I think you are referring to the dive recovery flaps fitted to the P38J and later. I'll talking about the 'detent' maneuvering flaps that were installed in the P38F model to increase turn rate. This was a system controlled by a thumb button on the control yoke that extended the regular landing flaps by about 2 1/2 degrees. Using this the P38 could easily match the turn rate of a '109F. I agree that the Spitfire had the range the RAF requirement asked for. It just wasn't enough for the war the RAF ended up fighting. The '109s paid for their short range in the BoB when many were lost to fuel stravation returning form escort missions that barely reached London. The next summer, the Spitfires ran into very similar problems when they tried to escort daylight raids over Europe. Mitchell designed what the RAF asked for, but one of the mistakes of pre war RAF leadership (along with miserably bad tactical and gunnery training for their pilots) was the set belief that an effective long range fighter was impossible. The very idea was actively opposed by Air CM Portal right thru 1942. The Spit and the '109 were actually very similar. During the war, improving engines, etc gave one or the other the edge for periods of time. They shared the same strengths and weaknesses. With the Germans on the defensive in the West after 1940, short range wasn't too big a problem. The Spitfire wasn't an effective offensive weapon due to the range limitation. The big advantage of the '109 over the Sptifire was that it was much cheaper and easier to build. Less extreme, bu similar to the advantage the Mustang had over the Lightning.

Roll info is harder to get and mostly anecdotal. Robert Johnson in THUNDERBOLT considered the roll rate of the Spitfire (both MK V and MK IX) to be very poor. Much less than half the rate of the P47C. In WING LEADER, Johnnie Johnson mentioned the story I gave earlier about putting MK V ailerons on MK II Spits trying to get some improvement. Most of the material I've seen indicates that the P47 and FW190 had the highest roll rates and I don't recall reading anything specific to the '109. The Lightning was slow until the J model that introduced power assisted ailerons which made a great improvement, but roll rate was still not a strong point. It could still outroll many fighters by rolling against the opponant's propeller torgue direction. In any single engine fighter (or any twing without opposite rotation) you got a much higher roll rate one way than the other depending on direction of propeller rotation. Turn rate, of course, is really just the ability to fly as slowly as possible without stalling the a/c. Slower you go, the tighter you can turn. Mitchell designed the Spitfire with a very broad cord wing, providing low wing loading, then made the wing very thin to reduced the high drag factor the broad cord would cause. The thin wing, of course, led to the inefficient armament placement (across 3/4 of the span) and the difficulty putting fuel tanks in the wings (only done after the redesign of the MK VIII). The P38 used a long, narrow wing and the advantage of it's opposite rotating propellers cancelling torque for low speed controllability. Many WWII fighters could use flaps in combat (not all, some, like the P40 had a system that was just too clumsy), but the Lightning system was by far the best. Push a button under the pilot's thumb and the rest was automatic. Down went 2 1/2 degress of flap, with reduction in stall speed with very little drag penalty either in fuel use or energy loss. Introduce to combat in late '42 or very early '43 in North Africa. Agility (the ability to switch from one maneuver to another) was probably more important that turn rate for anything except purely defensive purposes, and that depended on roll rate and pitch rate. What the Lighning gave up in roll rate it largely made up in pitch rate. The long, wide elevator gave excellent control return at any speed.

An entire serries of great posts Larry! When Oldie make his claims about kill numbers he forgets to count that hurricanes made more kills than the Spits in the BoB. And I did list the books and authors much earlier in this thread. One of the best is the list of "LATE MARK SPITFIRE ACES" I can't remember if it is 22 or 28? who earned their grades in Mk-IX and -XIVs. Now I'll have to look all this up again. Good night for now.

Earlier in this thread I objected to the belittling of the P38s record in the Pacific as being against 'paper kites' flown by inferior pilots. I refer you to an article in the current issue of AVIATION HISTORY magazine. Article by Jon Guttman entitled TOP GUN FROM DOWN UNDER outlines the exploits of RAF and RAAF ace Clive Caldwell. It includes an account of the first three Spitfire squadrons in the SW Pac area. The Spitfire Vs, flown by RAF trained pilots with combat experience against the Luft. defended against a series of raids by the Japanese Navy and Army against northern Australia between March and June of 1943, at a time when a few P38Fs were dominating the sky over eastern New Guinea. Intercepting eight raids, with the advantage of GCI and always enjoying at least a small advantage in numbers over the Japanese escorts of Zero's and Ki43s, the Spitfire squadrons lost 31 Spitfire Vs against Japanese loses (from Japanese records) of 7 fighters (6 Zero's and 1 Ki43) and one bomber with a second damaged beyond repair but returned to base. Of the Spitfire losses, 6 were to mechanical failure and 4 to fuel exhaustion. The Japanese records show that, in spite of being warned about Japanese a/c capabilities, most of the Spitfire pilots continued to try and dogfight. Note also the very low bomber losses. Looks like the Japanese had better escort tactics than the BoB Germans did.

This is the single best post I have seen on this topic! Factual data, refferances and insightfull analysis too! This goes toward my point of the total performance of the Spitfire weapon system.

The information in the article was fascinating. This was the BoB in miniature, but without the inexperienced RAF trainee pilots, and with a slow enough tempo that pilot exhaution wasn't a factor. Of the eight raids, six were described in some detail, and the defenders always had at least equal numbers to the Japanese fighter escort, yet out of a total of 105 bomber sorties, only one bomber was shot down and a second crashed on return to base. Loss rate of under 2%. Even discounting the Spitfires lost to fuel exhaustion and mechanical trouble the fighter loss rate was 3 to 1 in favor of the Japanese. The problem seems to have been tactics, not a/c. Used to flying Spitfires or Kittyhawks against Me109s, most of the Australian former RAF pilots couldn't break their habit of trying to dogfight Zeros and Oscars with predictable results. Nothing was said in the article about the actual escort tactics that the Japanese used, but they had to be pretty good. From another source, I read that some of the pilots were briefed on the Japanese a/c and tactics by Joe Foss while he was on leave from Guadelcanal in the winter of '42-'43. His reaction was that they were very polite, but clearly didn't take the Japanese seriously compared to the Germans.

Hi oldbutnotwise I thought I would expand on your post about the alleged 8:1 Lightning kill-ratio, and I came up with the following figures: Lightnings lost: 451 Air kills claimed: 1771 Ground kills claimed: 1951 Now if you divide the total number of kills by the losses then you do indeed get an 8:1 kill-ratio. BUT…if you look again at these figures using RAF standards, then a very different story emerges. Firstly, the RAF definition of a loss (unlike the USAAF) includes aircraft written-off on the ground. The US figures only include those aircraft that FTR. The number of P38’s written-off was 1307, of which the majority were due to combat damage, and hence must be included. Secondly, RAF claims do not include aircraft destroyed on the ground, for the very good reason that such claims were wildly inaccurate. The same aircraft were strafed again and again by different pilots, and each would claim them as kills. This certainly happened with the Luftwaffe in Greece in 1941, and on a much larger scale with the 5th Air Force in the SW Pacific. Needless to say, the Germans and Japanese did everything they could to encourage Allied pilots to waste bombs and bullets on derelict aircraft, to the point of propping-up collapsed aircraft or patching-up the most obvious damage. In a similar way the RAF on Malta used the remains of a few aircraft and a couple of old hangar doors to trick the Germans into believing that there was a huge underground hangar on the island. The Luftwaffe obligingly devoted much effort to attacking this non-existent structure! As a result there is no way the P38 kill-ratio comes anywhere near 8:1. It is very doubtful that it was as high as 2:1, and this of course is just a claimed kill-ratio: If you take over-claims into account then it is difficult to see the kill-ratio being any more than 1:1, and possibly less. You can do similar calculations for the P47 and P51, and these also achieved roughly 1:1 kill-ratios, with the P51 perhaps slightly higher than the P47. I would summarise by saying that if roughly equal numbers of roughly comparable aircraft, flown by roughly comparable pilots engage in air combat, then you must expect kill-ratios to hover around the 1:1 mark! Lastly, your estimate of 2000 kills by the RAF up to the end of 1940 is too low. The claim figures I have to hand are approximately: Norway: 80 Fighter Command Sept 1939-May 1940: 100 Battle of France 10-21 May 500 (at least 300 confirmed from LW records) Dunkirk 250 (at least 150 confirmed from LW records) Battle of Britain 10 Jul – 31 Oct 2600 (at least 2000 confirmed by various means) Malta 30 (actual losses 35, including a few to AA) East Africa 30 Greece 45 (at least 21 confirmed) Note that this list is by no means complete. It omits considerable air combat between the end of the Dunkirk evacuation and the official start of the BoB, plus claims for LW aircraft between 1 Nov and 31 Dec. It also omits claims against Italian aircraft in the Western Desert, and FAA claims. It seems likely that the British had claimed well over 4000 kills by the end of 1940, of which about two-thirds can be confirmed. I don’t have figures for 1941 and 1942, but I can’t see them being much less than the 1940 figure, so the RAF would have claimed perhaps 10,000 kills in the ETO and MTO by the time the USAAF entered battle in force in November 1942. The Americans may have claimed more kills for the period 1943-5, but not enough to counterbalance the RAF’s head-start.

When it came to statistical jiggery-pokery, the USN was in a class of its own. If we look at the alleged Hellcat 19:1 kill-ratio, we see that in reality over 800 Hellcats FTR, and no doubt a proportion of ‘Operational’ losses would also have been due to enemy action. In return they made about 5000 claims. The RAF would probably have been content with about a 5:1 kill-ratio, but for some inexplicable reason, the USN allowed its Intelligence Officers to arbitrarily assign losses to either flak or fighters. I can’t say whether this was naivety on their part, or a cunning plan to get grossly inflated kill-ratios. In any event there was a strong tendency to ascribe losses to flak rather than fighters. I personally suspect an element of racism here: at the time many Americans considered the Japanese to be sub-human, and preferred to think of their comrades being shot down by (relatively) impersonal AA, rather than being out-thought and out-fought by a Japanese pilot. The ridiculous thing about the USN system is that most pilots shot down in WWII never saw the aircraft responsible (and nor did any of their comrades). The implication is that the IO back on the carrier knew what had happened, when even the pilots who were present did not! Once again, if you take account of over-claims, it is clear that the Hellcat kill-ratio cannot have been more than 3:1 at the outside. If the USN followed the USAAF system of not counting aircraft pushed over the side due to combat damage, then the kill-ratio would be smaller still. I’m sorry to all for going on at such length: I hope I’m not turning into another Shooter…

Racism had nothing to do with it....and the figure of 10:1 or 11:1 is much more accurate. By the time the F6F Hellcat reached extensive service, the IJNAF was a shell of its former self. Its experienced pilots were mostly dead by mid-1943....and fuel shortage effected the amount of training new pilots got. Additionally, a lot of aircraft were shot down when they were conducting attacks on islands by the fleet or in fleet to fleet actions. 5,168 Japanese aircraft shot down, while only 270 Hellcats were lost in combat. Those are numbers which have been known for decades. http://usfighter.tripod.com/f6f.htm http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/battle_of_the_philippine_sea.htm http://www.acepilots.com/planes/air_wins.html Check out these sights, which are reprints from respected books and journals.

Couple of comments on Cromwell. I agree on the use of ground attack 'kills'. The USAAF in ETO was trying to encourage attacks on airbases -- foolish, I think because the Luft had more a/c than competent pilots. I assume the kill and loss numbers your quote are for ETO only. I doubt RAF kills for '41 or '42 matched those for '40. North Europe combat for RAF fighters was much less intense at that time. Even if your include MTO numbers, the short range of the Spitfire limited its usefulness in that theature. The 'Torch' invasion wouldn't have been practicle without the P38, the only reasonably competative fighter the Allies had at the time with adequate range for more than defensive operations. I also doubt that USAAF fighters overclaimed by as much as 100% as you assume. With the requirements for gun camera proof or multiple witnesses it would have been much less than that. Discounting the silly overclaiming by bomber gunners, claims by US escort fighters probably didn't run much more than 35% over Luft losses. Fairly typical for example the March 6, '44 raid on Berlin. After discounting ten percent of the claims by bomber gunners (about one in ten would be right for them) Luft losses were at least 60 a/c from their records. US fighter claims were 81. Eleven US fighters were lost. On the other hand, it's well established that RAF claims in BoB on most of the intense combat days, ran 100-150% over German losses.