MW50 -Secondary effects were cooling of the engine .

[Whacker]

Originally Posted by NZtyphoon

Compare what Kurfürst, a well known obsessive about the "inferiority" of the Spitfire (eg:http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php...e-Mk-Vc-Forums ) says, with the actual article http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spit14v109.html before you go believing everything that's written by Kurfurst.

Err... I was under the impression from multiple, varied sources that the early Spits generally *were* inferior to their chronological counterpart 109's in a number of ways.

As I understand it, Spits always had better turn rates across the board and the 109's were never able to take the lead. The early Merlins were inferior and had fuel starvation problems in negative G situations, there was a band-aid solution that partially worked until several years later it was fixed. All but the earliest 109's had the Kommandogerat device which automated pitch and mixture, most also had automated radiator controls. Later Spits had more automation that worked, and as the war went on they had better armament, the later Merlins and Griffons were on par with or superior to their German counterparts, and the performance gap was finally closed.