I Just read about the Tempest. It critical mach number was 0.83, above which it would nose down. One test pilot got o 0.87 in a completely out of control dive.

If nothing could 'out dive' a Spitfire, why were '109s and '190s successfully diving away as standard disengagement method throughout the war, and US P47s in moch fights doing the same?? When Spits (Mk V and later) wanted to disengage, they climbed, even though that usually meant being shot at for a longer period of time. Perhaps the problem was diving acceleration. The '38s were always noted for high accel. especially in dive, hence reaching Mcr very quickly. Once they had the recovery flaps, they could maintain 540 or so mph down to denser air while retaining control, and had no trouble killing anything that tried to dive away. On the subject of gun platform, the RAF pilots themselves always agreed that the Hurricane was a much bettr shooting platform than the Spitfire, and putting larger and larger engines in after the MkII wouldn't have improved that situation.

I'm pretty sure he was referring to controlled mach tests. Though as the Spit became more powerful and heavier its dive accelation improved. Tests on the MK14 shows that it initially dived slower than a Me109G, then caught up. Quite a few other aircraft would out accelerate the Spit in a dive and could manage to break away, depending on the tactical environment and pilot skill.

Yeh I've read that report. Strikes me as largely a matter of opinion. The Spit (and others like the Mustang) was a highly agile and responsive plane. Most pilots (including US ones like the Eagle squdron) loved it. A plane like that was more likely to get you into a firing situation in the first place .. and get you out of a bad one. You could see how a ham fisted pilot could have trouble, but the real solution was better training and bigger guns, both of which happened through time. The Hurricane's machine guns were grouped togther (like US planes) and delivered a more concentrated punch and were found to be more effective against heavily armoured bombers in the BOB. Hard to imagine that in '35, when the specifications were finalised, that 8 x .303 machine guns were considered an unimaginable amount of firepower. I used the V1 example in the other thread as an example that the Spit couldn't been that bad, flipping a V1 with your wing at 400mph (and 4000 feet off the deck) took incredible precision. Also don't knock the climbing turn as a tactical move. It was incredibly effective in turning a poor tactical situation (getting bounced from behind and/or above)into a much more even one. A very effective counter attack. Places the enemy into a difficult situation, do they try and follow or break away and re-try. In the first case they have now lost the tactical advantage and are playing into the Spit pilot's strength, the other option simply evens the tactical situation. Any plane can dive on the other if they catch it by surprise, if you have a 50mph (or more) advantage already, even if the other plane is a better diver they are not going to get away. Diving (apart from surprise attacks) is fundementally a way of avoiding combat, if you can climb and turn (and they can't follow as well) you are regaining (or at least evening out) the initiative. Needs the plane to do it though.

Lets finish this bit of disinformation from our american friends. 1, The US introduced the P36(curtis hawk 75) at the same time as Hurricane went into service, approx a year later in mid 38 curtis became aware that the Spit and hurricane (and the bf109) totally outclased the p36, it started to investigate the installation of the alison engine, this upgrade is whant became the p40. the P40 was accepted for US service in late 39(this was acceptance, the US army actually ordered the P40 before any prototype had flow) and entered service as the P40(no suffix) in July 1940. in this form it was offerd to the RAF who decided, that with its light firepower (1x.50 and 1x.30) and no armour or self sealing tanks, it was unfit for front line service (the Huricane and spitfire both had these prior to 1940.) curtis modified the p40 to include armour but not self sealing tanks as the P40B, they also increased the weaponary to 2x.50 and 2x.30. This entered service with the RAF as trainer as the Kittyhawk. curtis then produced the "C" model with self sealing tanks (it is now early 41) this is supplied to the RAF who use it as a ground attack aircraft in the MTO. It was been upgunned again to 2x.5 and 4x.30. however its speed is 345, slower than the mk1 spit 355 and the mkv which is in service by the time the C enters sevice, is 370. the altitude performance of the p40 was poor, above 9000ft the p40 was inferior to the hurricane mk1 and the bf109E, however below this height the P40E could meet the 109 on faily even terms and was actually superior to the hurricane. so whilst the the p40 did superceed the hurricane it took 3 years to manage it and it would have had a harder job if the developement of the hurricane had continued. regarding the fuel issue, as has been stated the raf used very little fuel on the ground as from engine start to wheels up was usually less than 3 minutes, how in three minutes did the aircraft use the same fuel as did the climb to altitude? high speed crusing in the combat zone (as stated by shooter) was a tactic used by MkV spits over france in 41 to reduce the advantage of the FW190, not as he tries to claim a standard tactic of the BOB. if he reads the bio's of BOB pilots he will find that they were often short fueled during this period as the fight were usually cut short by lack of ammo rather than fuel. as for interception, i think you are thinking of modern cgi not what was in place in 1940. a german formation was spotted by radar or the Observer corp and its APPROXIMATE position telephoned to local controlers, this was passed to group. at group a squadron was assigned to intercept, this squadron starting from a known position was given a heading and altitude to intercept. once passed the coastal radar/OC they were no longer able to track the germans, so if a intercept was missed the ground controllers had very little information to try and provided a new intercept, often they would retarget onto another raid or try, using info from engaged aircraft, to re-conect to the exsisting raid. the pilots of the failed interecept had no way of knowing in which direction the germans were so to fly arround and reaquire the targets was a virtually impossible task regardless of fuel. the only time a longer range would help is the retasking onto a new raid, however as a lot of the failed intercepts were down to the RAF pilots not being where they were supposed to be, due to enxperiance and triedness, even a retask was likely to fail. if range was such a issue the how did the duxford wing operate? on your calculation the spit would be out of fuel in any normal intercept, yet the duxford wing (firstly check where duxford is in england :-) ) was able to take off, form up 3 squadrons intercept the bombers leaving london and chase them to the coast of kent (sometimes all the way over the channel but this was against orders) before returning. you claim that an extra 200 planes would have been the battle winner, this is wrong, if you had said 200 with pilots then you might have had an argument, but as supply of fighters always lagged behind the supply of pilots training in the type what would have been better where the 200+ pilots lost in the battle of france. if you check contempory accounts the spit was by the far the easest fighter to learn, if you were a rookie thrown into the battle your chance of surviving the first DAY of combat was twice as high in a spit as a hurricane (later reports from the desert puts the P40 as harder to master than the hurricane so an assumption can be made that losses of rookie pilots would have been higher if the p40 was used) as the one thing that made the BOB a close run thing was the chrontic shortage of pilots replace the spit with P40/Hurricanes would have actually made a defeat more likely not less. as to production costs the figure I provided were not based on financial figures but effort, if you look at the cost to the

To OBNW: How many times do I have to point out that the production history of the actual P40 is not relevant to my point!!! The P36 (which was the P40 airframe existed, and the Merlin existed. Therefore a P40 type aircraft with the Merlin was perfectly possible. The Melin equiped P40F was superior to the Hurricane at any height in everything except climb rate, nearly equal to the Spitfire II in speed and superior in several other qualities including zoom and roll rate. My argument isn't for more a/c but for a higher interception/sortie rate which could have been accomplished with a longer range a/c as has been repeatedly explained!

The Eagle squadrons learned on Spit and didn't like changing. The 4th FG (ex-Eagle pilots) didn't do nearly as well flying P47s as the 56th FG which started with far less experience, due entirely to unwillingness to change tactics. That doesn't make either better, just different. Quality as a gun platform is more than just opinion. The Spitfire's controls were too sensative to hold the kind of fine aim needed to shoot effectively at range. It's other problem was the pre-stall shudder, which was a fine quality in an airplane (the Mustang's stall qualities were fairly vicious by comparison) but seriously interfered with aim in a tight turn. The Hurricane, with less sensative controls, could just be held more accurately on a target. The better concentration of firepower was an added advantage. The 'progression' problem in correcting aim that Shooter mentioned (he's right about that -- ever play with a toy gyroscope??) adds to the problem because of the Spitfire's light weight compared to the gyro forces involved. Maneuverablility rarely gets you into a shooting position. It's useful to get you out of someone else's gunsights. Remember that 80% of all fighters shot down didn't see the guy who did it until the bullets were hitting. Tactics (and usually surprise) get you into firing position. A good shooting platform lets you take maximum advantage of your chances.

larry because an p36 existed and the merlin existed doesnot mean that the p40F could have been produced in 1940, it took till 1940 to get the alison engined p40 in service, now as the US wasnot producing merlins these would have had to come from the UK and we were using all the ones we were making, the p36 was convincingly out performed by both the spit and hurricane, so why would the RAF risk the replacement of these aircraft with one that was purely a design idea? remmeber that the huricane and p36 entered service at aprroximately the same time. which would you hang your future on a proven hurricane or the bodge of an engine onto an airframe that it wasnt designed for? fortunately for the uSAF the bodge of the alsion worked otherwise you could have started ww2 with p39's and p36 as your main fighter strength. also there were a lot of additional changes made to the P40 between the first model and the F that would not have made it to a merlin version in 1940, remember that the P40 in 40 did not have a particually good firepower, it had no armour and no self sealing tanks and would have had a merlin 2 not the merlin 28 it had in the F thats 200hp less, yet it only just exceeded the performance of the hurricane with the 28 installed! do you think it would still out perform the hurricane if you take off that 200hp? you have not proved anytthing regarding the better intercept with more fuel, as i point out that the interception has nothing to do with range and the change of successfully reaquiring the target was pretty non existant. so range = better interception is unproven, as the raf short fueled during the BOB it would actually indicate the opposite! having aircraft roaming arround looking for the germans was the situation the whole of the RAF CGI was designed to avoid. the raf certainly thought that the spit had sufficent range to do its designed job, later they may have wished for longer range but not during the BOB.

so why when you take into account the actual number of aircraft involved in the BOB did the spits manage to shoot down more germans per aircraft than the hurricane? and bear in mind that normally the spits were tasked with the fighters and the hurricane with the bombers. when you take these facts into account then surely the hurricane being the more stable gun platform and tasked against the less manuverable bombers, should have scored more highly or do you go for shooters argument that the number of aircraft taking part is irrelivent and that the hurricane shot down more germans than the spit makes it superior?

OBNW: My argument was that a Merlin powered 'hawk type a/c could have been built in '39 as all necessary technology was available, and such an a/c would have had tactcal advantages due to superior endurance (range). The a/c was quite capable of handling 2x.50s and 4x.30s which would be at least the firepower of a Spit IX. The actual production history of the actual P40 is not relavent to the argument. The problem was that the short range Spitfire got only one chance to intercept and it either the sqd. ldr or the GCI messed up, the a/c lacked fuel for another interception attempt. With 25-30% greater endurance a second intercption could be plotted and attempted, radically improving the intercepts/sortie ratio. Except that squadrons could be scrambled earlier, the GCI system would remain. This has nothing to do with standing patrols -- a straw man argument in this situation.