Bf-109 vs. Spitfire....

Which Series of Craft Wins the Fight.... Bf-109 or the Spitfire???

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Thanks Gnomey.


Now it's my time to ask for sources, bwahahah!

- Can anyone point me in the direction of info concerning the Me109 turning with, or out-turning the Spitfire please?

Thank you,
 
With these two aircraft I think it was a toss of a coin. With successive variants they bettered each other. It all depends on the skill of the pilot. But, in saying that, my preference goes with the Spit.
 
I would second that but my feeling is that as the war progressed and speeds increased the advantage tendeded to go with the Spitfire.

The 109 had a problem with its control surfaces at higher speed as they became very heavy, the higher the speed, the heavier the controls. This is of course something every plane had to deal with but on the 109 it was more noticable.

The other advantage the Spit had was in firepower. If the 109 had a 20mm it was better for fighting fighters but lacked the punch against bombers, with the 30mm it was better against bombers. The Spit with its 2 x 20mm (I ignore the 303in this) was more flexible and those with the 2 x HMG further increased the advantage.
 


Yeap but there is a reason for the 109s armament. What was Germany having to combat? The allied bomber streams.

If you look at the evolution of the 109s armament the armament was more suited for fighters in the earlier part of the war when they were escorting bombers over England, later as they went more on the defensive the armament changed to having to deal with bombers.
 
Still having one center mounted 20-30mm cannon and two 13mm guns is a pretty good armament against fighters, the center configuration ensuring great accuracy.

And I doubt it was hard to hit a fighter with the 30mm cannon, it did after-all fire over 660 rounds pr. minute at 540 m/s - its all about the pilot knowing his weapons.
 
The is no doubt that the approx 850 m/s of the 20mm gave much better ballistics than the 30mm at around 530 m/s. Also a point often missed is that from the Mk IX onwards the Spits had far better sights giving greatly increased accuracy enableing them to use the extra ballistics. There is no doubt in my mind that the Spit had the edge in firepower.

Plus of course the bombers were escorted by fighters and a more flexible armament would have been more benificial.

Had the Germas been equiped with the Spit then they would have had better flexibility plus the Spit could carry 4 x 20 mm at some cost to performance of course, but a lot less cost, than having to hang 2 x 20 under the wings in pods as per the 109.
 
The 109's armament is much more precise though, simply because of the fact that its center fixed.
 
Glider said:
Shall we agree that the benefit of being center mounted is matched by the advanced sights that I think almost doubled the accuracy of the average squadron pilot?
Click to expand...


Advanced sights as in K-14 ?? Or just the normal sight which most featured ?

If just the normal sights, no I do not agree. If the K-14, well it does help, however not enough to balance it. The 109 doesn't have to deal with conversion, the Spit does.
 
Yes the K14 and we will have to disagree.
The spit doesn't have to deal with worse balistics of the German 20mm and extreamly poor 30mm Mk108 which is one reason why the 109 had to get so close. The K14 significantly increases the accuracy of the average pilot, that, plus the better ballistics of the UK 20mm more than makes up the difference.
 
The 109 didn't have to get close, precise shots could be delivered at pretty much all normal combat ranges, long range shots could be made with accuracy as-well. The 20mm MG151 had good enough ballistics to be effective at long range, and the Mk108 could be used at long range as-well if the pilot knew his weapons. Just the fact that the Spit has to deal with conversion is enough to say its less accurate, and is only ideal at a certain range.

And as to the K-14 sight, well the ability of the pilot determined the effectiveness of the this device as range had to be plotted by the pilot.

Don't compare the K-14 to the radar gunsight of the F-86 Sabre..
 
I think that one point that was never resolved for both the 109 and maybe a lesser extent for the Spitfire were the out-folding undercarriages and the narrow track which led to high losses of newbies in general and all pilots in fact at night or rough landing strips or side winds etc.

I never understood why a Messerschmit engineer did not come up with a clever conversion, even a half recessed landing gear.
 
Real simple - weight, material and producibility...

In the years the 109 and Spitfire were developed some of the materials used to carry some of the major stress loads were state of the art. High strength aluminum forgings, steels and magnesium were starting to find their way into aircraft construction. Designers of that day had to come up with a design that was light weight, strong and producible. Operational considerations were weighed when the initial prototypes were first evaluated and some of those idiosyncrasies were accepted. The pilots just had to learn to deal with them.

As the war progressed and aircraft development was at a "wartime urgency", many of the pre-war "quick and easy" design solutions that incorporated some of the previously mentioned materials became more refined, especially around the landing gear. The oleo strut evolved from a simple piston to a structural masterpiece that not only carried the aircraft weight but managed a smooth cushion when landing. At this point the engineer and operator has to ask themselves "Is interruption of the production line warranted to incorporate these improvements?" I would guess that although Germany built 35,000 109s, every production day of this aircraft was critical and if there were going to be major improvements, they better be well worth it, and it seems the lion's share of those improvement went into the propulsion, airframe and weapons systems. After 8 years of operating these squat, narrow track fighters with landing gear nothing more than a crude shock absorber, it was probably felt that it wasn't worth the effort to incorporate a better landing gear design although there were numerous accidents on both aircraft (the Spit and 109) due to their landing gear configuration.
 
A half recessed gear would have resulted in too much drag. Because of trying to reduce weight in the main wing spar the designer in effect on the BF attached the main gear to the fuselage resulting in the narrow track.
 

I cant remember who it was pbfoot maybe who went and measured the tracks of the 109 and the Spitfire at the musuem airfield near where he lives and the Spit was actually slightly narrower than that of the Bf 109.
 
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