Another couple of points that have occured to me. 1. If the BOB bombers were operating at 15k where were the Me-109's at. My guess would be at around 16-17k. The P-40 started to loose performance rapidly at 15k, so to engage the Me's with diving attacks it would have had to move well into their favoured territory. What that means is what OBNW has said before, that they would have only gotten one dive per formation because they didn't have the climb performance to pull up for a second one before the formation was miles away. That is if the '109's didn't climb use their superior clime to climb above the oncoming Hawk force chop them to pieces before they could threaten the bombers. 2. Had the Germans been fighting P-40's, then the obvious thing to do would be to fly the bombers in at a higher altitude, say 20k. All three of their main types could do this, it just wasn't their ideal altitude for their best performance. However, against a P-40 at 20k they wouldn't have had to worry about making their best performance, because the latter would have been chopped to pieces by the 109's in short order before they could do any damage. Any impact on range performance wouldn't have been an issue, as it was only a short hop over the channel to England. At the very worst, some of the the bombers might have had to reduce their bombload to operate at that altitude(eg, the He-111 was the worst and could make 24K clean, so it might have been an issue). That wouldn't have been such a big deal, because losses of bombers in A2A combat would virtually cease, so more bombers would get through to their target. Then, once the '109's had completely destroyed the P-40 equipped RAF, the bombers could go back to their favoured operating altitude and finish their job.

1. The original point of the argument was that better fighter range and endurance would have improved RAF performance in the BoB, even if some sacrifice was made in rate of climb. 2. The RAF-hawk I postulated would have been an a/c similar to the actual P40, designed and built in UK and powered by the Merlin engine. 3. My reference to the P36 was to demonstrate that all P40 technology except the Allison (to be replaced by the Merlin) engine already existed in 1936. The RAF-hawk could have been designed and built for the BoB in place of some or all Hurricanes, which it would have out-performed. British a/c industry had all the necessary technology (although they would have been well advised to buy propellers and probably landing gear from the US). The production history of the actual P40 is not relevant to this position. 4. With increased range and endurance, a/c could make an initial attck, disengage by diving away, and have time to regain height for another attack. This was commonly done in the Pacific by P40s against bombers escorted by Zeroes and Ki44s, and the performance of the '109E was NOT superior to these a/c. 5. The performance of the RAF-hawk would have compared to the Spitfire and Hurricane as I set out in my earlier post. Again, I point out that actual Luft. pilots who fought both Hurricanes and 'hawks in Africa considered the Curtiss' to be much superior to the Hurricane.

As stated in my earlier post, range of the Spitfire Mk1 & II and Hurricane I was 400 to 500 miles. The only way to get three hours endurance is without any use of high throttle settings -- no combat and no hard climbing. The original Tomahawk I had an range on internal of 730 miles. That is an advantage of 40% over the best of the RAFs BoB fighters. And that extra time is entirely at the disposal of the GCI effort to make interception.

"My reference to the P36 was to demonstrate that all P40 technology except the Allison (to be replaced by the Merlin) engine already existed in 1936. The RAF-hawk could have been designed and built for the BoB in place of some or all Hurricanes, which it would have out-performed. British a/c industry had all the necessary technology (although they would have been well advised to buy propellers and probably landing gear from the US). The production history of the actual P40 is not relevant to this position." Why on earth would the British even consider upgrading a P-36 in 1936? They already had the Hurricane in production and the Spitfire on the way and even the US hadn't considered upgrading the P-36 to P-40 standard at that stage. If the country building the type wasn't aware of its reletive performance disadvantages at that time, why would a second country that didn't even start to look abroad to increase it's fighter intake until 1939 consider it? Do you even know whether Curtis would have sold them a licence to build P-36's? Additionally, British firms were at full capacity producing Hurricanes and Spits(the only reason they eventually looked at the P-40) which were both performing well in the field, so why would they interupt production of two successful types for some theoretical improvement of a rotten American fighter?

Just a question Larry. How do you expect your RAF Hawk to be quicker than a Spitfire II, when it has the same engine as a Spitfire I but weighs 20% more? That would be a really good trick, considering that this very pro-Hawk website places the 1941 model P-40F, which was powered by a 1300hp Merlin, at a top speed of only one MPH faster than a Spit Mark I(see second ling for the Spit's speed). Note in the third link that the fastest in-service Hawk ever built was the N-1, which managed 378mph in 1943. The Mark V Spit beat that in 1941 and by 42 the spit was over 400mph with the Mark IV, eventually to reach 450mph in the Mark XIV. There is absolutely no comparison between the two types, and irrespective of whatever modifications you can dream up for the Hawk it never would have come close to the Spit's performance. http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/p40_9.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire#Specifications http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/p40_15.html

To AGR: I didn't say 'quicker'. I said it would be 'as fast'. Speed: Spitfire II (1175 hp) 357mph. Tomahawk II (1150 hp) 352mph. Note that 5mph is well within the performance variation between individual a/c. Note that the Hurricane I was slightly lighter than the Spitfire, but considerably slower. The Tomahawk had a somewhat higher wing loading. I'm simply comparing two a/c with very similar hp. As the Spitfire V being faster, it an additional 300 hp. There's no reason that the Tomahawk's speed should be reduced because of an engine swap that gave it another 25 hp, unless the Merlin was a lot heavier than the Allison.

"Speed: Spitfire II (1175 hp) 357mph." What? The Spit I had a top speed of 363mph and the Spit II was faster again than that due to a more powerful engine. As I said, the P-40F did have a Merlin and was only 1mph faster than a Spit I. Your idea was tried and didn't produce results I'm afraid.

Actually, the Spitfire I (365mph) was slightly faster than the MkII, and its best operating altitude was slightly highter (19K vs 17K). It was slightly heavier, but had an increase in climb rate. I compare the Tomahawk to the MkII because the hp ratings were so similar. The Tomahawk had some drag advantages over the Spitfire with the retractable tail wheel and the radiator and oil cooler enclosed. BEst speed for the P40F was 364mph/20K with 1300hp actually 1 mph slower than the Spit I. Spit VC was 374/13K with 1470hp. Note that the MkV is only 9mph faster than the MkI and only 10 mph faster than the P40F even though is has a distinctly more powerful engine (170mp difference from the P40F). Since nearly all the BoB Spits were MkIs, but they were being equiped with the additional armor that became standard in the MkII after production, it may be that the speed number for the MkI is for original a/c without added armor, bullet resistant windshield, etc.

Thats a different set of numbers to what I've seen. In any case, it doesn't change the fact that no modified P-40 was ever going to be as good a BOB fighter as the Spit. I'm getting tired of this discussion so I think I might leave it there.

Larry, I couple of corrections. 1stly the spit was tried with a retracting tail wheel but it was rejected as the increase in speed was so small as to be unworth the trouble of the wheel unit. you keep mentioning the pacific and avg for how well the p40 did. this is a poor example as the japanise fighter suffered the same tail off in performance at altitude as did the p40, it was one reason the p38 was such a success as its performance actually improved with altitude. a poor high altitude fighter vs another poor altitude fighter eugals out the altitude issue, the AVG by the way IIRC never met a Zero in combat, I also believe tthat it never met the Ki44, but I could be wrong, although for certain they never claimed on and most sites dont refer to them. the normal opposition were the ki15, ki27 and later the ki43 none of which were anywhere near the performance of the p40 let alone the zero.