Quote:
Originally Posted by whoarmongar
With two fighters constantly being developed and in service throughout the entire war (the 109 and Spit) with various different models and many intrim variants it seems to me that the date of any scenario is of upmost importance. It appears some people like to "stretch" the date of the BoB so as to include the latest variant, more potent model of their favorite fighter.
Personally I dont see a place for the cannon Spit in the BoB. However if it were implemented into CoD I dont think the reliability of the cannon would be an issue as it was caused by icing at high altitude and CoD Spitfires never reach high altitude.
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The cannon jammed because due to the thinness of the wing it was mounted on its side, not because of altitude. It was a problem with the ejection of spent cartridges, they simply wouldn't clear properly. They were withdrawn and didn't re- appear until November.
Edit: a little more info on mkIB. First one delivered to 19 squadron on 27 th June serial number R6761.
Armourer Fred Roberts explained " most of the trouble stemmed from the cannons being mounted on their sides, the empty shell cases therefore being ejected sideways from the breach and being deflected back into it. The nose of the shell dropping slightly and striking the breach end of the barrel, buckling the the shell case at the neck caused another kind of stoppage. We fitted various kinds of deflector plates. We altered the angle of the plates, fitted rubber pads to dampen the force of the shell case, but none of these experiments worked. We also had magazine feed troubles, caused by it lying on it's side. To counter this we tried varying the tension applied to the magazine spring but that was unsuccessful".