Quote:
Originally Posted by NZtyphoon
The reason bob-weights were adopted was because several Spitfire Vs had been destroyed through poor loading at squadron level; this has been explained by Supermarine's Chief Test pilot Jeffrey Quill, although some Spitfirephobes consider him to be so totally biased he's incapable of telling the truth  Of course we have to believe these "experts' such as Crumpp or Barbi, and not Quill, who was the chief propagandist of the Spitfire: 
To say that they were adopted because of inherent design problems with the Spitfire Is and II is wrong; they were used on the Spitfire III because it had developed cg problems and adopted in Spitfire Vs because of poor loading and increased equipment. |
Sorry NZTyphoon, but to say that the bobweights were introduced because of the "poor loading ad squadron level" sounds absolutely unconvincing to me.
The bobweights were used to reduce the ease of motion when actuating the elevators, reducing this way the possibility to inadvertently overstress the airframe, regardless of the flightsituation (spin, overspeed or else).