To Gevil: First: You were the one who brought up the Mustang. I simply commented that the Melins in the Mustang were built by Packard rather than RollsRoyce. The RAF recognized the difference. It was the difference between a Spitfire MkIX and MkXVI, also the difference between a MkI Lancaster and a MkIII. Sometimes the builder is of more than academic interest, as in Hispano-Hispano, SPAD-SPAD. The developement of the Merlin Mustang didn't help the Spitfire, but it cetainly did help the RAF. It provided the RAF with a fighter with strategically significant range, something the Spitfire didn't have. The RAF got about 450 Allison Mustangs (MkI, IA and II) as well as nearly 1700 Merlin Mustangs (MkIII and MkIV).

The Spit had three major design flaws. The most glairing is the narrow track gear wich caused more losses than any other single item. I noted this point in my first post. None have replied. The second was lack of range which could have been cured with a smaller cord wing and more fule. Regardless of the type of plane more range would have helped the Spit and Hurry do a BETTER JOB of defending the Kingdom! You can argue types all day long, but it is not about types, it's about range and the Spit did not have it! The third was the wing mounted guns. Nose mounted guns were, inspite of reduced rates of fire, if done poorly, much more effective than wing mounted guns. With nose mounted guns, properly done, there is no reduction of rate of fire. Think of how many gaps between the spinning blades there are for bullets to go threw, not what pecentage of the disc is obscured by the blades. (1200 Prop RPM, times three or four blades equals 3,600 or 4,800 shots per minute per gun!) You can bit** and moan all you want about this last, but anyone who's ever actualy watched gun film from a P-38 KNOWS that it had several times the effective fire power of the four 20MM gun Spit/P-40/47/51 or any other wing gun plane! Even after it runs out of cannon ammo, the four .50s were much more effective than the 4X20MM in the Spit! Statistics show that the average range at which pilots opened fire durring the BoB was 400-450 yards. At that range, 100% of the Spitfire's properly aimed shots are guarnteed to MISS! Just dragging the bullet stream threw the target from a P-38 at twice that range downed the target fighter more often than not. Finnaly, you all deride the SIM guys, but none of you ever worked for them and dealt with the actual test results that state the above. Wing mounted guns like almost all American and brit fighters were much less effective than the nose mounted guns of the P-39 and Germans! Go on line and read some of the great books about the German ACES! Live with it.

To OBNW; You are clearly showing your lack of understanding of both strategy and tactics with the following statements. The .5 issue below also shows a lack of knowledge of history! >>as to the .5 issue larry is correct that by 1940 FDR wopuld have said yes to the production of .5s in the UK however in 1936 the answer was no! and as pointed out many times when the spit and hurricane entered service they were the heaviest armed fighters of the day! by the time it became obvious that the 303 was no longer sufficent the raf had decided that cannons were the future and by 40 had cannon armed spits flying - unfortunatly not reliably.<< The origional Me-109 had a 20MM cannon IIRC, But the boeing P-26 of 1934 had a .50 which had more power than the four/eight .303s of the early Spits. >>your claim that 2x.5 nose guns and 2 x .30 wing guns was superior to 2x20mm and 4 x .303 is joke!<< No it is not. Two nose guns will put all of their shots on the target at ANY range that is within the "point blank" range. But all the wing mounted guns on the planet will be sure to miss a perfectly centered target at 1/2 the ZERO range! In addition a 5MM armor plate will stop 100% of .303 fire at 250 yards. many German fighters carried armor plates much thicker than this at 8-10MM, that could not stop a .50 at 600 yards, let alone 250. >>but your hindsight is so flawed, if the RAF knew what the BOB was going to be like would they have given up any performace of the spit for the sake of additional fuel that wasnt going to be used! yes it would have been advantagous later in the war but had the RAF been destroyed in 1940 then an ability in 42 would have been pointless would it not!<< Right! I've got a thousand bucks at ten to one odds that says; I can beat you playing either side of the BoB, buy much more than you can get back, IF I have longer ranged planes. Care to risk a hundred bucks to win one-thousand? >>if they RAF had the kind of foresight you mention then the RAF would have been equiped with jets by 1940.<< This is certainly true! They really stepted on their colective "Johnsons" whith that serries of choices didn't they! >>as for RM the original spit specification was for a range 30% lower than Mitchell actually included.<< So what! the failure was in the choices made to arive at the Spec in the first place! Then by Mitchel who failed to do his due dilligence and just went about his own way and built what he thought they wanted instead of making the right choices on his own. There is more than enough blame and bad design to go around! The UK was not alone in the above bad choices! The US had more jet engine projects in the works before WW-II than the rest of the world combined! In addition to GE, Lockheed, Northrup and at least TWO minor players ALL got rejections from the USAAF on their origional jet submissions! >>yes the spec was written after the spit was on the drawing bored but not as you claim after it had flown, the design was changed many times in line with the proposal, like the removal of the bomb racks on the original proposal!<< You are again dilusional! Read Dr. Alfred Price's books on the Spit to learn what you clearly do not know. >>it is you that make false asumptions, according to both cranwell and uxbridge range was not a factor on the RAF side (it was a major one on the Luftwaffe side that is agreed however the luftwaffe was an airforce design on specific job of ground support not strategic bombing)<< That they are/were obviously covering their colective rear ends because of their outstandingly bad judgement earlier in the war is plane for all to see! Read some of the more objective histories or some of the War Colledge Term papers that discuss this point in detail! Then you'll change your tune or just continue in ignorance? >>you claim that range would have made a difference yet no evidence supports this.<< Are you so ignorant of strategy and tactics and how range gives you options that this idea is not self evident? I sugest that you studdy any of the better books on "GAME THEORY" before making inane statements like the one just above again!

Another failure of the thought proccesses and demonstration of the lack of knowledge by OBNW! >>to say just because an aircraft can do something it means it can do to a level required to be effective is even poorer debating, you find anyone that will back your claim that a P40 could match a spit or 109 at 15000ft+ << You may have any plane you wish from the BoB in any multi-player flight sim and I will fly the P-39/40. I get to start from 300 yards behind you at full throttle and 50MPH faster than you are going. You get to start wings level, from cruise throttle settings and speed! I won't make you start from full lean cruise, IF you choose the Spit/Hurry, because that would make it to easy! I'll give you ten to one odds if you'll put up a hundred bucks. We'll fly ten tries and then switch sides and fly ten more. Who ever gets the most kills wins the money.

>>I've seen the 1,280 figure around a lot. The Hurricane IIC also had a more powerful armament and the spit IIBs armament was roughly equivlent, while the IIAs was indeed inferior. The Merlin XII on the spit II had only a single speed supercharger while the V-1650-1 had a 2 speed supercharger. The Merlin XX powered MkIII had a top speed of 385 mph.<< Right! On page 558 og Green/Swanbourough's book "The Complete Book of Fighters" it lists the top speed of the Spit-IA as 346MPH@15,000'. This figure can also be found in many other places and refferances. I also note that none of those still flying claim to be that fast. Note that the Spit-IA had a cieling of only 30,500' and that this figure IS LESS than that atributed to any P-40! See the refferance in the same book. Or are you really going to tell me that Swanborough and Green are not the two best aviation writers/researchers in the world? RIGHT! Note that the BoB was fought with the Spit-IA 99% and the Spit-IB less than 1% of the sorties. The hurry was also the eight gunned variant for the vast majority of it's sorties too! Because of malfunctions and the limeted numbers involved, there were very few if any Germans shot down with cannon armed planes in the BoB! That they only made one Mk-III is also a fact and that the speed you site is substantialy faster than most other REPUTABLE sources! Page 560 of the same book lists the Mk-VC's top speed as 374MPH. (The Mk-III was the prototype of the Mk-VC!) Note that the cannon armed planes WERE SLOWER in actuality than their LMG armed bretheren. If you want to use the aft fuse tank in combat, go ahead! It only took one tracer to cause any partialy filled tank to explode, IF it whent threw the air space above the fuel! And you want to add 100% to the target area where an unprotected tank explosion whoud separate the tail from the plane! RIGHT!

>>Machine guns were found to be not very effective against the sheet metal of the V1.<< Please site a source for this canard! 'Stang Opps reports state otherwise! >>To be successful against a V1 a plane had to: (3) be a good gun platform, V1's were very small and hard to see at 200yds, any closer and you wouldn't get back. (4) have heavy hitting power, you only had a very short time to shoot at one, maybe only a minute or less, for the slower planes possibly only a few seconds. I've gone through the figures (from Aces High Vol 2) and analysed them.<< Get a better book! Get one that lists the number of missions flown and the kills! >>Firstly I excluded any squadrons that were only used for part of the V1 action (using the RAF's web site and squadron operational logs),<< Why did you list the 'stangs' score then? it was only opperational Vs the buzz bombs for three months! >>After this I get: Number shot down Squadrons Number per Squadron Tempest V 581 3 194 Spitfire XIV 293 2 147 Spitfire IXB 97 2 49 Spitfire XII 44 1 44 Mustang III 253 4 63 Mosquito VI 71 1 71 Mosquito XIII 165 1 165 Notes: (1) Good effort for the Spit IX it must have really struggled. (2) Also good for the Mossie II, they were old and clapped out. (3) I suspect the Mustang was let down by its guns, it was used by a crack Polish wing (who had great success later in TAF) and was nearly as fast as a Tempest. << As to the above list of buzz bomb killers; The mustang only saw action for three months before they were transfered some place else! That not all the others were there for the duration is also beyond dispute. If you were to break it down by kill/sortie the 'stang would look mighty good! I sincerly dought that any of the rest would match those numbers! How about it? Use the kill/mission figures why don't you?

>>They stripped out machines guns from Spits as they were a waste of weight. A V1 was made from sheet metal with very few moving parts, much tougher than a plane. Took very accurate shooting to hit it. A pilot might have only time for a few bursts to take it down. Which makes those pilots (and it was by no means all) who tipped them even more remarkable ... that's some flying.<< Two things; Have you actualy read the details of "TIPPING" V-1s? It was easy as hell. All you had to do was fly along side within 3-4 feet and your tip vortex would cause their wing to drop and syonara buzz bomb! You continue to make this sound like it was hard to do. As some of the pilots who actualy did it or read some of the accounts writen at the time. Secondly, "SNAKING" was the primary cause of the Mk-XIVs delay into service! IIRC it was either 11 or 15 months between first flight anf first kill, BECAUSE it was very difficult to fly the thing! Changes to the verticle fin and rudder were made before it was only semi fixed and the resulting instability was the main reson there were so few kills from the type! IIRC only 17 or 22 total ACES in the Mk-XIV AND ALL OTHER LATER TYPES COMBINED, IIRC! The problem was finaly traced post war to the five and six bladed props. They added aria at the front of the plane that was not countered at the rear. Stand next to a Mk-V and then nect to a Mk-XIV to see this for your self. The one's rudder is ~two feet taller!

To MustangFlyer: Got the time to look up handling on Typhoon and Tempest. Crap!!! The fact that they both (particularly the Typhoon) had terrible handling problems on take-off and landing doesn't make the MkXIV Spitfire any better, but it does lead me to wonder how desperate for ground attack a/c the RAF was at the time. At least the P38 didn't actively try to kill its own pilot on take off and landing! Add the fact that the Typhoon was actually shorter range than the Spitfire, I can only conclude that the fact that you could hand considerable weaponry from it counted for more than anything else.

They were all bad on take off/landing and got worse as engine powers went up. By all I mean all: Spit, Typhoon (particularly bad), Tempest (better than Typephoon), P47 (got worse with later models), Mustang, Corsair, Hellcat, etc. Basic aerodynamics. Large torque, twisted airflow hitting off control surfaces, etc. All planes grew larger tailfins (or strakes in some cases, such as the P51D) as they grew in power. That, plus bettr training kept the problem within acceptable limits ... it was wartime after all. The true fix for single engined planes was contra-rotating propellers, as in the late Seafire. Yes, you were right about the RAF being desperate for another fighter bomber, though several times the Typhoon was nearly cancelled. They couldn't make enough Mosquitos to completely fill the role and there was nothing else with the speed, hitting power and toughness. By D Day there were 26 squadrons of Typhoons and they had evolved into an invaluable war winning machine. The battle of Mortain was the first pure battle of aircraft vs armour ... and the aircraft won.

Larry, You've got to compare like with like. The Typhoon had a longer range than the Spit 1/II/V (approx 500 vs 400 for the late Mk V) which were its direct comparisons. The Tempest had a longer range than the Mk XIV (approx 800 vs 600 for the XIVE with the rear internal fuel tank). Obviously these varied according to loads and drop tanks extended them further.