Spitfire Question

[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.