I Want my 4.09 Spit FM's back.........

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by Corto

Here is the BBC Doc:
For the Spit enthusiasts: Part 4 is the part were they talk about the advantages and disadvantages of Spit vs 109...

-------------------------
Spit vs Me 109 Part 4 from Min. 3 sec 20....

Spit 14.7 sec of fire Pee Shooter Ammo vs Me 109 55 sec of fire.. nearly 4 times as long!

If this and other facts are modeld in Olegs "realistic Simulation" "Cliffs of Dover".... no one will fly spit.....
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I will.

I saw that documentary when it was aired, very good. As above, explaining the 109 has cannon and 55 seconds is misleading, but regardless, it had the better guns. But again, as above, that's no good when you're on the wrong end.

There was little else in that documentary to say that a 109 will do better (please quote from in if you disagree). Hans Ekkehard Bob says he was always able to out-manoeuvre the Spitfire pilots, but he was probably a better pilot than those he was up against, and he was certainly more experienced. It's like if you wanted to work out which aircrafts suffered most PKs, and asked the survivors - they'd all explain that they were never killed (er, obviously). So if you ask the survivors, they tend to be the ones that did pretty well.

Comments from Tom Neil don't cover dogfights from those at equal altitude. He often talks of 109s dropping down to attack him.

The evidence from all sources seems to suggests:
the 109 has better guns
the 109 can accelorate more quickly when diving
the 109 can push it's nose down without losing power - Spit will lose power but engine won't cut.
Spit climbes faster
Spit turns quicker
Spit is faster in level flight

When there are a lot of aircraft in a fight, being able to dive away from danger, and having the firepower to more easily knock the opponent out in one pass are big advantages.
When a fight is one on one, I think the Spit has the key advantages.
Team play and tactics will be important.

[Corto]

Originally Posted by Triggaaar

I will.
Team play and tactics will be important.

yes...true....

[JG4_Helofly]

Adjusting trim settings for combat? Hardly possible imo. In a fight you go from stall speed in tight turns to high speed dives. Your velocity will change every second. The only logical trim setting is the cruise speed. That's the speed range you will be in 90% of your flight.

[jameson]

Originally Posted by JG4_Helofly

Adjusting trim settings for combat? Hardly possible imo. In a fight you go from stall speed in tight turns to high speed dives. Your velocity will change every second. The only logical trim setting is the cruise speed. That's the speed range you will be in 90% of your flight.

+1

But just to drop a big spanner in the works, no one has yet mentioned insane roll rates if you fly at 100's on your stick. From memory, IRL, a 109 at 400mph took 4 (four!) seconds to roll 180 degrees. If TD changed the game to reflect RL rates of roll, it would be great. The FW190 would become pretty uber though! Lots of red whiners, lol.

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Triggaaar

I will.

The evidence from all sources seems to suggests:
the 109 has better guns
the 109 can accelorate more quickly when diving
the 109 can push it's nose down without losing power - Spit will lose power but engine won't cut.
Spit climbes faster
Spit turns quicker
Spit is faster in level flight

Actually a number of LW pilots claimed the Spitfire guns were better against fighters than the 109 cannon (due mainly to the poor RoF) and the cannon were really only an advantage when attacking bombers.

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by WTE_Galway

Actually a number of LW pilots claimed the Spitfire guns were better against fighters than the 109 cannon (due mainly to the poor RoF) and the cannon were really only an advantage when attacking bombers.

That's interesting, thanks. It can't be easy to get the damage model from bullets right, in real life if a pilot could still fly home after being shot, they would. In IL2, we'll keep going unless we're on fire (time to rtb ). Cannons obviously do more damage but bullets were still very effective. Both sides were choosing to use bullets at the end of the war when they could have used cannons exclusively if they'd preferred.

Is there any documentation on why they added cannon to the Spitfire, but kept machine guns too (whether they just thought cannons were better, or if the cannons were primarily for shooting bombers)?

[Sven]

Originally Posted by Triggaaar

That's interesting, thanks. It can't be easy to get the damage model from bullets right, in real life if a pilot could still fly home after being shot, they would. In IL2, we'll keep going unless we're on fire (time to rtb ). Cannons obviously do more damage but bullets were still very effective. Both sides were choosing to use bullets at the end of the war when they could have used cannons exclusively if they'd preferred.

Is there any documentation on why they added cannon to the Spitfire, but kept machine guns too (whether they just thought cannons were better, or if the cannons were primarily for shooting bombers)?

As far as I know the only side who prefered lots of MGs were the Americans.
Russians equipped their fighter planes with canons La5/7 Yaks, and their goal was not to destroy waves of German bombers, since the Germans almost stopped using them.

[David603]

Originally Posted by Triggaaar

That's interesting, thanks. It can't be easy to get the damage model from bullets right, in real life if a pilot could still fly home after being shot, they would. In IL2, we'll keep going unless we're on fire (time to rtb ). Cannons obviously do more damage but bullets were still very effective. Both sides were choosing to use bullets at the end of the war when they could have used cannons exclusively if they'd preferred.

Is there any documentation on why they added cannon to the Spitfire, but kept machine guns too (whether they just thought cannons were better, or if the cannons were primarily for shooting bombers)?

In general, both sides wished to replace machine guns with cannon wherever possible. USN studies showed that one Hispano cannon has firepower equivalent to 3-3.5 .50cal Browning MGs. The Hispano's rate of fire and muzzle velocity are only marginally lower than the Browning M2, making it an excellent weapon with a great balance of ease of use vs damage.

However, in certain cases it wasn't possible. Spitfires for example retained MGs even after the C Wing versions could be fitted with 4 cannon, because there were issues with the outer guns freezing up at high altitude. Eventually they did switch to full cannon armament for the MK21, but this saw only very limited service before the war ended.

US attempts to use the 20mm Hispano were thwarted by their redesigning the gun in an attempt to make it conform to American manufacturing standards. The resulting version had an extended chamber, which caused rounds to misfire, and was also prone to jamming when fitted in wing mountings (although it worked reasonably well when fitted in fuselage mountings, since these suffer less from vibration). Despite the manufacture of large quantities of both guns and ammuntion, the problems were not resolved until near the war, at which point the change would only have caused disruption.