Solent Sky Museum
Images from John Northall
Published 5 Sep 2025
| The Solent Sky Museum depicts the history of aviation in Southampton, the Solent area and Hampshire. There is a focus on Supermarine, the aircraft company based in Woolston, Southampton, and its most famous products, the Supermarine S.6 seaplane and the Supermarine Spitfire, designed by a team led R.J. Mitchell. There is also coverage of the Schneider Trophy seaplane races, twice held at Calshot Spit, and the flying boat services that operated from the Solent. (Wikipedia) |
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| A two-row Alvis Leonides Major that was fitted to the prototype Handley Page Herald airliner before they changed it to two Rolls-Royce Dart turboprops. |
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| The Solent Sky Museum has the sole remaining Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 twin-engined flying boat fighter and a pristine example of its advanced Metrovick Beryl axial-flow engine. | ||
Metrovick were running an axial flow compressor on a rig in 1939 and had incorporated it into their first functional turbojet by 1941. It was developed into the F2 which first flew in a Gloster Meteor fighter in 1943. Unfortunately it suffered a material failure in a compressor disc while flying and the engine lost out to the Rolls-Royce Derwent.
Further developments included a 10 stage compressor and a can-annular combustor to give a more stable flame pattern compared to the annular combustor used previously. This led to the Beryl used in the SR.A/1. Metrovick also experimented with turboprop, turboshaft, turbofan and reheated versions.
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