To OBNW: The P38 was much stronger than the Spit, and did not 'come apart' in a dive. The Lightning had higher acceleration and gained speed much faster in a dive than the Spit. It quickly entered compressability. It didn't come apart unless overstressed trying to pull out, something a Spit would do much more quickly when it eventually got to that speed. All this was finally dealt with by the dive recovery flap. The air ducting was for the compressed air from the turbo to the engine, and was certainly part of the problem (not to mention a maintainence headache), which is why it was removed in the 'J' model and replaced with the core cooler under the engine. As for a/c strength, at least one P38 RTBed after being hit by an entire Bf109 head on. The '109 was reduced to chaff.

To AussieEngineer: The fuselage tank in the PR Spit was a ferry tank, meaning it was not self sealing. This was appearantly acceptable in a PR a/c which was supposed to avoid combat, but not so in a fighter. One tracer thru an empty ferry tank = explosion. Also, the Spit couldn't fly combat maneuvers with the tank full due to the aft shift in cg, which required the a/c to be flown with constant forward stick pressure until the tank was emptied. Actually, a self sealing tank should have been installed, but would have required the Spits be based outside the combat radius of the '109s. They could have taken off and climbed to altitude on the fuselage tank, then entered the '109s radius with full normal fuel load giving more time at height. The RAF recognized that the short range of the Spitfire was a problem and were already trying to find ways to increase it during the BoB, but were defeated by the design, particularly the internal wing structure. Efforts with various forms of drop tanks eventually gained them something, but lack of understanding of boundry layer effects and the desire for a flush fitting tank to minimize drag penalty cost them a lot of time.

The Germans who flew in the MTO (I can provide quotes if you like) considered the '109F to be superior to the Spit V. They were worried by the Spits rep when they first appeared, but in spite of the RAFs numberical advantage, reported that they soon realized that they could cope with it.

The tank effected handling no worse than on the Mustang. If 40 minutes was the average flight time for a spitfire mission in the BoB range and endurance must have definately not been an issue. There is no way with a 40 minute flight that a spit can even come close to emptying the tanks, that includes start up and taxi. So either spits were taking off with less than full tanks or coming back after exhausting their ammunition with plenty of fuel to spare. If one of these was indeed what was happening it doesn't really indicate a need for a longer range or endurance.

Yes, the fuselage tank on the Mustang had a similar (but not quite as severe due to the a/c's greater weight) effect on handling. That's why Mustangs on long range missions always burned fuel from the fuselage tank first, and switched to the drop tanks only after enough was gone to allow them to fly combat maneuvers. That's why the P51D had a slightly greater range on internal fuel than a P38J, but a somewhat shorter combat radius. As to time of flight for Spitfires in BoB, if half of all sorties failed to contact the enemy at all, and 40 minutes was the average time in flight, an aweful lot of a/c must have been sent up too late to make contact and recalled without accomplishing anything. That suggests the need for the operational flexibility offered by greater endurance (range). Throughout the battle, the RAF control staff were afraid of being drawn into committing a large portion of their a/c against a diversion and then having them caught on the ground refuelling. This fear, and the limited endurance of the Spit and Hurri were what controlled the timing of 'scramble' orders. Anything offering greater flexibility would mean that a higher percentage of sorties would make contact. And, as I mentioned, the RAF itself was already (by BoB) putting major efforts into increasing the Spit's range, without much success.

larrymust dissagreewith you on a few of these points, firstly, according to bob veterans if you missed the fight after being directed to the location from ground control then the chance of regaining contact was pretty non existant, nearly all cases where contact was made after initially missing it turned out that that the aircraft engaged another formation of germans not the one they were tasked against. cgi was a very hit and miss affair and not the science it is now, if you missed the interception you were tasked against which way do you turn? the ground control was unable to correct 90% of missed contacts, occationaly the observer corp could help if they could see the germans(not as comon as you would think) in most cases if the contact was missed the plans flew around for a while on the off chance of a contact then landed to be retasked on the returning bombers. the development of the long range spit can be split into two definitive areas. 1, the PR spits - always requiring more range, predates all atempts to extend the "fighter" version so most of the "fighter" mods were ex PR mods that were suitable for the fighter. 2, the fighter, more complecated this one, the mk1/2 didnt have any attempts made to increase range, the first fighter to have range modifications was the mkv(excluding the mk3/4 spits as they never reached production so can be disgarded) now this had a more powerful engine = more fuel consumption so to keep the range up to the mk2 an increase in fuel was needed, thats when the development started on increasing the fighters range. the spit was initially tried with centerline drop tanks like the P40 it was unsuccesful, so they went to slipper tanks. the rear tanks were only fitted, as you say, for ferry duties (most famous being the malta relief). wing drop tanks were also tried and decided against. if the range was such an overriding issue then the wing tanks would have been given a higher prioity. The americans seem to have this hang up about range, most european war fighters had a range of between 400 - 700 miles this applies to mk1 spits and 109's to late 190's, 262's and meteors. Range was only an advantage for escort roles and as only the US had a need for single seat escort fighters! if you look at the role the P47 played in europe, on jabo missions the jug was not equiped with drop tanks and was flown without full tanks, why? because it was not expected for the missions to last long enough to exhaust the fuel onboard, it was strike and leave not hang arround for hours. in short the long range fighter was only a product of the failure of the US daylight bombing program.

To OBNW: The P38 was much stronger than the Spit, and did not 'come apart' in a dive. The Lightning had higher acceleration and gained speed much faster in a dive than the Spit. It quickly entered compressability. It didn't come apart unless overstressed trying to pull out, something a Spit would do much more quickly when it eventually got to that speed. not true, the lightings thinker wing meant that it hit compressability at lower dive speeds than the spit, the thin wing of the spit meant that compreaasablity was hit at higher speed. the p38 was known to come apart at high dive speeds, the tail units used to come off tumbling the aircraft and causing complete distruction, the spit however used to suffer wing failure due to the G pulled coming out of the dive, unlike the p38 the spit used to recover from dives if the pilot lost concesness, it having a nautural tendancy to recover from a dive, this at high speed could and did lead to puling the wings off the plane, something you can do with a F16 if you pull enough g's it was known that the wings could survive g that would black out the pilot so as this was pre g suits the strength was regarded as suffcient. the point I was making was that shooters weak wings on a spit was rubbish. as for the air to air crash of 109 v p38 there are a few reported times this happened, however it was a rare occurance, nearly allways the p38 falied to survive, a lot depends on which bit hits which bit, there is a docemented occurance of a 109 hitting a b17 the b17 was lost and the 109 returned to base, now this does not mean that the 109 was stonger just that it happened, strange things happen in combat, to make a statement on something that was so unusual that it gets reported every time the P38 question arises it hardly the best way of assesing aircraft strength All this was finally dealt with by the dive recovery flap. The air ducting was for the compressed air from the turbo to the engine, and was certainly part of the problem (not to mention a maintainence headache), which is why it was removed in the 'J' model and replaced with the core cooler under the engine. As for a/c strength, at least one P38 RTBed after being hit by an entire Bf109 head on. The '109 was reduced to chaff.

During the BoB and on thru '40 experiments involving an overload tank under one wing and an added oil tank under the other (on a Spit IA) flush fitted just outboard of the wheel wells were conducted. Range was an American hang up, due (if nothing else) to the sheer logistics of moving a/c around the US due to distances. However, the DDay landings would have been impossible without nearly total air control that was NOT gained by Spitfires doing sweeps along the coast, but by attack on Germany drawing the Luft a/c back, and attacks on German airbases on the continent that were within range of the landing beaches, but beyond the range of the Spitfires. Both the RAF and USAAF initially failed to make daylight bombing work. The RAF gave up and retired to the night attacks that were wildly inaccurate until well into '43. The USAAF went back and made it work. Note that the RAF returned to daylight bombing on increasing scale whenever accuracy was needed, and once the US long range fighters made it possible for them.

You ignore the mechanics of what was happening in compressibility. The tails didn't fall off the P38s, but failed when the structural load was exceeded at levels no Spitfire could have survived. The V/T for the Spitfire, as well as the speed of encountering compressibility were higher than for the Lightning. This was an unavoidable result of the '38s more lift-efficient wing shape. But the main cause was the '38s faster dive acceleration, compared to the Spit. If a pilot in a Lightning hit compressibility and tried to pull out in that range due to lack of understanding (or panic) the elevator controls were strong enough to actually increase the AoA, which only made things worse, and put increasingly powerful loads on the elevator and rear tail booms. If the pilot knew enough to throttle back and wait for denser air, he could pull out normally (although with a lot of Gs) and I know of no case of wing failure on a '38 in such a pull out. There were also cases in which pilots actually pushed the Lightning into an outside loop and survived, coming level, but inverted. Any properly designed and trimmed a/c would recover from the dive once the pilot started to pull back, and the pilot won't black out until the G forces of pull out are in effect. Nothing special about that. Check the book THUNDERBOLT by Robert Johnson/Martin Caidin for a description of exactly that in a P47. As to the '38 vs '109 collision, it was head on, prop-hub to prop-hub between the '109 and one of the '38s engines. The Lightning returned to base with one engine wrecked and smashed back a foot and a half in its mountings, both radiators on that side stripped off, the wing visibly swept back and that end of the horizontal tail hanging loose. It still flew and was still controllable. The Lightning was second only to the Thunderbolt and just maybe the Corsair and Hellcat, in being the structurally strongest single seater of WW2.

During the BoB and on thru '40 experiments involving an overload tank under one wing and an added oil tank under the other (on a Spit IA) flush fitted just outboard of the wheel wells were conducted. the above modifications were to PR spits (the oil res modification is a give away as only the PR spits had these. and they were nose mounted not wing mounted if you look at a PR spit you will see than the nose is different under the engine this is the larger oil res) as i pointed out the range of the standard fighter was suffcient for its role, history shows that the majority of sorties by spits and hurricanes were quite short, the underfilling of tanks was common as was returning fighters with 1/4 full tanks. in short the spit and hurricane were idea for the BOB whilst this did leave them a little short legged for missions over europe post BOB it is worth remembering that this was not the role they weredesigned for, that they could undertake this so successfully was an indication of the adaptability of the designs. Range was an American hang up, due (if nothing else) to the sheer logistics of moving a/c around the US due to distances. no dissagreement here. However, the DDay landings would have been impossible without nearly total air control that was NOT gained by Spitfires doing sweeps along the coast, but by attack on Germany drawing the Luft a/c back, and attacks on German airbases on the continent that were within range of the landing beaches, but beyond the range of the Spitfires. sorry? how did the spit not have range over dday beaches when they provided a large majority of the air cover? whilst the USAF play a vital role in dday if you are under the impression that the RAF didnt you should check your sources. the role of fighter escorts on the withdrawal of luftwaffe fighter back to germany is accepted, and it was a role which the spit was unsuitable as it was a short range fighter not a escort, that it didnt perform these missions cannot as shooter insists make it a bad fighter, the role asked for a specific type of aircraft a long range gunship, a job that the p51 was perfect, however the 2 pure US designs the p38 and p47 were both failures at this role, had the p51 not been designed the air war over germany might have ended very differently. Both the RAF and USAAF initially failed to make daylight bombing work. The RAF gave up and retired to the night attacks that were wildly inaccurate until well into '43. post war studies have shown that the USAF daylight bombing was if anything less accurate than the RAF night bombing, both were area bombing at least the RAF admitted it. The USAAF went back and made it work. Note that the RAF returned to daylight bombing on increasing scale whenever accuracy was needed, and once the US long range fighters made it possible for them.