Friday Update, April 13, 2012

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by Osprey

Let's put this one to bed shall we.

The Spitfire roll rate was improved dramatically with metal ailerons. The 109 could only out roll the Spitfire at low speeds, at high speeds it locked up. At present in the game the controls for the 109 don't seem to lock up anywhere near as much as they should. Hopefully this will get fixed.

I don't know if this graph represents fabric or metal ailerons


"The RAE reported: "At 400 m.p.h. the Me.109 pilot, pushing sideways with all his strength, can only apply 1/5 aileron, thereby banking 45 deg. in about 4 secs.; on the Spitfire also, only 1/5 aileron can be applied at 400 m.p.h., and again the time to bank is 45 deg. in 4 secs. Both aeroplanes thus have their rolling manoeuvrability at high speeds seriously curtailed by aileron heaviness."

Note that the above information is a copy-paste job from a Mike Williams article, well known in the aviation community for its tendency to use manipulated evidence to further an agenda. In this case, the graph from the actual British 1940 report was cropped, hiding the fact that the (early) Spitfire (with fabric ailerons) required far higher stick forces to roll at high speed than the 109E.

The full graph - which was cropped for obvious reasons on Mike Williams's wwiiaircraftperformance 'website' - can be seen below:



The full British trial report can be read here:

http://kurfurst.org/Tactical_trials/...ls/Morgan.html

The Germans had also tested the Spitfire and Hurricane against their fighters. In agreement with the British testing team, they concluded that the Spitfire was inferior in roll to the 109E. They also found that the Spitfire had longitudal stability issues:

"The rolling ability of the enemy fighters at high speeds is worse than that of the Bf 109.
Quick changes of the trajectory along the vertical axis cause especially with the Spitfire
load changes around the cranial axis, coming from high longitudinal thrust momemtum, and
significantly disturb the aiming."

Can be read at full here: http://kurfurst.org/Tactical_trials/...g_Aug1940.html

Given our experience of the often doctored and manipulated reports on Mike William's website, I would advise caution and not to take them at face value.