Thank you for your post, Crumpp
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crumpp
This thread is going to cover the definable and measure stability and control characteristics of the Spitfire. It is not going to cover opinion outside of stability and control engineers.
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Defined like that, any argument is rather moot. If it is defined that the only stability and control engineers at that time were in the US (specifically associated with NACA), and they formulated standards which the Spitfire failed, then the Spitfire failed...as defined in this rather narrow question.
I believe that the work of the pioneering stability and control engineers was interesting and valuable for the future of aviation. But the Spitfire seems to be a bad example to demonstrate that value.
As opposed to the objectively derived flight stability data, the standards that NACA set were subjective (e.g. X inches in control deflection to perform Y). Defensible, intuitively correct, but subjective.
Despite failing these subjective standards, many records exists describing the Spitfire handling as (subjectively) good. Many descriptions exist of Spitfire first flights by novice pilots. Some note the Spitfire pitch issues (e.g "found it easy to black myself out"), but express relief at finding the aircraft benign to fly and push hard.
I realise that you want to exclude all these considerations as being mere anecdotes. But then what it is the argument? I think we all agree that NACA failed the Spitfire on certain aspects of it's flight stability. To determine what that meant, we have to go further.
I think the Spitfire is not a good example of the value of the advances in stability and control. Despite it's rather alarming characteristics in the NACA reports, the young humans sitting inside RAF Spitfires were capable of rapidly adapting to them and making the Spitfire what it was intended to be ..a superlative short range military interceptor.
camber