A newbies impression of the 109 and spit

[VO101_Tom]

Originally Posted by JtD

Eventually, the longitudinal stability was not unacceptable. The Spitfire was accepted into service with about 20+ military air forces, was built in 20000 examples, and is still being flown today. Unacceptable longitudinal stability would mean acceptance into 0 air forces, and a production of a handful of examples, and none would be cleared for flying today...

This instability was fixed in the Spit V.
Several Spit pilots complained that the Spit V felt sluggish. Of course the flight characteristics was not worse, just more stick movement and force was needed. iirc Crumpp showed a couple of documents about this.