Story by Jeffrey Quill (Chief test pilot)
Jeffrey Kindersley Quill OBE AFC FRAeS (1 February 1913–20 February 1996) was a British Royal Air Force officer, RNVR officer and Test pilot and the second man to fly the Supermarine Spitfire after Vickers Aviation's chief test pilot, Joseph "Mutt" Summers. After succeeding Summers as Vickers' chief test pilot, Quill test-flew every mark of Spitfire, originally designed by R. J. Mitchell.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchi...0-%201323.html
"The impression has once or twice been given that the Spitfire was "right, from the word go." This is not strictly correct. We had our full share of troubles, headaches and frights during that period and it was all full of interest. I personally was keenly aware of the privilege of working for R. J. Mitchell. But it would need a book to record all this. One point of interest is that K.S054 was, I think, one of the first aeroplanes to be fitted with an anti-spin parachute. It had shown up badly in the spinning calculations at R.A.E. and there was thus a certain amount of gloom about the prospects for the actual spinning tests.
The cable of the anti-spin parachute was attached to the fuselage just forward of the fin; it was then led along the outside of the fuselage, secured by sticky tape, and the parachute itself stowed in the cockpit.
The idea was that, if in. trouble, one opened the canopy, seized a handful of parachute and flung it over the side-preferably the appropriate side. I well
remember the first spin, entered at 20,000 feet from a. strangely silent stall with the big two-bladed wooden airscrew ticking over very, very slowly. But eight years elapsed before I actually had to use an anti-spin parachute (in a Seafire with an experimental rudder), and it broke my leg-but that is another story. The only difficulty we ha-d with the proto* type was persuading the R.A.E. that the spin recovery characteris*tics were, in fact, perfect. It seemed they had no business to be, but they were. "
More interesting stats here> (obviously not the definitive source but still an interesting summary of the evolution of the spit from MK1 to seafire 47 with a bunch of stats)
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchi...0-%200359.html
I read tonight somewhere in this archive there was a chart for spin recovery at various altitudes and it was 1-2 spins to 4 spins worst case and loss of 6000 feet (WORST CASE) from memory. Sorry I couldnt find it again! The spit pilots were not afraid of pulling hard as spin recovery was relatively simple. cut throttle, full opposite rudder, gently slightly forward, release rudder to neutral when slip indicator flips to other side and apply power build airspeed to 180MPH before gently pulling back. Ill try and find it again. Found another copy here..
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfire-II.html