Spit1a > SpitII

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by fruitbat

Lol.

One that put it 3000 feet above the 109. Ask Ulrich Steinhilper if it was marginal.

As others told you, it was the pilot, not the plane back then. One Spitfire pilot was lucky, and climbed higher than his 109 pilot opponent, so he had the advantage, and shoot the other guy down on that day. It has nothing to do with the planes.

The Mark II was practically the same plane as the Mark I, not some wonder fighter some want to make it to be. Just look at the engine outputs. The only difference between the Merlin III and XII was that the latter had about 1500 feet higher rated altiude, otherwise it had the same output, just 1500 feet higher. That's a whopping 500 meter...

Oh wait.. the same difference existed between various Bf 109 models.. some had DB 601A engines an older type of supercharger, some had with improved vaned diffusor superchargers in the Battle, too? Do you want to guess how much they differed from one another in rated altitude? By the same 'mighty' 500 meter / 1500 feet. And then of course there were the units with DB 601N, which had extremely good high altitude output. So, even on the German side, you had at least 3 different engines in the same airframe.