Quote:
Originally Posted by Crumpp
Just a note...
That is hardly realistic. Nobody flew at 36,000 feet operationally for any length of time during WWII.
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This is incorrect.
Just because the (unpressurised) B-17 and B-24 didn't fly in the stratosphere does not mean that nothing flew in the stratosphere.
In fact, the Germans used to fly reconnaissance missions in the Ju-86 at altitudes in excess of 45,000 feet, until such time as the Spitfire proved capable of intercepting them.
I believe the highest kill of the war was scored at almost 50,000 feet.
Obviously, close to the absolute ceiling, climb rates were awful, so getting up there probably took both parties well over an hour.
The secret was pressurisation, and the fact that people were prepared to put pilots through rather more physiological stress than would be considered acceptable today.
PR Spitfires quite often flew above FL400 as well, depending upon the atmospheric conditions (contrail avoidance being the main priority).
Beyond these extreme cases, the general trend was for the altitude of combat to increase until roughly mid 1942; hence the HF Spitfire IX and VIII, as well as the Spitfire VII, which started production around this time. Unfortunately, by the time these aeroplanes started to enter service, the average altitude of combat had started to come down again by "mutual consent", probably because people were starting to realise that it was quite difficult for fighters to influence events on the ground from way up in the stratosphere.
As for the B-17 and B-24, the main reason that they didn't go higher was the bomb loads they were carrying.
I strongly suspect that you'll find the higher altitude missions correspond to longer ranges, where bomb load was traded for fuel, much of which had been consumed by the start of the bombing run, resulting in a relatively high altitude (obviously the bomber stream would just cruise-climb to wherever its performance and the ambient conditions took it; they weren't taking any notice of German ATC
).