A newbies impression of the 109 and spit

[Glider]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

This is just not true. Spinning an aircraft that is not approved is just plain stupid. The only people that do it are those who do not understand the aerodynamics.

There is a good reason it is not approved to spin. Reason's like it does not recover for example.

I am sorry but that is plain wrong. If you look at almost any aircraft in the RAF at almost any time you will see that it says intentional spinning is banned. That includes the Spitfire, however it doesn't stop the fact that spinning is undertaken.
Pilots had to be trained to get out of a spin in a combat aircraft, and therefore you have to be in a spin to learn how the aircraft behaves. In reality it means that it should be done under supervision not as a matter of course until experience has been gained

Corkscrewing as an evasion technique is far more violent than a spin but all RAF bombers including Halifax and Lancasters undertook such a method.

This is one area I can speak of with some experience. When I started learning to spin some of this was undertaken in a Hunter T8. If you look at the pilots notes for the Hunter you will find, yes you guessed it, intentional spinning is banned.

Re the comment someone made about arguing with non engineers, I served in the RN as an airframes and engines artificer in the early 70's if that is of interest.

Just an observation, but the RAF never needed to develop a two seat Spit or Hurricane and trained many thousands of pilots to fly them. But the Luftwaffe needed to develop two seat 109's with the inevitable distruption on the design and production teams, presumably because they needed to.

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by Glider

Just an observation, but the RAF never needed to develop a two seat Spit or Hurricane and trained many thousands of pilots to fly them.

That's just plain silly. Everybody needed two seat trainers, but it wasn't widely practiced in WW2, the need it was just began to be realized.

BTW: Supermarine Spitfire T9:

[Glider]

I will reword my previous posting:-

Just an observation, but during WW2 the RAF never needed to develop a two seat Spit or Hurricane and trained many thousands of pilots to fly them. But the Luftwaffe needed to develop two seat 109's with the inevitable distruption on the design and production teams, presumably because they needed to.

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[Kurfürst]

Still plain silly. You want to make the lack of a proper two seat trainer variant a good thing...

[Glider]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

Still plain silly. You want to make the lack of a proper two seat trainer variant a good thing...

Just an observation, there were no ww2 spitfire two seat trainers and thousands of pilots were trained to fly them, and the Luftwaffe did have two seat 109's and 190's for a reason.

Personally I have often wondered why the RAF didn't have trainer versions. The jump from a Harvard to a Spit/Typhoon/whatever is a serious leap and a two seat version for at least the first say three - five flights makes sense, just to make sure they remember all the drills and can handle the extra speed.

[NZtyphoon]

Originally Posted by Glider

I will reword my previous posting:-

Just an observation, but during WW2 the RAF never needed to develop a two seat Spit or Hurricane and trained many thousands of pilots to fly them. But the Luftwaffe needed to develop two seat 109's with the inevitable distruption on the design and production teams, presumably because they needed to.

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Going way o/t here...

I'd think the main reason that the British didn't develop trainer versions of the Spitfire and Hurricane was because they had powerful advanced trainers such as the Harvard and Miles Master, which replicated most of the flight characteristics of fighters, albeit they didn't have the same high speed capabilities. One pilot who describes transitioning from the Harvard to a Spitfire in 1940 was Geoffrey Wellum; he didn't seem to have a huge amount of difficulty. The Harvard could bite pilots who got careless, but I don't know much about the Master, although it looked likely to be a good intro to the Hurricane. Interesting that it was equipped with a Rotol C/S prop. (Maybe another aircraft type for the developers???)

The Germans used aircraft such as the Ar 96. There really wasn't much call for a two-seat 109 until later in the war, otherwise the Jagdfliegervorschulen, the basic fighter training units, used various version of the 109 and captured D.520s etc; the pilots then transitioned to Ergänzungsgruppe which were similar to OTUs but attached to Jagdgeschwader

[VO101_Tom]

Originally Posted by Glider

Just an observation, but the RAF never needed to develop a two seat Spit or Hurricane and trained many thousands of pilots to fly them. But the Luftwaffe needed to develop two seat 109's with the inevitable distruption on the design and production teams, presumably because they needed to.

Hi. Only about ~100 aircraft were modified to G-12 standards (it was conversion only, G-2, G-3, G-4, G-6 types). I think these aircrafts used more for combat training, not for the basic exercises, circuits. For example, the RHAF did not use the G-12 type (Hungary also produced 109 G-6, G-8, G-14 types). If this was really necessary, then they would have converted.