| Fenrir |
10-16-2011 08:51 AM |
There is nothing more sinister going on here than crummps partisanship. For some reason there's a selection of people with an axe to grind against the Spitfire and Crummp falls particularly into this particular sorry species.
The fact is if he had done ANY research on ANY of the readily available tomes of the Spitfire (the volumes by Alex Henshaw and Jeffrey Quill for one, both Spitfire pilots and people with a far more qualifed opinion on practical aerodynamics than Crummp I am sure) he will know that the various quotes he has selected are, as typical, cherry picked examples of well known and quickly corrected faults with the Spitfire.
1) Spitfire Stability in Pitch: The Spitfire was certainly not UNSTABLE in pitch but the stablity it did have was MARGINAL. Big difference. as long as the CofG was kept within limits then the a/c was perfectly safe. The issues that affected only Mk.V aircraft of vicious spin characteristics and some strcutural failures were as a result of Squadron a/c being poorly loaded and supermarine directives not being followed at squadron level regarding the loading of new equipment and pushing the CofG out of limits. Bob weights and eventually a redesigned elevator mass balance actually cured this. See Quills book.
2) I suggest he actually reads Henshaws description of his fairly standard aerobatic routine that he was regularly called on to display and is accurately described in his book, Sigh for a Merlin:
Quote:
p.54, Sigh for a Merlin, Testing the Spitfire by Alex Henshaw
On the pull out from the flick roll, sometimes I would open the engine flat out in another vertical climb and at approximately 1200ft push the nose over forward and with engine closed complete the half of an outside loop, usually in those days called a bunt. I never really liked this manoeuvre either; it was easy but required heavy pressure forward on the control column and you could not afford to misjudge at 1200ft: with the nose going over down towards the ground the speed built up at such an alarming rate that it left no room to change your mind until it was too late. A the bottom of the inverted dive I would usually round-off to a few feet above the ground and then with as much pressure as I would dare on the control column - I say dare because I found it more disconcerting and frightening to black out from excessive negative g than I did from high loads in the postive position - I would push the machine into an almost vertical climb and then as it lost momentum from the negative g position pull the control gently over to form a half loop hoping as I did that the engine would burst into life as I opened the throttle. This it usually did with a spectacular sheet of flame pluming from the exhaust stubs caused by the unused fuel which had accumulated during the inverted manouevres.
|
Though according to Crummp that couldn't possibly have happened could it?
Agenda boi much!?!?! |
