Best Fighter

i like the manouverability of the earlier marks but i think i might just go for the power of the later marks...........

plan_D said:

They would like the Mk. IX better because of their memories with it. If they flew a Mk. VIII then they would have been in Burma while flying it, most likely. That's not a good experience. And not ALL liked the Mk. IX better.

The VIII was the definitive Merlin-engined Spitfire. It wasn't built that much because the Mk. IX was already using old V airframes. There were more to use...

I refuse...not never ever...will I bow down to your blasphemy...

The Mk. XIV was better than both of them...

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Of course, they did not ALL liked the Mk. IX better, but most of them did.

And you're talking like if all of the Mk. VIII were sent to Burma. A lot of them were but not all of them. There was some Mk. VIII in Europe and in Africa like there was some Mk. IX in Asia and in Africa. So a pilot could have flown both of them in Europe or both of them in Asia as well as he could have flown one in Europe and the other in Asia.

the lancaster kicks ass said:

i like the manouverability of the earlier marks but i think i might just go for the power of the later marks...........

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And the looks 8)

I didn't say ALL. They were sent to Italy and Burma...

not sure about the looks of the Mk.XXII, tail's to big..............

Every mark of the Spit looked good. It can be argued that the Spit was the prettiest aircraft of all time.

Not with me...


I prefer the '109, "Friedrich."

And the Mk. VIII got 8:1 kill ratio over the Japs in Burma...pure and simple beat down.

not sure i'd say it was the best looking, the SR-71 wasn't to bad..............

GermansRGeniuses said:

Not with me...


I prefer the '109, "Friedrich."

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I quite liked the 109 too.....In my gunsight!

The 109 was a classic fighter, but the DB engines always seemed to ruin the lines.

but the merlin in the spit, what a great looking combination...........

GermansRGeniuses said:

Not with me...


I prefer the '109, "Friedrich."

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that one is nice but the arming isn't verry good , I like 109 G2

RG_Lunatic, Thanks for the PM, I did miss that. Anyway you are correct the turbochargers in themselves were GE units. However the electronic control portions of the turbos (regulators, pressuretrol, Turbo Boost Selector and their associated electronics) were Minneapolis Honeywell units. My post did make it sound like everything was MH though, I apologize for that. I should have made a note that the turbochargers were General Electric.

Heres a link to a story mentioning a B-17G running on WE power for a few hours. It also mentions that their controls were MH units. http://www.huntress.com/high.htm Earlier B-17's (F and back) had manual turbo controls. Instead of having a single knob to turn with the electronic units these had 4 handles below the throttle quadrant. Each handle controlled each engines individual turbo through mechanical linkages. With this it was a lot harder to get the engines synchronized as you had to not only jockey the throttles but you had to jockey the turbo controls around too!

I have a friend back in Tennessee who I met on the B-29 yahoo group. He lives in the same town where I went to college so I emailed him saying I was going to school there and that I'd like to come talk about the B-29 for a while. I went to see him after my finals and stayed for about 4 hours. He was a ground crewman/weather specalist for a weather squadron on Guam during the Korean War. He does have a lot of flight time though. I got to hear a lot of interesting storys that day. One was about a B-29 that during takeoff, just didn't sound right! He said he heard it and turned around to see what was going on. The B-29 was climbing and was at full power. The crew was trying everything to slow it down. He said they had the bombbay doors open and came over the base at over 300 mph. The pilot tried to shoot a landing and came in near 300. He hit the runway hard tearing up the bombbay doors and skidding the tires for a good length of the runway. The B-29 then took back off, basically it was a skidmark touch and go!! Finally on the next go around the crew cut the two outboard engines on approach and when touchdown occured they cut the two inboard engines. The B-29 was still going very fast and the pilots were no doubt pretty scared. They stood on the brakes and skidded down the runway in a cloud of smoke. The four main tires blew but the B-29 finally stopped and that particular runway was closed the rest of the day!

An investigation was done as to what caused this. It turned out that the Minneapolis Honeywell control unit malfunctioned and snapped the wastegates totally shut. This produced over 70"Hg and sent the R-3350s into the highest war emergency setting!

the lancaster kicks ass said:

but the merlin in the spit, what a great looking combination...........

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Actually, I prefer the Daimler engine in the Spitfire...

Yeomanz said:

GermansRGeniuses said:

Not with me...


I prefer the '109, "Friedrich."

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that one is nice but the arming isn't verry good , I like 109 G2

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They actually have the same, unless you attach underwing cannons to the Gustav...



The Gustav-2 may be faster (not by much) than the Friedrich-4, but the latter handles much better...

Cool pic, GRG. Spitfire with a Daimler Benz, who would've thunk it?!

Isn't that a form of sacrilege?

GermansRGeniuses said:

Yeomanz said:

GermansRGeniuses said:

Not with me...


I prefer the '109, "Friedrich."

Click to expand...

that one is nice but the arming isn't verry good , I like 109 G2

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They actually have the same, unless you attach underwing cannons to the Gustav...



The Gustav-2 may be faster (not by much) than the Friedrich-4, but the latter handles much better...

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well to my knoledge the F4 has 1 12.7mm canon in the nose , and two 7.7mm in the upper foward fusalage and the G-2 has a 20mm canon in the nose and either two 7.7's or 12.7's in the upper fusalage ....