Quote:
Originally Posted by Sternjaeger
Oh puh-lease Moggy 
You really expected to hear Sir Stanley Hooker saying "actually...erm... our engines were a bit like cottage farm compared to the German ones, but hey, we had a little gizmo that they didn't have!" 
Allowing to fly a plane with an engine that didn't permit negative G manouvres was simply criminal, but that's all they had, so let's not get carried away with your love for the Spit and Hurri, you can't change the fact that the DB601 was a superior engine,period.
I reckon that the struts for the tail horizontal surfaces on the Me109 as opposed to the clean Spit and Hurri tail section makes more of an interesting story, there's actually an espionage tale about it too, with a German agent was trying to steal the secret of the tail structure in the UK. I remember overhearing the conversation some years ago, but cant remember the details. |
Just because it was more complicated doesn't mean it was superior. Any engine configuration with inverted cylinders tends to trap oil and other fluids in the inverted cylinder heads, leading to hydraulic lock on ignition and other fun things. There are reasons why there is only one surviving DB60X engine.