Hurricane & Spitfire control characteristics

[Sandstone]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

That's my impression as well. The 109 was simplicity itself, like the T-34. There was nothing fancy about it, but it had the all things you need in war. Easy production, easy maintaince, simple flying. Plus a package of guns and speed to catch up with the target. Really, nothing more is needed imho. A fighter is just a gun platform.

I can't really agree with this. The Bf-109 was a typical late 1930s design in whch significant compromises were made that ultimately affected its performance as a weapon for the Luftwaffe. Its principle weaknesses were:

1. Small size required a narrow track undercarriage. Fine for a peace-time airforce when pilots can be trained at leisure. Not a good idea when pilot training is reduced under war-time conditions.

2. Poor visibility. The aircraft structure was not capable of being adapted to the excellent bubble canopies used on later Allied types.

3. Limited range, restricting it to use an interceptor with limited success as an escort fighter. This would not have been a problem if the Luftwaffe had a good, long-range single-engined escort fighter, but they were unable to produce one.

4. Limited size prevented the wings carrying large/heavy internal weapons. All other fighter aircraft moved towards batteries of wing mounted guns (and particularly cannons). The Bf-109 couldn't do this. Latter versions of the aircraft were effectively reliant on a single cannon at a time when other interceptors were moving towards quad-mounts of 20 mm or 30 mm cannons.

5. Not designed for mass production (here, the analogy with the T-34 is particularly wide of the mark). The Bf-109 was designed to be produced by a skilled workforce. However, as the war progressed the German aviation industry lost men from the workforce who were withdrawn to bolster the front lines. They were replaced with significant volumes of slave labour where the intention was as much to kill the workforce through overwork and poor treatment as to produce aircraft. The skilled workers were thus replaced with "Jewish housewives and teenage girls picked up from places like Auschwitz". As a result, productivity was poor, those directing production became hopelessly morally compromised and aircraft were delivered to a poor standard by a reluctant, unskilled workforce who on occasion would sabotage their own products.

Overall, the Bf-109 was a good design for a peace-time late 1930s airforce. It was poorly suited to the war of national survival that the fascists actually initiated. It was unsuitable for low-hours pilots, it was overly complicated compared to other designs and in the face of actual German production capabilities, it had limited potential for development (because no realistic development could overcome some of the poor design decisions made early in its design cycle) and because the German aircraft industry in any event was unable to move to effective mass production and so was greatly out-produced by its opponents.

By the end of the war, fighter aircraft were becoming larger, able to be flown by relatively inexperienced pilots, had good visibility and often carried batteries of cannon. The Bf-109 had none of these things.

This isn't to say it was a bad aircraft and it still remained a dangerous opponent until the end of the war, but it was typical of the generation of fighters like the Hurricane, Spitfire and P-40 that the Allied nations replaced or complemented with better types as the war progressed. The Luftwaffe's inability to replace the Bf-109 says more about its disasterous R&D and procurement policies than it does about the strengths of the Bf-109.