You are right about the performance, the difference is small. However the handling of Merlin III (Spitfire I) and Merlin XII (Spitfire II) is different.
E.g. Climb boost: Merlin III +6 1/4 vs. Merlin XII +9.

a 1000m higher service ceiling is a pretty big difference imo.

I sincerely hope this is not true. I'm only interested in accuracy, not the game tweaking as we constantly saw with the last series.

If indeed the Spitfire and Hurricane proove miles better than the 109 and it 'unbalances' things then no doubt we'll just see half the Luftwaffe defect to the Allies because they were only in it for the big guns anyway.

You know what? I don't think there is much difference between the 109E3 and 109E4, so why don't you tell Luthier to scrap his plans to add the E4?

The differences between the Spit I and Spit II are there, and additionally, the Spit II was not used till late in the Battle and in small numbers.

I rarely fly the Blue teams planes so thats a issue someone else can follow.

The way I see it is that maddox games decided that that there was going to be two Spitfires in the release so they chose a MkIIa that is very similar in performance to a late model MKI and an early model MkI with a 2 speed Prop. Both of which will cover a lot of senarios.

Extra planes would be good, but we didn't get 'em. Roll on the patches and expansion packs!

Flight models and performance are not perfect but they are within a range that for me is acceptable, especially if mission designer make use of the mechanical weathering to vary performance of individual planes (something I haven't even begun to look at yet)

The thread topic was that a 'Spit Ia should have a Constant speed Prop'. Unfortunately the designation system that they used changed several times leeading to a lot of confusion and there were MkI spitfires with 'a' wings and two speed props in the time period of the Battle of Britain (though not on the front line as far as I know) so it's inclusion is Ok by me.

Cheers!

My understanding is that the Spitfire II with Merlin XII had somewhat better cruise power/max rich continuous than the Spitifire I with Merlin III: + 7 lb/sq.in. vrs 4 1/2 lb/sq.in. In other words the Spitfire II could continuous cruise at better than the Spitfire I's 5 minute all out boost limit of 6 1/4 lb/sq.in. (max emergency +12 excluded - which are the same). That's not insignificant in my view.

I agree - as does other documentation I've seen that shaped my understanding, i.e. various unit histories, biographies and official Operations Record Books that can be found on-line.

I agree, if you want to be able to recreate Dunkirk of the latter stages of the Battle of France then the early Mk 1 makes total sense. Just because it wasn't still around by the end of June '40 dosn't mean it shouldn't be there.
This type of game is all about expansion and that works both ways, forwards and backwards in time.

I have no idea about the single player campaign in this game as I can't actually run it on my rig. What date does the campaign start?

I am not suggesting changing the propellor of the early Mk I, this thread is about the Mk IA which lacks both a constant speed propellor and +12 boost. It is doubly handicapped.

The fact is, there are three Spitfires at present. The Mk I and Mk IA are basically identically incorrect in performance, they currently duplicate each other in performance, this despite the fact the graphics on the Mk IA shows a constant speed propellor, as per the historical aircraft. The Mk IA has the graphics of a CSP aircraft, but not the performance.

As others have pointed out, the Spit II has significant differences in performance from the Spit I.

1) It climbed better, it had a higher ceiling. According to the British tests, it reached 25,000 ft one and a half minutes faster than the Spit I. That is a significant difference for an aircraft which had as its primary role bomber interception.

2) It was slower above 20,000, but faster under. Essentially very similar to the differences between the Spitfire IX LF and HF as far as speed goes.

3) It was slightly heavier than the Spit I, which would affect handling.

4) Diving limits were raised to 470 mph maximum from 450.


Plus for those of us who want to be able to design historically accurate scenarios, it is important to have the correct aircraft. Many servers in the original IL-2 insist on the same thing, when that happens, the RAF side would be penalized.

We don't want half baked, performance fudged Spitfires, we want the correctly modelled aircraft.

I see.. I have the same book. ( I got very lucky and found it in a charity shop for £5)

So it looks like a CSP but dosn't behave like one. Are you sure it is a CSP? And how do you tell the difference? (genuine question, not sarcastic.. just incase you start getting all spikey again...)