Quote:
Originally Posted by illegalBeagle
Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think the original question has been answered. My understanding is that the games Spit Mk Vb without the LF or HF suffix is supposed to represent a slower Spit exported to USSR using less powerful Russian fuel. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here please.
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Swiss answered it... simply the F is the medium altitude (regular) model while the LF models are optimized for low altitude flight and the HF model is for high altitude.
With the Mark Vb it's a bit more confusing because the modeling also represents different years. So ... we have different engines with different supercharger settings and then you throw in the clipped wing versions too (which have an overall performance impact).
The Vb has RAF level performance for 1941 (actually I believe it's a bit better than it should be in the climb). The VVS didn't receive lower performing models... although by the time they got them and employed them performance may have been lower due to lower quality field conditions (fuel, oil, dusty conditions, etc.). The Spitfire was a bit more sensitive than some of the Russian birds. This doesn't seem to be represented in the game.
So to recap: The regular Vb has higher performance at higher altitude while the LF.Vb has higher performance at lower altitude and drastically reduced performance at higher altitude.
Spitfires are confusing because there are many modifications made to them over the time that they were used and not all of these are represented by a model number change. In comparison to the Bf109 we have the G series with G-1 through G-14 each representing some sort of significant change. With the Spitfire they would probably have been all under one Mark number with very little to identify. The RAF was slow to even classify the modified aircraft (some publications and log books refer to the Mark IX-B which is really a Mark LF.IX
).
Confusing
