A carrier fighter trades speed for controlled-crash strength

The Type 224 was the first aircraft to carry the Spitfire name and is presented as the likely starting point for the Navy's lost fighter. It reached only 208 miles per hour during its competition test, short of the expected 250, with wing thickness and placement among the suspected causes. A later Rolls-Royce Merlin offering roughly a thousand horsepower could have made the basic approach more viable. The reconstruction gives a carrier derivative perhaps 80 percent commonality with the Spitfire in its engine, controls, and construction methods while using a heavier gull-wing structure for repeated deck landings. That trade would sacrifice some speed in exchange for surviving the controlled crashes of carrier aviation, but this remains an engineering reconstruction rather than a documented project specification.