Stability and Control characteristics of the Early Mark Spitfires

[Crumpp]

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

1. Did inertial weights get added to the design to fix the Longitudinal instability....YES.

2. Did this occur during the Battle of Britain.......NO, the longitudinal instability was not fixed during the Battle of Britain.

3. Should the Spitfires modeled in the game exhibit the longitudinal instability.....YES.

4. Do they now exhibit the longitudinal instability in the game....NO.


As "yanks coming to the rescue"....that is a very myopic view and far from the truth.

It was Gates and Lyon's efforts that brought a measureable standard to the UK aviation authority. Yes he based those standards on the NACA's efforts just as the NACA based part of their standards on his work.

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.

And I suppose they added the inertial elevators to the Spitfire Mk I because nobody in the RAF could read a load plan or do a weight and balance?

I am sure there was an issue in the Mk V when it first came out with the operators incorrectly loading the aircraft. That certainly did not help the longitudinal instability of the design making a bad situation much worse, but it was not the reason for the longitudinal instability.