[Glider]

This is the full quote as posted by Kurfurst:-

When the Me.109 was following the Hurricane or Spitfire, it was found that our aircraft turned inside the Me.109 without difficulty when flown by determined pilots who were not afraid to pull their aircraft round hard in a tight turn. In a surprisingly large number of cases, however, the Me. 109 succeeded in keeping on the tail of the Spitfire or Hurricane during these turning tests, merely because our Pilots would not tighten up the turn suficiently from fear of stalling and spinning. ...

It clearly has two part

a) When the Me.109 was following the Hurricane or Spitfire, it was found that our aircraft turned inside the Me.109 without difficulty when flown by determined pilots who were not afraid to pull their aircraft round hard in a tight turn. So when two deteremined pilots fly the aircraft to the full the RAF fighters easily turned inside the Me109

b) In a surprisingly large number of cases, however, the Me. 109 succeeded in keeping on the tail of the Spitfire or Hurricane during these turning tests, merely because our Pilots would not tighten up the turn suficiently from fear of stalling and spinning
Where the Me109 pilot is the most determined the Me109 can stay with the RAF fighters

From this it seems that with pilots of equal ability the RAF fighters will turn tighter.

All I am saying is read the whole quote.

The fact that pilot skill and/or tactical advantage is of paramount performance should not be a surprise. Most would agree that the Hellcat is a better fighter to a Zero, but would you fancy your chances if Saburo Saki was in the Zero?

There are some other parts of the same test report which are worth noting:-

The aircraft stalled if the turn was tightened to give more than 4 g at speeds below about 200 m.p.h. The slots opened at about ½ g before the stall, and whilst opening caused the ailerons to snatch ; this upset the pilot's sighting immediately and caused him to lose ground. When the slots were fully open the aircraft could be turned quite steadily until very near the stall. If the stick was then pulled back a little more the aircraft suddenly shuddered, and either tended to come out of the turn or dropped its wing further, oscillating meanwhile in pitch and roll and rapidly losing height ; the aircraft immediately unstalled if the stick was eased forward. Even in a very tight turn the stall was quite gentle, with no tendency for the aircraft to suddenly flick over on to its back and spin. The Spitfires and Hurricanes could follow the Me.109 round during the stalled turns without themselves showing any signs of stalling
Interesting that at very slow speeds the RAF fighters could maintain control when the Me109 was stalled. This proves that those who believe that the Me109 could turn better than the RAF fighters at slow speed are wrong.
Also that the opening of the flaps fixed with the Me109F caused the Me109E to lose ground. In a tight turning combat losing ground giving an advantage to the RAF is a serious issue. Its also worth remembering that the German Flight tests were clear when reccomending that Me109 pilots shold not get into a turning combat with the Spitfire or Hurricane

After these turns the Me.109 was put into a steep dive at full throttle with the airscrew pitch coarsened to keep the r.p.m. down. It was found that both the Hurricanes and the Spitfires could keep up with the Me.109 in the dive; the aircraft with constant speed airscrews could do this more readily than those with two-pitch airscrews. The ailerons and elevator of the Me.109 became so heavy in the dive that rapid manceuvring was impossible, while, as explained in section 4.22, banked turns could be done more readily to the right than to the left because of the absence of rudder bias.
Speed is an issue as is the lack of advantage once in a dive. Normally the 109 did have an initial advantage due to the engine cut out.

In most cases this steep climb at low airspeed was the only manceuvre whereby the Me.109 pilot could keep away from the Hurricane or Spitfire. During the general fighting which folIowed the set programme, one other feature of advantage to the Me.109 emerged. If a negative g is put on the aircraft for a short time, the engine does not cut as it is of the direct injection type; whereas on the Spitfire or Hurricane the engine immediately splutters and stops when negative g is applied, because the carburettor quickly ceases to deliver petrol under these conditions.
A steep climb at a low airspeed will work as an evasion but only if you are one to one. If there is another RAF fighter around you are a sitting target, low speed low energy.


During the general fighting, with the Me.109 chasing a Spitfire or Hurricane, some of our pilots escaped by doing a flick half-roll and then quickly pulling up out of the subsequent dive. The Me. 109 pilot found this particularly difficult to counter, for when the Me. 109 rolled after his opponent, the speed built up quickly in the steep dive which followed the half roll, and the elevator became so heavy that a quick pull out was impossible; in addition care had to be taken not to pull out quickly when the speed had decreased, because the aircraft stalled so readily under g. As a result 2,000-3,000 ft. may be lost in the manceuvre, and if a Me.109 pilot can be tempted to do this at low altitude a crash is almost inevitable. Conversation with some of the pilots who had had experience in actual combat with the Me.109 revealed that in several cases a Me.109 had, in fact, been observed to crash in this way without a shot being fired

Clearly high speed control forces is a particular issue with the Me109 as is the danger of stalling under G. Loss of height when the plane stalls is another issue.

The final summary of the turning performance is as follows:-
5.3. Comparative Turning Performance of Me.109 and Spitfire. – During the dog-fights against the Hurricane and Spitfire, it became apparent that our fighters could out-turn the Me.109 with ease when flown by determined pilots. Since the minimum radius of turn without height loss depends largely on stalling speed, and hence on wing loading, the poor turning performance of the Me.109 may be ascribed to its high wing loading, 32.2 lb./sq. ft. compared with 24.8 lb./sq. ft. on the Spitfire. It was thought of interest to go into the matter a little more deeply, and to calculate the relative performances of these aircraft in circling flight, so that the sacrifice of turning performance entailed by the Me. 109's high wing loading could be assessed qualitatively.


In a recent report on the dog-fight12 Gates gives an analysis whereby the performance of an aircraft in steady spiral flight at full throttle can be estimated from its measured full throttle performance in straight flight (partial climbs and top speed) ; the analysis leads to a compact diagram from which the radius and time of turn, and the corresponding rate of ascent or descent can be obtained at any given airspeed and normal g.

Such diagrams have been constructed for the Spitfire and Me.109, and are given in Fig. 17, together with an explanation of their use. The turning performance of the Hurricane is probably little different from that of the Spitfire, these aircraft being roughly similar in wing loading and level performance. The " stall boundary " depends on an estimate of CL max at full throttle. In the case of the Spitfire this has been measured in flight, while the Me.109 figures were based on the Spitfire results; tables of the assumed values of CL max are given in Fig. 17. CL max falls off as g is increased, because the stalling speed increases as g gets larger, thus lessening the slipstream effect.

It will be seen that the minimum radius of turn without height loss is obtained by flying as near the stall as possible at a comparatively small g. For ease of comparison the radius of turn has been plotted against speed for both aeroplanes in Fig. 18, (i) for turns at the stall, and (ii) for turns without height loss. The advantage of the Spitfire over the Me.109 at once becomes apparent, the minimum radius of turn without loss of height being about 696 ft. on the Spitfire as against 885 ft. on the Me.109. The characteristics of these turns are summarised in the following table :-

So read the whole thing