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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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AussieEngineer    RE:Spitfire Kills and Claims   1/9/2006 12:43:02 AM
You found the right formula this time. I suggest you do the calculations yourself , I have. You might find that a 400 mile radius as specified in my previous post is quite a possibility. Also, it might interest you to know that the wing tanks in PR spitfires were not in the position of the guns in the fighter variants. They were intergral tanks that went from the leading edge of the wing back to the main spar, they held between 57 and 66 imp gal depending on the mark. The guns and cannon in the fighters were position behind the main spar with the exception of the barrels, which went through the main spar and wing leading edge.
 
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larryjcr    RE:Spitfire Kills and Claims   1/11/2006 3:46:08 PM
To Shooter, ref your post of 1/6: We were discussing ways to increase range of the MkI at that point, not starting from scratch. Hence my dismissal of changes in the engine mounts to lower the engine, let alone changing the location of the wing to change cg. My idea was that it might have been possible to do something like the MkVIII wing alterations for leadig edge tanks which might have been made larger if amrament changes were made: replacing the 8x.303s with 4x.50s.
 
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Shooter    RE:Spitfire Kills and Claims   1/11/2006 3:50:33 PM
I never disputed that the spit could be made into a long range plane, just that if it had been done durring the design fase, it would have been much better. Having said that, when I look at the things that must be done to get a 400 mile radius, such as cruise at 191MPH@6,000' and auto lean or "Full Weak" as the brits say is a heavy price to pay for that cappasity. On the other hand if the Aspect Ratio was as high as the mustang for instance, IE 5.82 instead of 5.600 or 4% greater than it was the range at least according to the Breuget formula would be 432 miles in stead of 400 you postulate? Taking this one step farther, if the plane had been designed right in the first place, the AR could have been 8 instead of 5.600 and the plane would have been much better at both combat and long range cruise. Furthermore, it would have been significantly faster both in top and cruise speeds and that would have made it harder to shoot down and easier to kill with. Both things the Spit lacked. ( It is very hard to claim that the Spit, even using the claimed ratios was a great plane and war winner. Later research shows that it may evan have been a looser? IE, killed fewer planes than it lost!)
 
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flamingknives    RE:Spitfire Tactics   1/11/2006 4:55:03 PM
Shooter: I think that one problem with your argument is that you assume tactics to match your new fighter. Nearly every engagement in the BoB ended up in a dogfight, where the Spitfire was very strong and where a range-optimised aircraft, as they stood at that stage in the war, would be weak. Unless the RAF had these entirely hypothetical aircraft you suggest and used tactics not developed until later in the war and had pilots with sufficient training to carry them out then they would have suffered terribly. If you look at the BoB, you'll note that this was a largely inexperienced airforce on the defensive against a well-trained attacker. All other scenarios like this in WWII result in very heavy losses for the defender, while the RAF gave as good as they got.
 
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AussieEngineer    RE:Spitfire Kills and Claims   1/11/2006 7:56:16 PM
The extended tips spits had an AR of 6.5, 10% greater than that of the Mustang. The P-40 and Hurricane also had higher AR than the Mustang. Clearly there are more important things at work than aspect ratios. I'd like to see the calculations for an 8%(400 to 432 miles) increase in range.
 
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MustangFlyer    RE:Spitfire Tactics   1/13/2006 7:23:36 AM
flamingknives good point. What has to be remembered is how new this all was. Dogfighting at the dizzy heights of 300mph and 15,000 feet, unimaginable in even '37? Some people were arguing that you couldn't even do formation flying in these new planes. The Luftwaffe was streets ahead of everyone in operational tactics at that time, fortunately they met their match against (my personal opinion only) one of the greatest strategist of WW2 - Dowding. A truly remarkable man. Basically, against intense opposition from within the RAF he: „h Created the next generation of British fighters, with vastly more performance than their predecessors. „h Created a whole international training system for airmen. „h Pushed and implemented radar. „h Built a whole integrated national air defence system (which is the basis of every modern system today). „h Then managed it daily through it through Britain's greatest challenge (ably assisted by Parks a brilliant tactician). „h Then he and Parks got shafted. On another thread we were talking about "what ifs", but the best ones are those that are reasonable, within the skills and knowledge of those at the time. So it is fair to argue about longer range Spitfires, because there were those at the time that argued and tried that. Similarly more Mosquitoes, because there were those at the time that argued that (actually in ¡¥43 RAF Operations Research scientists proved that). To Shooter: It does not make sense to argue that the RAF should have (say) bought lots of P40s for air defence, when everything they knew at the time proved that what they had was better .. not to mention they made it themselves and therefore were a reliable source .. versus a very unreliable supplier at that time. The US was officially and legally neutral when the war started. Many people in the US did not want to be involved at all , some, very influential, supported the Germans, such as Joe Kennedy or Ford, some were simply Anglophobes they didn't like the Germans but they hated the British. Many US companies were closely involved with German business, such as IBM or Ford. We talk about Lend Lease, but that was much later, the US demanded cold hard cash at top dollar... until the UK ran out of money (at one point the UK's total national reserves were just 12 million pounds), then they took property and assets. By the end of the war the UK was totally bankrupt. There were those who saw it very differently, that we had to stand together, Roosevelt and Eisenhower stand so high amongst the greatest of Allied leaders, but there were others who had other agendas (even Roosevelt had an agenda , but that is another story). So you are Dowding in ¡¦35. What do you do, you¡¦re bosses are bomber obsessed, every expert (including US ones) say bombers will always get through, the country is in a recession, the Germans are getting stronger, the US is not in the equation at all .. oh I know buy P40s¡K. yeh sure.
 
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larryjcr    RE:Spitfire Tactics   1/14/2006 10:52:45 AM
To Flamingknives: The tactics for using a fast, strong, stable a/c against an opponant with tighter turning ability weren't developed 'later' in WWII. They were developed in 1916 by Oswald Boelke using Albatros D2s against Nieuports and Sopwith Pups, and refined in 1917 by the pilots of SE5As and SPADs against Fokker DrIs. Nothing needed to be developed except in detail. As I've said before, RAF combat tactics in the BoB weren't 'developed' at all. They were in default of having any proper tactics at all!!!
 
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AussieEngineer    RE:Spitfire Tactics   1/14/2006 7:38:08 PM
The standard/regulation combat tactics of the RAF were indeed abysmal in the BoB. The way they were teaching pilots to close and attack was just terrible. I think the standard tactic for bomber attacks was to slow down to some specified overtake speed form a line and attack bombers for directly astern at the same alitude. The Germans called this tactic "the line of fools" IIRC. They could just zoom in and pick them off one by one.
 
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larryjcr    RE:Spitfire Tactics   1/15/2006 10:38:46 AM
Actually, it was even worse than that. There were NO tactics at all for fighter-vs-fighter combat. Theory was that fighters were too fast to fight each other. The 'line of fools' was one of a series of "Fighting Area Attacks" to be used by fighters against bombers, I think that one was Number Two. These were sort of 'marching band' type evolutions which proved not only totally useless, but, as you point out, extremely dangerous. Reportedly when one student asked an instructor was the '109s were likely to be doing during a FAA, he was told: "ignore them, they'll have to wait their turn." By the way, the FAAs were the reason RAF fighter training placed so much emphasis on formation flying. Too bad they didn't seem to have time for proper gunnery training.
 
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oldbutnotwise    RE:Spitfire Tactics   1/15/2006 11:32:37 AM
larry you are correct in that far too much weight was placed on formation flying by the RAF, hoever you must place it in context, the same "tactics" were being peseude by the other major forces, the only exceptions being the japanise. the luftwaffe only changed from this formation flying to a more suitable form after suffering badly in the early engagements in the spanish civil war. it was a case of experiance was the only way to convice the ex ww1 pilots who now ran the airforces of the world that the tactics that were so succesfull in 1918 were no longer valid. remember that in the 30s the accepted rule was that you could not stop bombers from bombing and look how wrong that was.
 
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