Supermarine Spitfire. American Users, part one. The Spitfire with No.164 Squadron and Argentina.

 

To write about the Spitfire's usage with Argentina means to write about the operational history of No.164 (Argentine-British) Squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF). 
This squadron was activated on 6th April 1942 as a gift squadron from the British diaspora in Argentina, hence its motto in spanish, "Firmes Volamos" (firmly we flight). It was activated at RAF Peterhead, in Scotland and was initially equipped with the Spitfire Mk.Va flying mostly shipping patrols. In May, they were rebased to RAF Skeabrae, in the Orkney Islands, where they were re-equipped in September with the Spitfire Mk.Vb,. There they faced some occasional clashes against Luftwaffe fighters. In February 1943 they were rebased from RAF Peterhead to RAF Fairwood Common, in Wales to be re-equipped with the Hawker Hurricane as the squadron was to perform ground-attack duties. 
It wasn't until June 1945 that the squadron switched again to aerial interceptor role and changed the Hawker Typhoon with the Spitfire Mk.IX, which kept them, together with some Mk.XVIe until August 1946 when the squadron was disbanded. 

After the war, in 1947, Jaime Storey, an Argentine citizen who was interested in the Spitfire, bought a PR.XI, which was registered as LV-NMZ and, with additional fuel tanks, it flew from RAF Hurn, in Dorset, England to Buenos Aires, Argentina in a flight that took place between the dates of 29th April 1947 and 7th May 1947. This machine was donated to the University of Cordoba, together with a Mk.IX which was bought by Henri Henequin (CEO of Henequin & Co) and tried to sell it to the Argentine Air Force back in 1946 and, for that purpose, it was painted with the Argentine roundel and fin flash. This machine, however served as a source of spare parts for the aforementioned PR.XI. 
The Argentine Air Force also ordered ten Spitfire T.IX trainers in 1950 but it was cancelled and the Fiat G.55b were acquired instead.

Sources:

1st https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._164_Squadron_RAF
2nd https://www.3040100.com.ar/spitfire-en-la-aviacion-argentina/ (translated)
3rd https://www.elgrancapitan.org/portal/index.php/articulos3/segunda-guerra-mu/1363-spitfires-en-argentina (translated)

Asja Jaktfalk II - Foreign Users

Yes, that's the roundel used by the Swedish Air Force during the late 20s and mid 30s.

As we are covering it's foreign users, we are leaving technical descriptions for later.

The Asja Jaktfalk was a Swedish single-seat biplane fighter built in the late 20s, but it's most developed version, the Jaktfalk II, saw the light in 1932.

The Asja Jaktfalk was firstly tested by military representatives of both Argentina and the Empire of Japan, but they placed no orders as they weren't satisfied by it's performance, however we decided to draw some paintjobs to see how they would've looked like if they had bought them.
They also served in the Finnish Air Force who received three of them on 8th December 1939 as part of the Swedish help on the Finnish winter war. As they were seriously outdated, they were used for training purposes at the airfield of Kauhava until as late as 1945 when they were all scrapped.
Apparently, it also served with the Latvian navy, however as we only could find a text reference on wikipedia to this, the Lavtian profile of this airplane should be considered speculative.
Finally a modified version, powered by an Armstrong Siddeley Panther IIIA engine was built for Norway in order to test it against the British Hawker Fury.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svenska_Aero_Jaktfalken
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters

Arado E.654 "Skorpion"

Designed by Arado's main designer, Walter Blume, the Arado E.654 Kampfzerstörer (destroyer, heavy fighter or fast bomber) was basically an enlengthned version of the Ar.240 in order to fit two propeller driven 2000hp Daimler Benz DB 614 or DB 627 mounted side by side and inclined in 15 degrees.

The engines drove the propellers using a complicated and controversial method which was designed back in 1941. Basically the right angle gear boxes and long drive shafts connected the propellers to the engines mounted in the fuselage. Theoretically this system was going to radically reduce the drag caused by the larger wing engine nacelles and kept the engines more protected within the fuselage.

The E.654 had a single vertical fin and rudder with the tailplane set at the top of the fin. That's where the nickname of this airplane comes from, because in some handwritten notes from Walter Blume himself, show that the streamlined body on top of the junction with the vertical tail, resembled the sting of an scorpion. Wings were straight and showed taper both on leading and trailing edges. A trycicle configuration based landing gear was chosen with the two frontal main wheel retracting into the engine nacelles and the smaller tail one retracting into the fuselage.

The crew of two, one pilot and a radio/radar operator who also acted as a gunner sat back to back inside the cockpit located at the frontal part of the fuselage. It was armed with six 30mm MK103 cannons mounted in two cheeks located at the bottom part of the nose and, the defensive armament consisted in two remote-controlled turrets containing each of them two 13mm MG131 machine guns. It had also a hardpoint under the main part of the fuselage in order to carry some bombs (or, as we imagined it, a torpedo, which it's just a work of our imagination as there were no references to a torpedo bomber version).

Junkers and Dornier had already experimented with the shaft drive systems and obtained satisfactory results when using short shafts. Anyway there were no practical experiencies available yet with the right angle gear boxes and long multisection drive shafts that had to be able of absorbing the engine power and passing it to the propellers while keeping the vibration under control. However, Walter Blume tried to find an engineering-based solution to those problems but, just like happened with another of his previous Zerstörer designs, the E.561, it was abandoned due to the lack of interest of the RLM in this kind of system.

Edit: We have redrawn the Hypothetical naval version in order to equip it with the fearsome Fritz X anti-ship guided bomb.

Sources:
1. http://www.luft46.com/arado/are654.html
2. Midland Publishing - Luftwaffe Secret Projects - Ground Assault & Special Purpose Aircraft