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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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larryjcr    RE:High-speed attacks?   6/7/2006 12:34:17 PM
While not impossible for a Spit to make high speed attacks (the MkVIII and later the MkXIV had to do so against the Japanese, where turning contests were suicidal) they had a number of drawbacks. For one thing, the Spitfire was a comparatively poor gun platform. This was a result of the very sensative controls, where were a major advantage in acrobatics, but made 'holding' a target at any serious range difficult. There was also the factor of gyroscopic progression due to engine torque trying to turn the a/c away from the direction the pilot was trying to move the nose. Due to the Spit's low structual mass, this showed up more in a Spit than in heavier a/c. Second, due to Mitchell's efforts to achieve the lowest practical wing loading, the Spitfire had far more 'failure points' than either the P47 or P38. In open style combat, any mistiming can give the enemy a shot -- usually not a good one, but still, a chance to get hits. Either the '47 or the '38 could be expected to take far more damage than was needed to shoot down a Spitfire. The Lightning by the way, had very good acceleration due to the combination of high power loading and a very 'slick' airframe. Only the later Spitfires with greatly increased power made up for the disadvantage of low wing loading in acceleration. As was mentioned below, the Lightning also was the only one of the USAAF fighters that had a rate of climb comperable to the 'European' style fighters. Also, both the '47 and '38 enjoyed very very high zoom climb rates, which could often get them out of trouble. Another advantage of higher wing loading and sheer weight of the a/c. The Spitfire was deliberately built with very low wing loading and very sensative controls. These were advantages in close combat, but there is a downside to everything.
 
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MustangFlyer    RE:High-speed attacks?   6/15/2006 8:43:53 AM
I agree about there is a downside to everything, just have problems about the rest. The poor gun platform seems like ones of those 'myths' again, like the negative G carb or COG issues. I've read heaps of pilots accounts (including US pilots using the Spit), plus test pilots and I've never came across the poor gun platform issue, either in air-air or air-ground. It was a highly maneuverable, responsive plane. If you were ham fisted then I'm sure you could have problems, but you would with everything you flew, except maybe a B17. The Spit had several major advanatages in combat, particularly what is now called high E (energy) maneuvers. The Spit was very slick (probably second only to the Mustang) and thus could undertake a wide range of maneuvers sucessfully. Shoot and scoot was a normal tactic by every pilot in every plane if they could get away with it. The 'great' planes all had a sufficient range of options, if bounced turn, dive, climb, etc (depending on the plane) and get the advantage back again. To bounce you must quickly maneuver into an advantageous position. The poorer planes had fewer options for their pilots. Spits, Mustangs, Me109s and Fw190s all gave their pilots a lot of options to bounce, avoid bounce, recover, re-attack. With a Spit you had a lot of options in either attacking or being attacked, you had speed, climb, spiral dive, climb, spiral climb, basically you could quickly fit togther a combination of maneuvers to get or regain the advantage. Not sure about the 'failure points' either. The Spit was very strong. The Typhoon, the (I hate to admit) Mustang, the Me109 and P38 all had issues with structural strength and wing/tail break offs if pushed too far. It was quite small so a major hit would make an impact ... if you could hit it. Interestingly the Spit made a fair fighter/bomber. It couldn't carry a lot of bombs but it could deliver them very accurately (with the right pilot). This was because it could make such tight pull outs at high G. P-47s and (to a lesser extent) Typhoons always had to start their pull out earlier, otherwise you would 'mush' into the ground (Golly's book, The Day of The Typhoon, gives a case where a too gung-ho pilot killed himself this way). Price's book on the Spitfire has a section about G damage to the Spit (rated 10 Gs), despite contineous high G (black out level) operations with dive bombing Spits showed very little damage. Re Damage capability compered to P-47s and P-38s, an unkind person would say that the P-47 had to survive more damage because it couldn't avoid it (it was a BIG target and a maneuverable as a frigate) and the P-38 broke down so often that damage from the enemy was a secondary concern. The Mustang combined many strengths togther, probably the best E fighter of WW2 due to its outstanding aerodynamics, reasonably maneuverable at lower speeds, excellent at higher speeds. Again a good pilot could string togther a range of maneuvers to gain/regain the advantage. Plus it had the best range of the lot. Small, difficult to see, very, very fast. Climb was poor but zoom climb was excellent. Great in a dive without the mach limitations of the P-47 and P-38 (which was miserable). Its range and speed were major pluses, you could avoid an attack or disengage if hard pressed, then using speed re-engage again at will. Try that in a P-47 or Spit and you would walk home. Mach limitations should not be underestimated. Basically if a Spit got on your tail at high altitude and stayed with you .. you were screwed no matter what you flew. You might get an initial advantage but you would have to pull out earlier (or go into the deck as happened in the BOB) and the Spit was still accelerating and under control.... ouch. Closterman gives an account of this from 40,000 feet against an Me109. Several other pilot acounts also give examples. Your best hope in this situation would be that the Spit would disengage through lack of fuel (oh for that long range Spit). The Mustang was nearly as good, though it would tend to 'porpoise' at near its mach limits. Interestingly the Mosquito also had a very high mach limit as well, one was actually clocked at 600 mph by radar. The Me109 wasn't too bad either, except that its elevators locked up (too fast and straight into the ground) and a tendency to yaw, which if not carefully handled could overstress the airframe. The US voted with its money, dumped the P-38s and P-47s for air-air combat in the demanding ETO and relegated them to the still important but less demanding roles such as air-ground or less demanding theatres. The UK did the same, relegating its Beaufighters and Hurricanes as soon as they had better alternatives. The Germans were just too good to put up sub-standard equipment if something better was available.
 
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larryjcr    RE:High-speed attacks?   6/16/2006 11:25:19 AM
Will cut this into parts on the two main subjects. If your haven't read complaints, you haven't read far. Even in the BoB and earlier, pilots who flew both the Spit and the Hurricane agreed that the Hawker was a better shooting platform becasue it was more (their word) 'steady' than the Spitfire. This is what they were talking about. It's not a matter of being 'ham handed'. A fighter pilot in combat is always a man on an adrenaline 'high'. That's great for reflexes and strength, but its crap for fine motor skills. Trying to keep an a/c with over light controls on a point of aim requires a level of delicacy that a pilot on adrenaline just wasn't capable of providing. The US military did a formal study of single engine fighter control forces in '44 and concluded that the Mustang's controls were 'too light' for optimum gunnery in combat, while the F6F's were too heavy. They made fine shooting hard due to the amount of strength required. The Spitfire's controls were considerably lighter than the Mustang's.
 
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larryjcr    RE:High-speed attacks?   6/16/2006 3:48:27 PM
Actually the Spitfire was designed for angles combat rather than energy combat. While fairly 'slick' it's low wing loading mitigated against it in acceleration, and it's lack of mass was against it in zoom climb. The Lightning was 'slicker' for its mass than either the Mustang or Spitfire, and the Germans complained that it was very hard to see when end on -- coming in or going out. One German ace described it as "three beads on a string". You are confusing structural load bearing with ruggedness. Any fighter a/c, particularly one that depended on tight turns as its primary maneuver, had to be able to handle high structural loading. The Zero was structuraly very strong, but it couldn't take damage. Ruggedness was the ability to take battle damage and survive. The Zero achieved low wing loading by reducing structual weight. The Spitfire used the same idea, but to somewhat less of an extreme. It took a lot less damage (one average -- there was always the 'golden BB') to shoot down a Spitfire than a Thunderbolt of Lightning -- or even a Mustang, and that was NOT just a matter of proportion to a/c weight, or size. For all its ability to handle the loads of tight turns, the Zero was fragile even beyond its lack of armor and self-sealing tanks. The concept of 'failure points' is simply the number of locations in the a/c where a single cannon hit, or a few hmg hits will cause the destruction of the a/c. Of course, any a/c powered by a single liquid-cooled engine came with major collection of failure points, but most of them lay in the a/c structure, where the a/c could easily be destroyed by generating a weak point by battle damage, while the a/c was under heavy structural load from combat maneuvers. The Spitfire was less vulnerable than the Zero, but much more so than even the relatively fragile Mustang. Again you insist that only the ETO really mattered. With the end of combat in Europe, the USAAF (which then had a P47 -- the N -- with range equal to the Mustang) 'voted with its money', and started retaining Mustang pilots of the 8th AF to fly Thunderbolts. There was no shortage of P51s, but the USAAF clearly considered the P47 a more effective and useful a/c.
 
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MustangFlyer    RE:High-speed attacks?   6/16/2006 4:53:16 PM
(1) The ETO was the dominant field of battle, that was agreed to by the Churchill, Roosevelt and the CCOS. The reason was simple, Japan couldn’t win no matter what, the Germans could have (and nearly did). And if they had, they would have been the dominant power on earth. As far as the air war goes it was by far the toughest environment. (2) Re Hurricane, they only references I get are were about its more concentrated guns. Park tries to vector the Hurricanes to the bombers and the Spits to the Me109s whenever possible. The fact that the Hurricane was badly outclassed by the 109 was also a major factor. (3) The Spit was simply a much higher performing plane. Some pilots struggled with that (and got replaced or killed). Bit like some pilots transitioning to the Mosquito couldn’t hack it because of its higher performance. (4) If the Spit was really as bad as you say then it would have been fixed, there would have been so many complaints by pilots, test pilots, etc that something would have been done. Tightening up the controls is a simple job, minor changes to control runs, elevator balance, etc, would have damped down control responsiveness markedly. In fact a lot of development work went into improving control responsiveness, anything that could have been done to make the Spit even more responsive to controls was done. Planes that had poor handling (due to manufacturing defects) were sent back to be fixed! For your argument to be true then for 9 years (including 6 years of war): the pilots (Bader, Tuck, Broadhurst, , Johnston, etc, can you imagine them not complaining?), test pilots (people like Quill, Sheen and Henshaw), all of Boscombe Down, Supermarine, MAP, the RAF chiefs, heck even the UK Government were all wrong. Sorry doesn’t hang right with me. (5) The Spit had a lot of armour and was, at least as tough as a Me109 and Mustang. Don’t know where the more vulnerable than the Mustang bit comes from. Roughly same size, same armour, same engine. The Spit was a bit lighter, mainly because the British had more experience at combining strength with lightness (later copied by NAA for the P-51H). Lots of them came back shot full of holes. (6) Well the Mustang got half of all the German planes shot down in the ETO by the US, so it must have been good for something. (7) Must be me, but when you have a plane that is nearly twice the price, requires twice the fuel for the same range and has inferior performance at all altitudes, is vastly less manoeuvrable, has a take off length as long as a Lancaster and will kill you if try combat manoeuvres under 10,000 feet, I just find it a bit hard to say that the P-47 was better than the Mustang, or even in the same class. (8) Different philosophies about fighters, truck vs sports car, what does the job better. A fighter is supposed to do the hitting, not get hit. The P-47 & Typhoon were too heavy, the Zero too light. The 109, Spit, Mustang & 190 (in order of mass) seemed to be the best compromise between performance, strength & hitting power and the record backs that up. None were perfect, they all had their particular strengths & weaknesses, but they were the dominant planes of their era.
 
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larryjcr    RE:High-speed attacks?   6/17/2006 3:48:39 AM
Funny you should mention Sanfor Tuck. His comments comparing the Hurricane to the Spitfire: "it's remarkable steadiness and solidness (compared to the Spitfire) when the eight guns crashed into life made it an absolute delight to fly, but I would have liked more speed," If you like, I can also give you a quote from him on the Hurricane's superior ruggedness.
 
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oldbutnotwise    Spit myths   6/17/2006 2:37:34 PM
1, the wing shape was because of the need to fit the 8x.303 mitchel had already decided on the elipitcal wing before the decision to fit 8x mgs and in the original design had 4x .303 in the nose. the elipitcal is suposed to be the best shape for a straight wing fighter but it has the build problems. 2, the hurricane was a better gun platform this relates to the bomber attacks, to kill a bomber with .303 mgs in 1940 you needed to hit with a lot of rounds so need a steady platform, however against a fighter you need to be able to follow the fighter target, so the spit was actual more suitable as a fighter intercepter than the hurricane, whilst the hurricane was better against bombers. 3, the spit was fragile. unsure of this one as all the reference i can find actual states the opposite, that the spit was actually reasonable rugged, the only weak spot being the undercarriage. yes the main spar was vunrable to cannon hits but compared to other aircraft a hit that would cause the main spar to fail would have a similar effect on a twin spar frame! 3, the fuel tank location caused a lot of burnt pilots, this is actualy false, the main culprit of the badly burnt pilots waqs the hurricane and was more often the glycol tank or the wing tanks that were the cause. the main tank on the spit was protected from the front by that chunk of metal known as a merlin, behind the tank was the pilot and his seat armour so any rounds hitting from the rear had usually had to pass though the pilot! 4, the hurricane was able to survive more punishment the hurricane was a fabric covered body with metal wings, whilst the body was easy to repair and cannon shells would not detonate on impact as it would on the spit, whilst this meant was that a lot of hurricanes came back with big holes post war investigation of wrecks and damage reports it seams that this was actualy a weak spot for the hurricane, as a lot of the cannon shells failing to detonate on the skin would travel though the frame untill hitting something more solid, often the pilot armour, which whilst stopping 7.62 was insuffcient to stop 20mm resulting in a dead or serious injured pilots in situations in which the spit would survive. the spit could and often did return with 20mm holes in the structure, whilst often this resulted in the wrighting off of the airframe but it got the pilot home. 5, the camera gun was removed because it was showing that the pilots were overclaiming and was done to prevent morale from failing. the camera gun was removed because the film was so blured it was completely useless, so the was decided to remove it to save weight, it was reintroduced in the b wing and c wings when they went into production.
 
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larryjcr    RE:Spit myths   6/17/2006 3:52:57 PM
Ref gun platform. The Hurricane was a steadier gun platform, and therefore superior against a target at longer ranges (at the time of the BoB, RAF written policy was that the fighter pilot open fire at 400 yards and continue firing while closing). The lighter controls of the Spitfire were an advantage in a close range manuevering contest, and at that range, accurate gunnery was less important as careful aim was impossible with both a/c engaged in maneuvering anyway. However, as the question started with the suitability of the Spitfire for high energy style combat (in which longer range shots are much more the norm) the weakness of the Spit in shooting 'steadiness' is a weakness even if your shooting at a fighter rather than a bomber. Unless your attacker is at a 'dead six' position, any firing from the rear is going to get some rounds past the armor into the area ahead of the pit, even ignoring the question of deflection shots. Unfortunately, the self-sealing qualities of the fuel tanks in the MkIs and IIs fell badly short of what was needed, and the position of the tank, directly in front of the pit, produced the predicatable results. The Spitfire's ruggedness was about equal to that of the '109, which also came up short compared to designs produced later in the war. On average, 3-5 hits by 20mm would destroy a MkV Spit, or a '109G. A FW190 or P51 could handle about 5-8 hits. The Mustang was only marginally larger than a Spitfire (about a foot more length and span, but with less wing area, so actually a smaller target from many angles) but was half a ton heavier due to a more heavily built structure. All of them (except the '190A) were vulnerable to hits to the engine cooling jacket, radiator and the lines between. In a single engine a/c it's pretty hard to keep them away from the pilot. The idea that the Hurricane could take more damage than a Spitfire may be a myth, but it was certainly a myth that was universally believed by the pilots who flew both a/c at the time.
 
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larryjcr    RE:High-speed attacks?   6/18/2006 2:58:02 PM
To MustangFlyer. The P51 got a lot of kills (and a lot of those on the ground) due to large numbers in use at a time when the quality of German pilots was going down. It was not uncommon for them to attack and decimate Luftwaffe pilot training flights. Improving the Spitfire's stability as a shooting platform would have been easy to do, just install some artificial resistance in the control systems to make them less sensative, as Grumman did for the F8F Bearcat. But that would have meant giving up some of the 'lightness' that was so very nice in a tight turn, acrobatic style of combat, for which the a/c had been designed, and for which the RAF trained its pilots. They chose not to make the trade off. As to the Spitfire being a radical, 'cutting edge' design, it was certainly an excellent example of combining the best of what was then current aerodynamics, and structure. At least Mitchell avoided Messerschmitt's error in sticking with the externally braced horizontal tail. But there was really nothing that was new. At that time, the methods that had been in use in bombers and transports for several years were finally being applied to fighter aircraft, and Mitchell got it right for what he was trying to do. I may disagree with some of the choices, but not with the quality of the work. On the other hand, the early Spitfire, and the Merlin that powered it, was behind the technical curve in some important aspects. The continued use of the float carbarator rather than fuel injection looks pretty foolish in retrospect, as does the delay in providing the a/c with constant speed propellers, which were standard with the Germans and in the US at the time, and got to the Spitfire and Hurricane only during the BoB.
 
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AussieEngineer    RE:High-speed attacks?   6/18/2006 6:09:20 PM
The early 109s didn't have CSPs, they had variable pitch props at best, big difference there. But your right about the US, they seemed to have CSPs down fairly well and the Brits always seemed to be lagging behind, in that particular area. Eg, the Comet racer, had a 2 pitch system that was changed automatically and only once after takeoff. But everybody was behind the technical curve in some area or another.
 
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