Why do Spitfires turn better than Hurricanes?!

[TomcatViP]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

LOL I love you man



I always dozed during my theory lessons, but if memory serves compressibility on tail surfaces is the creation of shock waves on the leading edge, which creates a void that makes the control surfaces ineffective because they're outside of the airstream (Viper might give a more educated explanation of it).

No no no..

The tail plane is affected too but this is not the primary prob. In fact it impact the transonic regime by raising the overall drag of the plane as a consequence of the mach shock on the wing itself - e.g : the compressibility - that alrdy affect the plane with a nose down torque.

the thiner is the wing (thickness/cord) , the latter does this occur due to overall smaller camber ratio.
The easiest solution found at the time was to use symmetrical wing section.

Once the wing mach shock wave has been addressed then the tail shock became a problem you are right (take a look to the X1 story)

~S