Every Merlin-powered Spitfire you can currently buy for Microsoft Flight Simulator shares the same silhouette. Aeroplane Heaven’s Mk.1a, Flight Replicas’ own Mk.1a and Mk.IIa, their Mk.V pair and FlyingIron’s Mk.IXc all have the tall rear fuselage and the older sliding hood. What none of them offer is the cut-down spine and the teardrop canopy of the last Merlin Spitfires, the shape that walked the type from wartime fighter into its postwar service years. That is what Flight Replicas has just announced.
The developer said this week that the Spitfire Mk.XVI “should be released very soon”. The package, according to the announcement, contains clipped-wing and full-wing versions, plus high-backed fuselage versions to represent the early aircraft. There are also two types of gunsight, gyro and standard, depending on the version.
The Mk.XVI is one of the more confusing entries in the Spitfire family tree. It’s essentially a Mk.IX fitted with the Packard-built Merlin 266, the American licence version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin 66. The engines were near identical, but Packard built to American measurements rather than Imperial, and parts were not always interchangeable, so the RAF gave the aircraft a separate mark number to keep ground crews from mixing the two up.
That engine was rated for its best performance at lower altitudes, which is why almost every Mk.XVI left the production line as an LF, and why so many of them flew with clipped wingtips for a faster roll rate down low. The type entered service in late October 1944 at RAF Coltishall and spent the last months of the European war largely in the fighter-bomber role, hitting airfields and V2 launch sites. From February 1945, production switched to the low-back rear fuselage with the all-round vision canopy. In total, 1,054 were built, production ending in August 1945, and a handful stayed in RAF service into the mid-1950s.
The two gunsight types are a smaller detail, but an interesting one. The standard reflector sight required the pilot to work out deflection by eye and experience. The gyro sight, introduced in the last year of the war, computed the lead angle mechanically once the pilot set the target’s wingspan and held the pipper on it. It made a measurable difference to hit rates.
The one item worth watching is the build platform. Flight Replicas states plainly that the aircraft was built on the MSFS 2020 SDK and tested in 2024, which is consistent with everything else in their MSFS catalogue, including the DH.89 Dragon Rapide that appeared on the Marketplace in January.
There is no confirmed release date beyond “very soon”, no price, and no word on distribution, though every Flight Replicas MSFS release so far has landed exclusively on the in-sim Marketplace for PC and Xbox. There is also no detail yet on the sound package, which is the question most likely to come up given the developer’s history of using existing sim soundsets on earlier releases.
The preview images do give a sense of the livery spread. Alongside RAF schemes with invasion stripes, the shots show aircraft in Belgian Air Force markings, Free French roundels and Polish squadron codes, plus a silver postwar scheme, which reflects the type’s long tail of service with several European air arms after 1945.
On a side note, FlyingIron has confirmed it’s building a full Spitfire 2.0 remake natively for MSFS 2024, which is worth keeping in mind if you’re a fan of their exquisite MSFS 2020 rendition.
