But this is nothing special about the Spitfire. Each aircraft has it's structural limits, exceeding these limits damages/destroys the aircraft. As you say the critical situations might be different for each aircraft.
The problem is not the Spitfire, the problem is that structural limits are not simulated.

How many Spitfires actually broke up in flight during the battle of Britain/ Documentary/damming evidence please (considering you want up to 80% of Spitfires to fall apart)?

Just for interest I'm going to post Bf 110 losses due to break up or other, mainly unknown, causes between July and December 1940:

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k3...-page-002a.jpg
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k3...-page-001a.jpg
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k3...-page-001a.jpg
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k3...-page-002a.jpg
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k3...-page-001a.jpg
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k3...-page-002a.jpg
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k3...-page-001a.jpg

According to Robtek in gameplay the wings should be theoretically ripped off Spitfires at least 80% of the time, with no empirical evidence that this actually happened in real life http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...&postcount=609.

So why not extend that type of thinking to other aircraft types, such as the Bf 110? Why not conclude that a large percentage of 110s lost in unknown circumstances were lost because of elevator failure due to mishandling? It could also be asked why did the 110 lose its right wing on the 18th of July? How many Bf 110s lost their wings, but were counted as lost due to unknown causes? Yes, let's make it simple and assume that at least 80% of Spitfires and Bf 110s will break up due to abuse of the elevators.

I don't think there's anything wrong with what robtek stated here, maybe he could have worded it a bit differently, avoiding the word abuse. The Spitfires elevator was sensitive enough to allow the pilot to achieve the stalling angle of attack at any speed, which at high speeds means it is easily possible to overload the airframe. So if folks in game pull back the stick all the way, they should either stall or break a wing. Just like it would have happened in real life. Pilots learned to not do it, hardly a big deal, and players can probably manage the same.

For the 109, this problem did not exist, the elevator was way too heavy at high speeds. There was, however, a different one. In high speed dives, there was a serious tendency for the nose to tuck under as speeds increased, and coupled with the heavy elevator, the pilot would not be able to pull out with the elevator alone. Trim had to be adjusted. This, however, lead to problems in the pullout, as speed decreased again the tuck under tendency disappeared, which meant quickly increasing g-loads up to the point where the airframe would be overloaded, unless the stick was pushed forward hard.

The problem that I have is that they didn't break up, there are hardly any examples of this happening.
I have said a number of times that I would expect to find a small number as their could be a number of reasons why an aircraft was weakened resulting in a break up but so far only one has been presented and so much happened to that aircraft before it broke up it was close to a miracle that it stayed together as long as it did.

Find some examples of it happening and we can debate it but without any them there is no reason to include it in the Sim.

That said I do reconfirm that if a pilot doesn't take remedial action almost immediately entering a high speed spin or roll then there should be a chance of break up. Any aircraft stands a chance of breaking up in those situations.

The poor bugger would probably be trapped by G forces even if the plane did hold together

I should add that the Me110 seems to have a much bigger problem than the Spit

I see we are back to the red vs blue tit for tat that doesnt help anyone. We dont need reliability modeled. When we fly we are almost garenteed 100% of the time to have action. If you see how many flights some aces took and the actual percentile of those that resulted in combat you can see that they flew far more non combat sorties than combat ones. We do need correct handling though.

I think finding the data and hashing it out as a respectable debate until we find a general consensus is the best for all. Lets leave our ego at the door and try to get the right evidence for such things and respect each other without emotion.

Yes we know the red pilots are very frustrated. All the flight models have problems and by and far the reds are most in need of urgent attention. However just arguing because you cant get you point through to somone on the net is not helping.

Thats an interesting doc NZtyphoon. Dont suppose you have one for 5./JG27?

There are plenty of examples.

Honesty, the whining about this issue has become legendary. Why are such a small group of people is such denial about a 60 year old airplane??

:confused:

An inertial elevator was added to the design.

Why would they do that???

The only reason to add such a device....IS TO INCREASE STICK FORCES IN ORDER TO OVER COME LONGITUDINAL INSTABILITY.

There is no other reason for it. Inertial elevator is the fix for only one thing...longitudinal instability.

Did other airplanes recieve inertial elevators? Of course, it was not invented by Supermarine despite the fact many seem to think of them as the wellspring of aviation. Other airplanes have stability and control issues that give them unique personalities.

All the tap-dancing and attempts to underplay that fact the Spitfire was longitudinally unstable in all conditions of flight at normal and aft CG are just not credible in any fashion.

Now the logic seems to be that if other airplanes had issues then the Spitfire get's a pass.

Why does it get a pass? Some people want to have the speed, climb, and turn performance in an overmodeled stable platform.

So what about the temperature issues with the spitfire? It seems that when temperature effects are turned off the spitfire is faster. Is this because when turning the temperature effects off the radiator no longer causes a drag (because it is closed anyway)?

Why does the water and oil not cool down when flying faster (for instance in a dive)?

Does the spit when flown by the books show temperatures and operation times as it should?

How about the speeds and climb that can be achieved?

It should be possible to reduce radiator opening in normal cruise. Is this implemented?

What about the mixture? It seems that when the lever is forward the game takes it as rich mixture.

+1
The Bf 110 data comes from Zerstörer: The Messerschmitt 110 and Its Units in 1940. There is a comprehensive book on JG27 available through Amazon but I'm wondering how it became a book on Sopwith Aircraft 1912-1920.

There are plenty, actually. Undue sensitivity of the controls and ease of overloading the aircraft structure is stressed as a specific problem with Spitfire in the Spitfire Pilot's manual.

Now is "hardly any examples of breakups happening" or "maybe you can a small number of breakups"? You contradicted yourself in the follow up paragraph, congratulations..

Of course there's a reason. I see the Spitfire manual specially noting the risk of breaking up of the airframe a perfect and throughly documented reason as to why include this control characteristic into the sim. Not much a 'debate' is required, its plain there.

I am sure our two import fanatics, Glider and NZTyphoon, neither of whom are actual players or buyers of the sim and are really just here to disagree and continue their old feuds from other boards and would like to bury the whole thing in another wall of nonsense. ;)

Wishful. You always seem have this stance, first denial, when denial no longer works, comes the 'oh maybe I admit I am sure the Germans had it worse'. What's the connection anyway to Jeffyboy's newest smokescreen about 110s...? I can count but one Bf 110 loosing a wing for whatever reason in this list of 6 months of losses. I am sure there were a couple others with similiar fate, but how does that connect the Spitfires?

Let me see if I got your "logic" right: one 110s lost a wing for some reason in July 1940, which is, Glider and Minorlinkstorian argues, a good reason why not to model Spitfire pilots ability to break the aircraft in two just by pulling the stick back too much, due to the well documented extreme sensitivity of the elevator, noted by NACA, RAE, the Air Ministry, and which was specifically noted in Spitfire Pilot's manual specifally notes for the type, and which was the cause of numerous Spitfire breaking up during the war.

Seriously, its way to transparent that its just two guys, arguing that their national idol should be modelled without any flaw in a WW2 flight sim. And I would say it's pretty lame to watch this happen in every thread.

Question.

One aircraft has a stick force gradient of 4 lbs/g, the other has a stick force gradient of 20lbs/g.

Question 1.
In which aircraft is it easier for the pilot to reach the actual break point of ca. 10-12 g?

Question 2.
Is it possible for the aircraft which has a stick force gradient of 4 lbs/g to actually reach that 10-12 g load at which the airframe is likely to break?