Spit IIa

[Crumpp]

"therefore failed to meet the accepted requirements"

Ok - I admit I shortened "failing to meet acceptable requirements" to just "unacceptable."

Was I wrong?

you don't come away with the impression that the Spitfire was a POS from a handling point of view.

Nobody said it was a POS. There are some very good qualities the Longitudinal Instability gave the aircraft from a flying perspective. I love the Spitfire.

It was a two fingered aircraft and one can see how its pilots felt all you had to do was "think about it" and the plane responded. It is an airplane a highly skilled pilot would have love to fight in.

In rough air, Instrument conditions, as a gun platform, precision landing or precision aerobatic platform, the early marques could best be described as skittish. It certainly was not ideal for those missions and a more stable aircraft would not require as high a degree of skill to perform the same maneuvers.

In terms of your game, the excellent stall warning the type possessed means that any computer FM based on 2D Clmax calculated turn performance is optimistic.

They also said with respect to being able to rapidly pull to Clmax without the risk of stalling:

No they don't say CLmax, they say maximum lift coefficient and they list those coefficients achieved in the report. That makes it very easy for somebody who wants to program a computer game, btw.

That is the source of the confusion between the NACA and the RAE. Somebody at the RAE thought it was 2D Clmax too.

Something most Fighter pilots would consider a highly desirable characteristic.

Again, a skilled pilot would love it. He could pull very quickly to the burble and back off to the point just before to achieve that maximum lift coefficient to make his best rate of turn. All within ~3/4 of an inch of stick travel.

NACA's referenced requirements ... nobody else's

The United States had the ONLY stability and control standards during the war on the Allied side.

Only Germany and Japan had stability and control standards at the beginning of the war. The NACA was the first Allied organization to develop any standards. The British never did during the war and it was not until post-war that they came on board to develop any.

Remember, a stable airplane can do any maneuver an unstable aircraft can. The stable airplane can do it just as fast and more precisely requiring a less skilled pilot to do the same thing. It can also do things the unstable one cannot. Such as not destroy itself by overloading the airframe, shoot down other airplanes much faster, land with more control and precision, maneuver better in rough air, and hold a precise altitude/heading in instrument conditions.