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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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AussieEngineer    Ooops forgot about the He-112   10/29/2005 6:22:47 AM
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_other/he112.html This has a bit of information as to why the He112 didn't win the contract. It just wasn't as good as the Bf-109.
 
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Shooter    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/29/2005 6:40:07 PM
Two replies in one post; AussieEngineer 1st and OBNW 2nd! >>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. << This is the failure of the thought process. If your plane is durable and long ranged it can aford to do these things the Spit can't and a change in tactics wins the day. See Aussie engineers post a few back. OBNW>>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.<< Again you do not have a clue what you are talking about! Almost any hit on the spar itself was catastrofic! Regardless of caliber! We built P-51Js to brit load factors and then chose not to use them even though they were MUCH better at any thing than the Spit 24, because there were judged to be too fragile! 491MPH, 7500'/Min climb, 1400 mile range and rate of roll much better than the Me-109 or Fw-190! Spitfires were NOTORIOUS for their weekness! OBNW>>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.<< Again you are ignorant of the topic! Both 4 blade and contra props were easily sync'ed. For CRPs you just time it so the props both cover one gun at a time! If the guns are arainged to coincide with the number of blades, 2 guns at 180 degrees and two three bladed props, at least one gun is shooting all the time. OBNW>>the contra prop was introduced for two reasons, 1, to reduce tourque yaw, not a problem on early spits<< You have obviously never flown in one have you? Yaw was and is a huge problem in a maneuvering fight! You pull back on the stick to follow a target up, but the nose moves right too, and the burst misses! OBNW>>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,<< Again you fail to know the right facts! Contra props are much more efficiant than any single plane rotation prop! At least 6.25% more efficiant than the very best single plane props! 13.3% better than the average prop and as much as 21.4% more than the typical wide cord prop used for high altitude work! Even the least of these gains would more than offset any losses due to extra weight! And when compaired to the typical combat type prop, made for dramatic improvements in performance! OBNW>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.<< Again you fail to grasp the true implications! Flaps were not only available in 1928, they could add up to 25% to the wing aria and much more important, they changed the wing's CAMBER! the increased camber gave great increases to the L/D at low speeds and high AoA! A simple switch conected to the air speed meter could deply them automaticaly at speeds under 200MPH and greatly increase the maneuverability! OBNW>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, << How can the cruise speed for any given power go up while the top speed goes down? LOL!!! The point of the Trapiziodal wing was first to make the plane less expencive to manufacture! Second to reduce it's area and thus increase the wing loading, cruising and top speeds! The traid off is sustained maneuverability! Instantainious maneuverability also goes up, but the flaps mentioned before make the sustained maneuverability increase more than the origional larger wing! Oh, the benifits of technology and increased camber! OBNW>the rnager (RANGE?) 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, << Of course it was a problem! That's why they added fule cappasity to every single newer model of Spitfire ever made! That Lancasters were getting shot out of the ski was ahuge problem! The reason the did not go for anew plane was that it was concidered "Bad form" to interupt Spitfire production to change over to a new and better plane! See the official MoD History! OBNW> as pointed out standing patrols were not a good idea,<< I never mentioned standing patrols! The entire rest of this post is about a straw man that you are the only one talki
 
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Shooter    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/29/2005 6:44:55 PM
To larry; Three greast posts in a row, I wish I had read them all before I sopent so much time typing the same things you said! great job!
 
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larryjcr    RE:Ooops forgot about the He-112   10/29/2005 11:13:28 PM
To AussieEngineer: Excellent site. Much more on the He112 than my source. One question. The text refers to the elliptical wing as proven to be the 'most efficient'. I assume that is most efficient in terms of lift to drag ratio. It is certainly not the best in terms of either lift to structural weight, or lift per unit of planform area. A narrow cord, evenly tapered wing is much better by those standards. Why else did the Ta152, Westland Welkin, U2 and all sailplanes use that shape? In any wing shape, lift isn't uniform for the whole planform area, and the broader the cord, the less lift the trailing edge produces. In terms of either lift for its weight, or lift for its area, the Lightning's wing would have been more efficient than the elliptical, even without the increased efficiency produced by the zap flap system.
 
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larryjcr    Tactics   10/30/2005 12:28:19 AM
I mentioned before that the design of the Spitfire focused on speed, climb and acrobatics. The a/c was originally intended as a bomber interceptor, not for combat with enemy fighters. The speed and climb were to reach intercept point and the acrobatics were to allow quick changes in formations fot the 'Fighting Area Attacks' that were pre-war Ftr Com doctrine. They didn't expect the collapse of France. They didn't expect German fighters over England. They expected formations of unescorted bombers!! Ftr Com believed that fighters were too fast for maneuver combat (dogfights) to be practical. This was proven wrong, and they had NO workable air combat doctrine in place during the BoB. Actual RAF tactics (really the lack of tactics) amounted to: charge at the bombers and shoot at one. Then shoot at another one. Keep doing this until a '109 attacks you, then turn hard to avoid being shot down. If a '109 or '110 gets in front of you, or you manage to surprise him, shoot at him, but the bombers were the real targets and have priority. Ftr Com GCI made little effort to give the interceptors altitude superiority, and none at all to get them into the up sun position. Compare to the advice of WW1 ace Mick Mannock to the pilots of his flight: Always attack from above, and out of the sun if at all possible. Don't attack from the same level unless you have some other advantage. Never try to attack from below. Never attack an enemy single seater unless you have an advantage, or have to protect a friendly two seater. Never hesitate to break off combat if you lose the advantage. The Spitfire's qualities, the inexperience of a lot of the RAF pilots and the lack of workable doctrine, dictated the style of combat. It wasn't something anyone planned for.
 
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AussieEngineer    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/30/2005 6:50:11 AM
The end result of your strategy shooter is keeping the pilots and planes in the air longer than needed. It leaves less time for maintenance and runs down the pilots. That and the P-40 and the P-39 were both dogs altitude and only available in small numbers if at all in 1940. The Germans were never in a position to win it anyway.
 
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Shooter    RE:Ooops forgot about the He-112   10/30/2005 8:15:27 PM
Nice post Larry! I keep harping on ASPECT RATIO, but no body listens.
 
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Shooter    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/30/2005 8:42:11 PM
>>The end result of your strategy shooter is keeping the pilots and planes in the air longer than needed. It leaves less time for maintenance and runs down the pilots. That and the P-40 and the P-39 were both dogs altitude and only available in small numbers if at all in 1940. The Germans were never in a position to win it anyway. << There are several problems with this post; 1. The take off and landing were the most stressfull times of the flight and accounted for almost half of all losses? Fewer TO&Ls means fewer opperational losses. 2. The time given by range would alow attacks from the sun side and higher altitude. Both very powerfull advantages. The Spit required that they could not be used most of the time. 3. That either plane had less performance than the Spit of Me-109 is certain. That the -109 could not use this advantage due to fule shortages is also certain! That either of them were supirior to the german bombers or fast enough to over take cruising fighters when large throttle openings were used is also certain. I suggest that you buy any reputable flight sim and try to fly the BoB mission in a Me-109E? It will open you eyes! 4. Acording to many British sources, the Germans were only TWO DAYS from winning the BoB, when they chose to change tactics from attack of the RAF and it's facilities, to bombing London and other British cities. It was THE SINGLE biggest blunder of the war!!!! This has been Gamed out many times by professionals in the services war coledges and the germans win WW-II if they avoid this mistake!
 
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AussieEngineer    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/30/2005 9:51:13 PM
1. That is true. However, adding an extra 2 hours of flight time at 20,000+ feet altitude tires pilots out even more for landing. It also leaves less time for maintenance. I'm not sure what the hours of maintenance to flight ratio but any increase in flight times increases the time you have to spend on maintenance and also reduces the time you have available to spend on maintenance. So you end up with lower servicability rates of your aircraft. 2. Extra range is of only minimal advantage. As I said earlier the spit had enough fuel to go full bore for an hour. That was plenty of time to position them to attack from above or from the sun. It was the fault of the ground controllers that this didn't happen more often. The aircraft is also limited by ammunition load. Two one hour sorties have more possible attacks than a single three hour sortie. 3. I agree that Bf-109s were handicapped by their short range, however, why use a P-39 or P-40 when it offers no appreciable advantages, except perhaps armament in the case of the P-39. The endurance of the spit was sufficient for the task and it's performance was superior in most respects. 4. Sandhurst wargamed it in 1974 with various conditions (mostly to give the Germans an advantage) and not once did the Germans actually win. This is also consistant with a number of books I have read. British fighter production was far in excess of German production at that time in the war, they also had far fewer pilot losses than the Germans and were getting replacements quicker as well. The Germans simply lacked the ability to maintain a persistent numerical superiority over RAF.
 
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larryjcr    RE:How to fix the design defects of the Spitfire airplane of WW-II.   10/30/2005 11:26:10 PM
To AussieEngineer: Your right about UK Ftr production being greater than that of Germany. Also, they were getting additional a/c by collecting and rebuilding crashed Hurris & Spits. The problem was pilots, who were sent up with minimum trainging, then shoved into combat often under a disadvantage of altitude and position. The controllers failed so often because the window of success was so narrow. Scramble even a very few minutes too early and the Spit didn't have the fuel to wait for the attack to come within reach. Scramble even a very few minutes too late and they end up trying to attack from below -- with predicable results -- or fail to reach the raid at all. Instead of two one hour flights vs one two hour flight, it would be more like three one hour flights vs two 90 minute flights. That difference would have meant a much higher per cent of sorties reaching effective attack position. Also, while the German raids were coming in, the squadrons were much more vulnerable on the ground than in the air. Less time on the ground would have reduced the chances of being caught in on airfields. As to the matter of ammunition, what percentage of Ftr Comm. a/c actually shot off their entire load on a sortie. Since barely half of sorties resulted in firing at all, this was probably fairly low. Anybody go a number??
 
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