Stability and Control characteristics of the Early Mark Spitfires

[NZtyphoon]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

Amoung the Western Front warring powers during World War II, only two nations had measurable and definable stability and control standards. Stability and control was a young science. Airplanes had simply been two slow and light previously. The forces were small enough such that there was little need. The two nation were the United States and Germany.

Slightly OT, but important to this thread; Unfortunately Crumpp's "historical analysis" is seriously flawed - the British, with the likes of William Lanchester, were pioneers in laying down scientific principles for aeronautics, as shown by this extract: http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.o...t/61/1/39.full

The eponymous university of a vibrant industrial city was an appropriate institution for studies in higher engineering; his father counselled Ludwig to go to Manchester. At the time, English aeronautics was transforming itself from a fledgling, essentially empirical, science to one grounded on firmer principles, taking forward the perceptive concepts of powered aeroplane flight set down by Sir George Cayley a century earlier. Frederick William Lanchester (FRS 1922), who disapproved of trial and error methods, had produced his theoretical calculations for the lift acting on an aircraft wing. His book Aerodynamics was the standard text to be consulted on the subject.

The university had not long been formed from the incorporation of two higher education establishments, Owen's College and Victoria University. It inherited a brilliant academic staff. The Professor of Mathematics was Horace (later Sir Horace) Lamb FRS.7 His classic work Hydrodynamics underpinned the solution of numerous problems arising from the dynamics of an aircraft in flight. A lecturer under Lamb was J. E. Littlewood (FRS 1916), who after spending an unhappy three years at Manchester (1907–10) returned to Cambridge.8 Wittgenstein attended Littlewood's lectures and eventually met up with him again at Cambridge on equal professorial terms.

Another notable at Manchester had been Osborne Reynolds FRS, a longstanding Professor of Engineering who retired a few years before Wittgenstein's arrival but whose work on kinematic viscosity resulted in the Reynolds number, a parameter of vital importance with regard to the onset of turbulent flow within the boundary layer on the surface of an aerofoil. Reynolds's successor, Ernest Petavel FRS, a distinguished physicist, actually learned to fly; in consequence he underwent a severe flying accident.9 In due course he took up the post of Director of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), an organization also becoming involved with aviation activities, for instance constructing wind tunnels to test models.5 In 1908 the contributions of these Manchester academics to aeronautics were yet to be fully realized.

I would have though that someone who is supposed to be a graduate of aeronautical engineering would have known of William Lanchester:http://www.guggenheimmedal.org/Pages...aspx?Year=1931

Aeronautical science to Lanchester was always a spare-time recreation. One of his earliest contributions was an analysis of the dynamical stability of airplane flight, made in 1897, some years before there were any airplanes. So penetrating was the insight shown that this analysis served as the inspiration and foundation for the later work of Bryan, Bairstow, Hunsaker and many others, who were able to apply Lanchester’s precepts while using modern wind tunnels.

He was also the first to propound the vortex theory of flight and its engineering application to the design of airplanes, which was followed up later by Prandtl and others. The vortex theory was the basis of a paper read by Lanchester before the Birmingham National History and Philosophical Society in 1894, and a further paper submitted to the Physical Society of London in 1897.

Lanchester was one of the original members of the Aeronautical Research Com*mittee under the chairmanship of Lord Rayleigh. In 1926 he gave the Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture on the subject: “Sustentation in Flight.” He died March 8, 1946, at the age of 77.

and also recognised the role of the likes of the Royal Aircraft factory (later Royal Aircraft Establishment) in laying down the principles of scientific analysis later used by NACA; instead we have these types of comments:

Originally Posted by Crumpp

The RAE did not have stability and control standards. However, the RAE did agree with the NACA even if they did not know it.

which are complete nonsense. This type of blinkered ignorance about the role of the British, and the Royal Aircraft Factory and RAE, in laying down the principles of scientific aeronautical analysis beggers belief, and Crumpp's idea that only the USA and Germany "had measurable and definable stability and control standards" during WW2 is farcical.