MW50 -Secondary effects were cooling of the engine .

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by Whacker

Err... I was under the impression from multiple, varied sources that the early Spits generally *were* inferior to their chronological counterpart 109's in a number of ways.

As I understand it, Spits always had better turn rates across the board and the 109's were never able to take the lead. The early Merlins were inferior and had fuel starvation problems in negative G situations, there was a band-aid solution that partially worked until several years later it was fixed. All but the earliest 109's had the Kommandogerat device which automated pitch and mixture, most also had automated radiator controls. Later Spits had more automation that worked, and as the war went on they had better armament, the later Merlins and Griffons were on par with or superior to their German counterparts, and the performance gap was finally closed.

IMHO the corresponding Marks of the Spitfire were more or less on par with the 109s, ie. Mark I vs 109E, Mark IX vs 109G, Mark XIV vs 109K - the only exception of the Mark V that was a bit inferior to the 109F from the start, and later Mark IX (1943 with the Merlin 66) that took a lead on the contemporary 109G-6.

The problem with not so much with development, but deployment. Even though there were as good Marks of the Spitfire at the same time, they were never entering service as quickly as the newest 109s. Mark Is may have been as good as 109Es, the difference was that all 109s were Emils in 1939/40, while most of the RAF still had Hurricanes and only a handful of Spitfires in comparisons. The Mark IX may have been about as good as the 109F/G in 1942/43, but again the difference was that while all 109 units had 109Gs, most of the RAF Spitfire Squadrons were still flying Mark Vs - even at the start of 1944 the Mark V was the most common Spitfire, just about to be replaced by the Mark Niners but the LW was moving to the next phase of MW boosted 109s and/or AS engines; the Mark XIV may have been as good as the 109K, but it mattered little given that 90% of the RAF Spitfire Squadrons were still flying Mark IXs, which were a bit overhwhelmed in performance by late 1944.