Updated RAF FMs in 1.07.18301

[6S.Manu]

Originally Posted by Glider

This is the full quote as posted by Kurfurst:-

When the Me.109 was following the Hurricane or Spitfire, it was found that our aircraft turned inside the Me.109 without difficulty when flown by determined pilots who were not afraid to pull their aircraft round hard in a tight turn. In a surprisingly large number of cases, however, the Me. 109 succeeded in keeping on the tail of the Spitfire or Hurricane during these turning tests, merely because our Pilots would not tighten up the turn suficiently from fear of stalling and spinning. ...

It clearly has two part

a) When the Me.109 was following the Hurricane or Spitfire, it was found that our aircraft turned inside the Me.109 without difficulty when flown by determined pilots who were not afraid to pull their aircraft round hard in a tight turn. So when two deteremined pilots fly the aircraft to the full the RAF fighters easily turned inside the Me109

b) In a surprisingly large number of cases, however, the Me. 109 succeeded in keeping on the tail of the Spitfire or Hurricane during these turning tests, merely because our Pilots would not tighten up the turn suficiently from fear of stalling and spinning
Where the Me109 pilot is the most determined the Me109 can stay with the RAF fighters

From this it seems that with pilots of equal ability the RAF fighters will turn tighter.

All I am saying is read the whole quote.

The world is not white and black.

Let's talk about flying skill of the pilot: there is the general skill and I agree that the 109 pilot was really skilled, if not he would not be chosen as enemy for the test. But being a skilled pilot in some kind of plane does not mean that your as skilled in another one. For accuracy I asked to my teammate, the military pilot, and he agree with me... you need experience in THAT plane to reach the best performance. The document states that he fled it until he was used to it (how many hours? can't read by now)... but how can we know that he could push the plane at its limit like the determined pilots did in their Spitfires?

This "H + Sp > H + Bf > L + Sp" (H is a High skilled pilot, L is Low skilled pilot) as many of you want to use as proof is wrong. We don't know if the L pilots are really inexperienced... they could be expert Hurricanes' pilots flying in a Spitfire!!
So it's "H + Sp > H + Bf > (?) + Sp"

But, again, H and L can't be the pilot general skill... they must be the personal skill in those planes.
Lets add the new variable (there A means that pilot is really accustomed to the plane, and B means that the pilot is not used to fly it)...

H + Sp + (A) > H + Bf + (?) > (?) + Sp + (?)

So we don't know the overall skill of the outturned Spitfire's pilots.... we don't know if the 109 pilot could push it to its limit.... the only thing we can know is that the determined pilots who actually outturned the 109 were experienced pilots but for sure more used to fly Spitfires than the 109's pilot was used to fly the german plane.

Now can they outturn a "Marseille"? Probably... but how can we be so sure?

[TomcatViP]

So now it's normal to think that the SPit outurned the Hurri ?

Regarding all you have posted Seadog, it's sad that you keep posting things that have been alrdy discussed heavily. It show what I am saying since long now : some of you don't care at all of what others can says and keep posting the same extract, the same curves, the same "document" even if those are questionable.

That's boring. We push arguments frwrd and you keep putting wall of this in every post.

Boring.

Did you ever see that we have no prob saying that the Spit will outurn a 109 in what was the condition of the test? You didn't even read that. Convinced that the truth can't be other that what you did build in your own mind.

Dogfighting is a difficult exercise. It's not acrobatic work. But that you can not understand and keep holding the point of view that the best turner have to be British and rules the fight.

Before pasting bellow another hundreds of copied lines from another thread, take the time to re-read what we have said. Otherwise, ONCE MORE, there is no point arguing with some of you.

Operational results during BoB shows that the Hurri has been the best fighter, just followed by the 109 (I put logically the Hurri frwd as it did won BoB when the 109 just loose). But that you don't care. You and others can't admits that point and still push forward the SPit, mixing it's perf with latter model just to ensure you have your Tie-Fighter ride online. Of course that a thing that you can't do with the Hurri as the theSidney Cam fighter did reach nearly all it's potential during BoB.

Moreover, anyone with an ounce of flying experience flying the SPit we have in game see immediately how ridiculous it behave. This has been pointed by many others before but still we have to ear your ridiculous discussions about frwd speed, mean tide height for "accurate" perf assessment (Oh G. forgive us for our sins), and many hair raising theorizing idea.

Enough is enough. I want myself to be able to fly a SPitfire in CoD without feeling ashamed of myself. That's how a proud Brit should spend his time on an aviation forum !

Why does it hve to be a Frenchman writing that ?

[Glider]

I think we agree on most things.

There is a difference between skill and experience on that I think we agree. It is quite possible to have a lot of experience on an aircraft but still not be skilled enough to takie it to the limit. It is also possible to be very skilled and not a lot of experience in an aircraft.

The Me109 was flown by an RAE pilot who we can assume is a very skilled pilot used to flying a variety of different types of aircraft. As you say he wouldn't have been given the job without that extra something. Test flying is by definition the art of taking the plane to the limit, to push the envelope to see what it does.
You are correct, we don't know how many hours he had on the Me109 but that is of lesser important than his experience as a test pilot.
From the test we know that he was confident to fly the Me 109 past the deployment of the slats which is something a number of German pilots didn't do. We know that from other quotes from other german pilots. We also know that he flew it past the stall in a tight turn until he had to recover it which means that he did push the envelope until the plane stalled.
The intresting thing is the combat with the RAF pilots. Some clearly did fly their aircraft until the shudder and those did turn inside the Me109 whatever the 109 pilot did, even until the Me109 stalled. However, others didn't and they found the Me109 when flown to the limit, stayed with them.
Those RAF would have been experienced but the skill level differed. I say they would have been experienced because if a Sqdn Leader was asked to send some pilots to fly mock dogfights against an Me109, I am willing to bet a pound to a penny they would go themselves and say the flight leaders. They wouldn't send someone inexperienced

|I know my experience was in gliders but I flew a number of different types and it didn't take that long to get the hang of something. The only real issues were if the glider had a new feature which I had no experience in, how to use that feature took a little time but you got there within a few days, not weeks.

Edit - I should add that using the new feature was fairly easy, getting the bewst use of it was something else. In my case it was when I started to fly high performance gliders with water ballast. Using it was easy, knowing when to use it was tricky

[Crumpp]

The Stability and Control characteristics of the early marque Spitfires are well defined and measureable across multiple sources, the RAE, NACA, and post war stability and control engineering text's.

[Glider]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

The Stability and Control characteristics of the early marque Spitfires are well defined and measureable across multiple sources, the RAE, NACA, and post war stability and control engineering text's.

As are the views of those who flew it

[Crumpp]

As are the views of those who flew it

Subjective opinion, unmeasureable, and without definition...

[Glider]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

Subjective opinion, unmeasureable, and without definition...

Possibly, quite possibly, but the problem with post war studies are precisely that, they are post war. The benchmarks that apply post war are often not the same benchmarks that apply during a war. Even during a war, there are sometimes differences between what the engineers believe to be acceptable and what the people on the front line believe to be acceptable.

This is probably the main difference between us.

[Crumpp]

the problem with post war studies are precisely that, they are post war.

The NACA study was not post war....

The RAE Operating Notes warnings were not post war.....

Gates attempts to get the RAE on a measureable standard were not post war.....

He wrote over 130 papers during his career on stability and control. A significant portion of them were written during the war attempting to convince his colleagues at the Air Ministry to adopt measureable standards.

In fact, Gates stability margin criteria were part of the NACA's standards!!! Gates developed the "Aerodynamic Center" which would replace the obsolete "center of pressure".

All of Gates findings agreed with the NACA's conclusions!

He and Gilruth were good friends. In his 1942 visit to the NACA, Gilruth hosted Gates.

One of his sources for the development of the following table is the basis of the NACA standards!!

Gilruth . .Requirements for Satisfactory Flying Qualities of Airplanes•
N.A.C.A. Advance Report A.R'.C. 5543.

Just as a chart of speed or climb performance shows us how the aircraft should perform, the plots of acceleration forces over velocity tell us how the aircraft performs in abrupt maneuvers.

For satisfactory stability and control, a pilot is able to precisely control the accelerations on the aircraft.

This is not what the plots show for the Spitfire. The accelerations vary wildly as the pilot is unable to precisely control them.