Stability and Control characteristics of the Early Mark Spitfires

[NZtyphoon]

Originally Posted by Crumpp

In England, Jeffery Quill was the Chief Test Pilot for the development of the Spitfire. If it met his standards in his opinion, without quantification, it went forth despite the some early testing investigating the longitudinal instability, his acknowledgement, and all the warnings found in the Operating Notes that are the result of longitudinal instability.

It was not until the design was evaluated under a set of measured and defined standards that the longitudinal instability was quantified and fixed in the Spitfire.

Alas Jeffrey Quill - he spent thousands of hours in flight, testing and developing real Spitfires in real conditions, and thus we find out that he had no idea of what he was doing by an American sitting in front of a computer who had "tested" the Spitfire a couple of times on a flight sim and he did find it wanting. And because of Quill Spitfires went forth unstable and drunken in their flight.

Thus it was the Yanks who came to the rescue and fixed the hitherto unstable machine by waving their magic flight reports and inertia weights and speaking in unison "Fix this Spitfire it does not meet our standards!" The British quavered and lo! they fixed the Spitfire forever. And the tale told by Quill, that the inertia weights were fitted after the discovery of badly loaded Spitfire Vs in Fighter Command service was horse pucky.