Spitfire Question

[Robotic Pope]

Originally Posted by Soviet Ace

That would be the MkXIV with the Griffon.

OH DAVID!!! WHERE ARE YOU!!?

Well actually he is right. The first griffon powered Spitfire was the mk IV,It was the prototype mk IV then renamed to mkXX and then renamed again to mk XII. The Mk XIV was the next step on and was fitted with the same 2 stage supercharger that the Merlin Powered mk IX already had.

I'm pretty sure the Mk II's Merlin was effected by negative G's. It's disapointing that the game doesn't show this. It was one of the main things the 109 Emil was able to exploit to their advantage. In BoP the Spitfire mkII seems far better than the Emil.

Engine cut out due to fuel starvation is in the game though. It happens in the I16 and I153 almost instantly if you go into a steep dive. Its just anoying you can't get it started back up again.

[sir70]

Originally Posted by MorgothNL

I think it was always the right wing.. but I still wonder why... and what is that piece of wood changing...so it makes the wings stall at the same time . (not saying you're wrong...found the same thing about that 'piece of wood fix')

I believe the strip was placed in a position that would disrupt the airflow
over the wing to reduce lift. Engineers back then were so clever!

[Skorteus]

Originally Posted by MorgothNL

I didnt quite get what you were saying... but I read a few times over ... and only then I saw you were talking about the seafire 47 ..
So you are saying... because the pilots were used to applying right rudder (because of the torque to the left)... the also used right rudder in the seafire 47 .. Even though the 47 was eliminating the torque effect with its 2 props . Thats ... well.. not hilarious... but still LOL

Right, but it was just the early single prop version that gave them the grief, the problem was resolved with the dual, counter rotating prop.

[David603]

Originally Posted by Robotic Pope

I'm pretty sure the Mk II's Merlin was effected by negative G's. It's disapointing that the game doesn't show this. It was one of the main things the 109 Emil was able to exploit to their advantage. In BoP the Spitfire mkII seems far better than the Emil.

Engine cut out due to fuel starvation is in the game though. It happens in the I16 and I153 almost instantly if you go into a steep dive. Its just anoying you can't get it started back up again.

The Spitfire MkI was always affected by negative G making the engine cut out, as were early MkIIs, but later MkII models were fitted with a makeshift but effective fix invented by a female engineer named Betty Schilling. Since the MkII in the game is the cannon equipped B model, it would almost certainly have the fix.

From the Merlin 66 engine onwards, Spitfires had pressure carburettors, which all but cured the problem.

Incidentally, if people are wondering why Rolls Royce kept using carburettors instead of fuel injection despite the obvious disadvantage under negative G, this was because it allowed the light and relatively small 27 litre Merlin to compete on power outputs with the bigger 33.9 litre DB601s and even the later 35.7 litre DB605s used by the Bf109 family. The carburettor system was even kept for the 37 litre Rolls Royce Griffon, which in its later forms was capable of over 2,400hp, where even the most powerful variants of the fuel injection DB605 could only produce 1950hp.

[MorgothNL]

There we go ... thnx for clearing it up david
Any idea as to why one wing of the F4U would stall before the other?

[David603]

Originally Posted by MorgothNL

There we go ... thnx for clearing it up david
Any idea as to why one wing of the F4U would stall before the other?

At a guess, the torque from the prop is affecting one wing more than the other. Say the prop is rotating clockwise from the pilots point of view, as on the Corsair, this will mean the plane will be trying to roll left. This will have the effect of increasing the amount of lift the left wing has to provide, so if you are on the point of stalling it will be the left wing that drops first, and vice versa if the prop rotates the other way.

This fits with the Corsair's tendency to stall and drop its left wing if power was suddenly increased when flying slowly, but I'm not sure why it also has a reputation for stalling and dropping the right wing if power was kept constant and the plane was allowed to slow down to stall speeds. I took a Corsair up in Il2 1946 to test this, and tried flying at a safe altitude with the flaps and gear down at low speed, and then seeing which wing dropped first, and it was always the left wing, regardless of whether I throttled up or let the plane stall on its own because of a lack of airspeed.

I really should look into this more, because I was just flying a combat mission with a Spitfire XIV and I pranged it on landing because I was coming in below the glide path, so I throttled up and the right wing dropped and smacked me into the ground. Plane didn't blow up, because I only dropped about 20ft, but it was a total write-off.