitfire Vs were the first to see service outside Britain.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The Spitfire also served on the Eastern Front with the Soviet Air Force (VVS). The first deliveries of the Spitfire Mk VB variant took place at the start of 1943, with the first batch of 35 aircraft delivered via sea to the city of Basra, Iraq. A total of 143 aircraft and 50 furnished hulls (to be used for spare parts) followed by March of the same year. Though some aircraft were used for front line duty in 1943, most of them saw service with the Protivo-Vozdushnaya Oborona (English: "Anti-air Defence Branch"). In 1944, the USSR received the substantially improved Mk IX variant, with the first aircraft delivered in February. Initially, these were refurbished aircraft, but subsequent shipments were factory new. A total of 1,185 aircraft of this model were delivered through Iran, Iraq and the Arctic to northern Soviet ports. Two of these were the Spitfire HF Mk IX (high-altitude modification) while the remainder were the low-altitude LF Mk IX. The last Lend-Lease shipment carrying the Mk IX arrived at the port of Severodvinsk on 12 June 1945.


title: Supermarine Spitfire

text: The Spitfire also served in the Pacific Theatre, meeting the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero. Lt. Gen. Claire Chennault said: "The RAF pilots were trained in methods that were excellent against German and Italian equipment, but suicide against the acrobatic Japs." Although not as fast as the Spitfire, the Zero could out-turn the Spitfire, could sustain a climb at a very steep angle, and could stay in the air for three times as long. To counter the Zero, Spitfire pilots adopted a "slash and run" policy and used their faster speed and diving superiority to fight, while avoiding turning dogfights. The Allies achieved air superiority when the Mk VIII version was introduced to the theatre, replacing the earlier Mk V. In one memorable encounter, New Zealand ace Alan Peart fought a solo dogfight against two dozen Japanese aircraft attacking the Broadway airstrip, shooting down one.