Johnnie Johnson - Wing Leader

[Gaston]

Originally Posted by |ZUTI|

Mr. Brown, yes, I was flying a long time with hit joystick settings, but was not that great for online Still, handling was quite nice indeed.

Those are the exact pages i tracked after buzzsaw posted his reply and indeed, there is noted that it was vertical fight.

Thank you both for clearing it for me. I don't know when i will read the book again, but it really is one of the best i've read so far (read quite few of them, enjoy them all, speciall The first and the Last, Galland was also nice writer ).

Ahem, "Vertical Turn" here means a "Vertical Bank turn" (vintage lingo), and the context of the text makes perfectly clear the Spitfire V loses in sustained horizontal turns.

And at real high speed you Black-out in unsustainable turns, and at low speed you gray out in unsustainable turns, which means the fight started at lower or medium speeds at best, and went on to sustainable low-speed horizontal turns.

Despite what Johnny Johnson opines about the impact of the Spitfire Mk IX, the only advantage this later mark had on the Mark V was on the vertical...

So Mk IXs redressed the balance with their superior climb rate, not superior turn rate...

Gaston