Quote:
Originally Posted by Crumpp
Guys,
The Spitfire was a great airplane and a very effective fighter. There was no such thing as a Stability and Control Engineer when the Spitfire was designed.
It was a new science and almost all of the World War II era fighters have some sort of stability and control issue. It is just as important as the aerodynamics in their fighting abilities.
The Bf-109 had issues with the coupling effects of yaw-wise and the lateral axis at high speed.
The FW-190 and P-51 had longitudinal axis stick force reversals at low speeds.
Airplanes simply got faster and heavier so quickly that the engineering science did not keep up. It did matter so much when airplanes were slow and light.
|
This I totally agree with, problems were not unique to the Spitfire.