View from the cockpit

[pupo162]

- The Me 109 was dived to Mach 0.79 in instrumented tests. Slightly modified, it was even dived to Mach 0.80, and the problems experimented there weren't due to compressility, but due to aileron overbalancing. Compare this to Supermarine Spitfire, which achieved dive speeds well above those of any other WW2 fighter, getting to Mach 0.89 on one occasion. P-51 and Fw 190 achieved about Mach 0.80. The P-47 had the lowest permissible Mach number of these aircraft. Test pilot Eric Brown observed it became uncontrollable at Mach 0.73, and "analysis showed that a dive to M=0.74 would almost certainly be a 'graveyard dive'."

i was udner hte impression that the p47 was one of the best divers of the time, not one of the worst.