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Subject: How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.
Shooter    5/26/2005 5:12:16 PM
Given 20-20 hind sight, It is easy to see where R.M. went wrong with the Spitfire! The following list of items is my idea of how they should have done it, IF THEY HAD READ ANY OF THE COMMON TEXTS instead of designing a newer SPAD for the last war! 1. Start with the late Seafire or even better the Martin Baker MB-5! they have contra props and wide track gear. The MB-5 also has a much higher LOS out of the pit forward. This is also one of the Spits larger problems. 2. Change the shape/planform of the wing and eppinage from eliptical to trapiziodal. The eliptical surfaces caused the construction time and cost of the Spitfire to be more than double that of the Mustang and almost as much as the P-38. 3. Reduce the wing cord and thus area by 35-40%! This reduction in surface aria will increase the cruising speed substantialy! This is probably the single biggest defect in the design. The change in aspect ratio will also help fuel ecconomy! 4. To compensate for the increased landing and take off speeds install triple slotted fowler flaps with a long hinge extension. This gives a huge increase in wing area and changes the camber for supirior "DOG FIGHT" ability, should you ever need it! ( because the pilot really screwed up!) At full extension and deflection, they would reduce the landing speed by 11~13MPH? (Slip Stick calcs!) 5. Remove the wing mounted radiators and install a body duct like the P-51 or MB-5! This one change would add ~35MPH to the plane? 6. use the single stage griphon engine and install a "Turbo-charger" like the P-38 and Most American Bombers had. This would increase power and save weight, both significant contributers to performance. 7. Remove the guns from the wings! This would lower the polar moment of rotation and give the plane snappier rates of roll! It also makes room for "wet wings" with much more fuel. A chronic Spit problem. It also fixes the Spit's gunnery problem of designed in dispersion! 8. Install the Gun(s) in the nose! Either fireing threw the prop boss/hub or on either side 180 degrees either side of the prop CL. This fixes the afore mentioned dispersion problem. One bigger gun between the cilinder banks or upto four 20MMs beside the engine or both, depending on what your mission needs were! 9. Make a new gun based on the American 28MM or 1.1" Naval AA ammo! This shell was particuarly destructive, had a very high MV and BC and was all ready in service. A re-engineered copy of the existing gun to reduce weight and increase RoF is a faily simple task. Pay the Americans for it if British spring technology is not up to the task! it also frees up much needed production capasity for other things. 10. Design a new drawn steel "Mine" shell for the above gun! Spend the money to load it with RDX instead of the TNT used for the first 4/5s of the war. 11. Pay North American or Lockheed to design it for you, since the Supermarine staff was to tied up fixing the origional spitfire design to get it done any time soon. Did I miss anything?
 
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Shooter    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/26/2005 2:40:53 PM
>>You have to keep in mind that it was an interceptor, not a long range fighter. Climb was as important as important as top speed. The extra speed may cause the interceptor to be several thousand feet below the enemy fighters and still climbing at the time of intercept. << This is part and parcel of the problem. With speed and range which the Spitfire did not have and a change in tactics, the P-40 would have done abetter job than the Spitfire. Who needs good climb when you can take off at first warning and fly to the intercept point climbing all the way and still have gas left to fight and return home. The Spit's short range required then to wait on the ground untill they knew where they were going and then take off. It was a case of fitting the tactics to the plane that was itself a product of deffective logic. They just missed the boat from the git go!
 
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Shooter    RE:CRIKEY!!!   10/26/2005 2:44:53 PM
Great post larry! I wish I'd read it before I wasted my time typing a reply that was less eligant than yours! The Spits struts were to thin and suffered to many failures to be nice! Another concequence of Britan's failure to keep pace with the worlds move to stronger steel in the 1930's.
 
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larryjcr    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/26/2005 3:53:07 PM
Maybe it's worth looking at the He112B - the a/c beaten out by the Bf109. It used the same eliptical wing profile as the He50 (which inspired Mitchel's Spitfire design), but was a thicker airfoil shape than the Spit. It used outward folding landing gear, but put the fold point well out on the wing, giving a much wider stance than the Spit. With an engine giving less then 700hp, its top speed was just over 300 mph, climbe to 20K was 10 minutes and armament was 2 rifle cal. mgs plus 2-20mm cannon. Range was over 600 miles. Test pilots who flew both it and the '109, expected the '112 to win the contract as it was superior in every respect except top speed.
 
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AussieEngineer    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/28/2005 5:48:46 AM
What is the point of flying off to intercept bombers where their fighter escort will be more effective while at the same time wasting fuel, tiring out your pilots and wearing out the aircraft. It makes much more sense to have the aircraft on the ground for as long as possible.
 
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larryjcr    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/28/2005 10:46:41 AM
The problem is timing. Get the fighters up early with adequate endurance, then effective interception is much simpler. During BoB, in spite of GCI, barely half of Ftr Com. sorties actually intercepted and engaged, and even then, many times, they were still too low when they did and weren't able to attack the bombers, only be attacked by the '109s. This is why the timing of ordering take offs was so critical. Order even a few minutes too early and the Spitfire is too low on fuel to fight by the time the attack comes within reach. Too late, and they won't have the altitude to fight effectively. The earlier you can launch, the less critical the timing, the the higher the percentage of sorties that can engage the attacking force effectivly. Also note that with the close escort tactics the Germans were using (why is another subject) the escorts couldn't prevent attacks on the bombers if the interceptors had enough altitude, they could only engage them after their first attack.
 
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oldbutnotwise    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/28/2005 3:59:23 PM
shooter is off target again. the spit wing was actually very strong and whilst it did have a few failurres(as did ALL aircrtaft when subjected to too much g) the spit wing was actually stronger than that on wither the P38 or the P51, the single spar was a composite of tubing giving maximum sttrength at the wing root and less at the tip were its was not critical. so this rubbish about the week wing is just shooters bias showing, the spits thin wing was a very effective item and superior to both the the wing on the p38 and 109, the p51 wing whilst a more efficent crusing wing was saddly lacking in most other areas. a comment on some of your arguements about the spit, firstly you can have either coutra props or nose guns but not both, even 4 bladed props were impossible to syncronise let allone countras. the contra prop was introduced for two reasons, 1, to reduce tourque yaw, not a problem on early spits 2, to transmit more power, this was an alternative to 5 bladed props, but as the 3 bladed props of 1938-41 could happly transmit the power of the engine the introduction of countra props would have added wiegth for no gain(actually loss as the contra props use have higher mechanical losses, but in later engines the power released was higher than the losses so was worth while - not a situation with earlier engines) as to the flaps, i did say they were availible in 37 but were heavy and slow, the last thing a fighter needs is the addition of additional wiegth. wings - making the curise speed higher by trap wings is ok unless you would have made the top speed lower, and this is what would have happerened, as would have bigger tanks, speed as you say was important yet nearly every one of your ideas would have slowed the spit down, the rnager issue was never regarded as beeing a problem, the raf did not have a need for a long range fighter untill the B17s came across and started to get shot out of the sky, even late war RAF fighter were designed with short ranges, the need for long range was a US one not a RAF one as pointed out standing patrols were not a good idea, unless you have a lot of capacity and are not out numbered 10 to 1, tied pilots especially inexperianced ones were more likely to die. even if the spit and hurr's were longer ranged it is extreamly likly that they would have employed the same tactics as the problem of long ranged fighter on standing air patrols have is that for the first part of the patrol they are fuel heavy and the last part fuel light (and tired) so unless you were fortunate that the jerries attacked in the middle of your patrol you were going to be severily disadvantaged. they didnt choose manuvability over speed, the spit was one of the fastest planes of its day, marginally faster than the 109 despite using a lower power engine, the thing wing is a idea for speed, the only fighter in 39 that was faster was the he100 (THE HE112 WAS A RENAME of the he100 as a properganger excercise), a fast but pig to fly, in back to back trails the 109 was superior in all but speed yet it was still choosen! but according to shooter the he100 must have been better, the german airforce must have got this wrong just like the RAF did, a fighter had to be manuverable in the BOB enviroment as the kill and run used so succesfully later in the war was not an option in 1940 by the way the USAF were taught the same tactics prior to 1940 as the RAF, it was the experiances of BOB that changed thier tactics just like it did for the RAF. the only airforce to revise its tactics betwen the wars was the Luftwaffe, not becasue of a few books (which by the way were the minority most studies incorrectly reinforced the view of the curent tactics being correct, and only with hindsight can they be picked from the mass) but because of there experiances in the spanish civil war(which they entered using the same close formation tactics as were being used by everone) the idea that the P40 or P39 would have done better is laughable and I would like to see you justify it. larryjcr whilst the se5 was a good aircraft the camel was better, from what I have read it was certainly the best allied fighter of the war the timing issue isnt as clear as that, yes the spit was short ranged, however in the bob they were rarely fully fueled, they were sent up at the optimumj time, too early and the fight took place over the channel, giving the germans oppotunity to reinforce the fighter escort, and pulling the raf fighters oveout of position. you should try and visist the RAF command center at Uxbridge, the inseight it gives on the tactics is quite detailed, and remember the effectiveness of the cgi was that the tactics were practiced before the war and was known by all levels in the raf. yes hindsight is wounderful and all combat can be shown to be flawed with it use, but taking the world of the time the method of defense was superb. if you can pick one point that would have "improved" the battle
 
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larryjcr    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/28/2005 6:30:01 PM
To OBNW: No, the He112 came earlier than the He100 (He113). It was the '109s competition for the origial Luft monoplane ftr contract. The He100 was a different a/c designed after the '112 lost to the '109. As stated, the test pilots expected the '112 to win as it handled and climbed better. They blamed politics for the decision, as Heikle wasn't popular with Hitler & co. The '100 was used for a lot of propaganda photos just pre war, referred to as the 'He113', and many BoB pilots reported them in combat, although none of the handful of pre-production '100s built were every sent to the front. Yes, the USAAF were taught tactics by the RAF in the spring of '43, and found that in actual combat the RAF formations were MUCH too tight. The BoB experience hadn't caught Ftr Com. up with the Germans in air tactics, and it had so little actual combat between then and '43 that there'd been no further improvement. For some reason, Ftr Com didn't consider experience of squadrons in North Africa to apply to them and ignored it.
 
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larryjcr    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/28/2005 7:55:26 PM
To OBNW: My comment was that the majority of the top Empire WW1 aces flew the SE5A, rather than the Camel. and at a time when a pilot with enough kills could pretty much write his own ticket, stands. Look at the list. Both of the top two (Mannock and Bishop) and many more down the list preferred the SE to the Camel. They'd learned the hard way that speed and gunnery get more results than turning contests. Your point on lack of training and experience is definately right on!! Not only was Ftr Com. painfully short of trained pilots, those they had were badly mis-trained. Far too much time spent learning tight formation flying and the stupid, ariel marching band evolutions of the (I think they called them) Fighting Area Attacks, and lack of decent gunnery training put even the prewar pilots well behind the Luft. As I mentioned in an earlier post, close combat wasn't Ftr Com's chosen tactic, it was a defalt rising from the utter failure of their pre war doctrine.
 
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larryjcr    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/28/2005 8:29:33 PM
To OBNW (By the way, pardon this string of posts, but your last was pretty long and I wanted to reply to the various points without one huge send) I did not recommend standing patrols, or forward interception. I did point out that if Ftr Com's a/c had more endurance (range) even at the expense of some climb rate, the timing of squadron scrambles would have been much less crtitical, the percentage of sorties that were able to engage could have been increased and the number of interceptions with sufficient altitude advantage to ensure an effective attack would have been higher. Squadrons based near the coast regularly had to climbed away from the incoming raids after scramble, trying to get altitude. This is why basing at the coastal fields (Hawkinge, etc) was abandoned. With Luft attacks on Southern England, it took perfect timing, and some luck to get effective interception of the raids. Squadrons being thrown one by one against an more numberous opponent with equal, or even higher altitude isn't effective. The 'Big Wing' was the right idea, but not workable without time to form, so was only effective when the Germans started penetrating as far as London. With longer range a/c the controllers could order scrambles earlier, have time to form proper wings while the squadrons were climbing, and have a greater chance of having the height advantage when interception did occure.
 
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AussieEngineer    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/29/2005 6:18:47 AM
The tactics of sending single squadrons as they were ready against the bomber formations had merit. Pilots felt that it gave them a target rich environment and gave them a better chance of suprise. The big wings were difficult to set up and more unwieldy to vector. I think 11 and 12 group had the right tactics for their locations.
 
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