Spit IIa

[Fenrir]

What kind of verification do you have for these sources Crummp? As far as I know you've written that stuff on an old typewriter and scanned it. Besides, when it says 'failed to meet requirements' - whose?! What requirements? For all I know the Spitfire fails to meet requirements for a heavy lift wide body! Context man, for pitys sake.

Besides, if what you infer is correct we'd have seen spitfires and DC-3s - or more accurately, there constituent parts - scattered all over the landscape because every single one was an inherently dangerous saftey hazard. Take a look how many survive into the modern day and are flown regularly and aerobatted reguularly without incident. Look at the war record of these a/c. Since when on either type is it apparent that they were falling out of the sky in pieces with a methodical regularity?

Do I have to point out that the pictoral example of a structural failure that you provide IS A BLOODY Mk. FIVE again.

Gimme strength!

Besides which where on that photo/drawing does it show that this breakup was caused by excessive g due to instability? Oh that's right, it doesnt. It could have been faulty construction, metal fatigue, flutter, any number of causes. You just assume that it's down to some inherent flaw with Spitfires stability because you've got your axe to grind.

As for your quote on the Mk. II that buffeting can cause large variation in stick travel and g - wow, revelation. Any one who's read into the spitfire knows how sensitive the elevators were. At what what point does it say ANYWHERE in that text that the a/c is longitudinally unstable or prone to taking itself to pieces in that text? It does not. You're extrapolating, badly while your at it, tying it in with other flawed and irrelevant data.

The simple fact is your opinion extrapolated from text book teachings do not correlate with the historical record from a massive amount of disparate sources. And your one textbook evidence - whose validity I suspect - is not only being qouted without context - again WHAT & WHOSE requirements - but upon re-reading them it even agrees with me - NOTE the passage that you underlined 'the small static longitudinal stability',

It says small. It does not say none. It says the stick was very sensitive to movement in pitch.

It does not say Spitfires were falling apart all over the sky.

AT NO POINT DOES IT SAY THAT A SPITFIRE IS DANGEROUSLY AND INHERENTLY UNSTABLE.