Bf-109 vs. Spitfire....

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

  • Total voters
    159

Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules

Pierre Clostermann (interviewed by Alexandre Jaeg):
"Spitfire. The Germans called her the oeillade of the peacock because of her beauty. My God but this plane was a beauty! She had feminine lines with the soft curves of a woman's hips all around a bubble of plexiglas for the canopy that sat calmly on her fuselage. In spite of her wing cannons she had the grace of a swan. There was something beyond the first impression beauty of the Spitfire that caused a certain reverence, a silence whenever she was discussed among the pilots. Even today, a generation later, the friends of my son refer to the Spitfire with reverence as if there was something mythical about her.

AJ: We can say that between us this same romantic mythical feeling about the Spitfire still exists today.

PC: Ah yes! Then you too realize the beauty of this magnificent plane! Today, fifty years after the Battle of Britain, the old pilots of the time show a tear of admiration whenever they set eyes on the beautiful lines of the Spitfire. For them it is as though they are remembering their pretty petite fiancée of the first aerial love of their life. Today's young pilots only dream to try it, to have one flight in the Spitfire. But beware! Just as a woman mistreated if the Spitfire is mistreated it will take vengeance and kill. I found written in the archives a piece from Corky Miller, a test pilot for Grumman, who wrote something astonishing about his flight in the Spitfire. It is as if one is reading an account of a virgin experiencing her first encounter. Corky miller writes: "There is no question that the Spitfire has one of the most beautiful silhouettes of all of the major fighters to evolve from the drawing board. Her elliptical wing and long fuselage are beautiful to watch in flight or on the ground. The long nose and the rearward elevated attitude in flight promotes much improved pilot visibility compared to other fighters where one is obliged to roll partially inverted or to zigzag in taxing in order to maintain adequate visibility. I was warned prior to my test flight that her hydraulic pumps were troublesome, problematic, and that I should not trust the brakes. As soon as I placed myself on the flight line and arrived at the moment of truth I applied throttle and I was delighted with her acceleration. She lifted off in a short 150 meters into a wind of only 20 knots. She climbed like a Japanese Zero. Any shortcomings of this plane that had been expressed to me prior to this test flight had completely vanished in my mind by now. A slow speed stall at 110 km/h revealed only a slight drop of the right wing. She responded and recovered promptly from the stall as soon as I re-applied power. Despite the busy array of instruments and switches in the cockpit that is typical of British planes I found that I did not need any compensators; everything was located where it seemed natural. Her stability on the three axes was sufficiently sensitive to delight a fighter pilot yet sufficiently stable to permit smooth flying in turbulent air. I felt that the Spitfire was a better pilot intrinsically that her pilot riders in the cockpit. Aerobatics were a delight. She responded to my thoughts apparently without any effort. Her qualities of flight were so marvelous that I proceeded on with a few reverse Cuban eights. They were no more complicated to perform in the Spitfire than to eat a piece of cake. Upside down I hung in the harness but found it quite comfortable. I never derived as much pleasure in flying any fighter as the Spitfire. She made me feel comfortable in any attitude of flight. Now I gained some understanding how the pilots in the Battle of Brittan could form up repeatedly day after day, exhausted, yet admirably succeed in their mission and in the end defeat the Luftwaffe. I confess that my Tomcats, Wildcats, Hellcats, and the Corsairs and Thunderbolt P-47s are beasts of burden compared to this thoroughbred, the Spitfire. She is analogous to an Arabian stallion. As for the landing she was no more difficult than to down a dry martini."

AJ: That is eloquent!

PC: Yes! And it was written by a well-known test pilot of fighter aircraft. Most pilots who flew the Spitfire remember it fondly. Presently, there are about 50 Spitfires still flying in refurbished condition. The only problem is that in some of the restored the engines are not typical of the original Merlins or Griffons; the sound of the Rolls Royce engines was always something special. Later on in the war when I transitioned from the Spitfire to the big raw Hawker Tempest Mk V, well, let me just say that I was in another universe altogether. It was similar to comparing a gazelle to a rhinoceros."
The Hawker Tempest Page
 
Going back to Bf-109E versus Spitfire MkI/II. Is there any other website showing a comparison apart from wwiiaircraftperformance? in this website the level speeds shown are for a Bf-109E1, are there graphs showing E3 and E4?
 
Soundbreaker Welch? said:
As I see it the Spit was a lovely plane to fly, the 109 not so much.

It still had an impressive kill ratio though.
Click to expand...

One thing I have noticed in our discussions of aircraft A vs B is that we tend to assume they operate 1 vs 1 in making comparisons

What about the effect of numbers ? Deployment tactics ?


I know for example that the Thach Weave worked with 2 Wildcats


Box formations of B17s were a much tougher prospect than just 'a' B17 on its own etc etc


What about the Melee of say 10 versus 10 - I have a feeling this may soon start to even the playing field in some respects and smooth out some of the advantages of any one type.
 
Because that would be exactly what you say it is - a comparison of tactics vs tactics, rather than machine vs machine.

The 'effect of numbers' argument breaks down over the Eastern Front where the best Luftwaffe tactics simply couldn't shoot the VVS fighters down faster than they could be replaced. That only tells you that if you swarm a quality machine with enough inferior machines, you'll eventually defeat it.

1 vs 1, under idealised conditions, tells us more about the merits of the machines and what the designers got right or wrong.

I don't think there's anything wrong with your melee approach, as long as it's depicted as such because it's a different issue.
 
The 'effect of numbers' argument breaks down over the Eastern Front where the best Luftwaffe tactics simply couldn't shoot the VVS fighters down faster than they could be replaced. That only tells you that if you swarm a quality machine with enough inferior machines, you'll eventually defeat it.


I thought the La-7 was pretty good ?

Maybe from 43 to 45 Russian planes were not such a pushover, even if in greater numbers, they could also hold their own 1-to-1 I believe.
 
Kurfürst said:
Oh, there are plenty, but not on certain sites. Didn't the Spitfire had these little fences on the wing top, exactly because skin wrinkling, failurues?



But for example the Mk II manual also instructs the pilot to caution:

Click to expand...

As I have discussed here Wing breakage; 109 or Spitfire? #80 and 83 Using these pages as a reference gives a false impression of events.Reinforcing strips (hardly wing fences) were added above the wheelbays of a small number of Spitfires, but this was by no means representative of the majority of them. The pages from Morgan and Shacklady simply show that while there were several incidents involving Spitfires there were also several causes for them - only to be expected in a mass produced, high performance fighter which was often put under considerable strain.

To summarise:
There were 121 Spitfire crash investigations between 1941 and May 1945 involving serious structural failure:
22 aileron instability
46 pilot overstressed airframe
20 pilot error in cloud
13 misuse of oxygen system- pilot error
3 pilot blacked out
17 engine failure/fire (Glider)

121 out of 22,000? Sure, there would have been other incidents which were not investigated, but, overall this compares very favourably with some modern aircraft (the stats for the likes of the "Century series" of aircraft such as the F-102 F-106 would make interesting reading).

BTW nobody has yet come up with any reliable, accurate 109 accident and incident statistics. However, I have read, for example, that 1,500 109s were lost or damaged in landing or take off accidents:
Scource: 109 Myths Lots of badly damaged Spitfires were repaired and put back into service as well, of course.

While there is some discussion about the wheel track of the 109 v the Spitfire ("Me 109 E is 1,97 meters; 109 G 2,06 meters and 109 K 2,1 meters. However - Spitifre's undercarriage width was 1,68 meters.)" a fundemental difference is that the 109's undercarriage was angled outwards, while the Spitfire's was straight; in the event of a skewed landing the sideways forces on the 109's undercarriage were often enough to collapse the leg sideways back into the wing, often breaking the complicated undercarriage pivot point. Also, as mentioned, the cg was well behind the undercarriage. The biggest weakness of the Spitfire was to nose over, often damaging the propeller through "pecking". Finally, yep, the Seafire also had real problems on carriers, but no 109 ever took off and landed on a carrier at sea, so no-one knows whether it would have experienced similar, if not far worse problems.

In the meantime we have yet to see any stats on 109 flight accidents.
 
And this is different to the Me 109 wing failures how?

I have not seen the primary source for this, so excuse me if it was posted in this thread. But does it say specifically these 121 were the only accidents, or was it simply a sample for analytic purposes. Very significant for your 121 out of 22,000.
 
riacrato said:
And this is different to the Me 109 wing failures how?.
Click to expand...
The Spitfire V test alluded to by Kurfurst was after a series of Spitfire V crashes which occured in 1942. Investigation by Jeffrey Quill, amongst others, showed that the sole reason for these crashes was bad loading on the part of RAF squadrons, which brought the cg far too far back in the fuselage. KF likes to think this report was representative for all Spitfires and has posted it several times as "evidence" that all Spitfires were inherently accident prone. Read the rest of the discussion in the threads posted in the wing breakages.

Again, Kurfurst has used the " Pilot's Notes" several times in the past as evidence that the Spitfire was all but impossible to fly, yet the only place these pages can be found is on his own website

BTW Kurfurst has yet to post any reliable information on 109 crash statistics.
riacrato said:
I have not seen the primary source for this, so excuse me if it was posted in this thread. But does it say specifically these 121 were the only accidents, or was it simply a sample for analytic purposes. Very significant for your 121 out of 22,000.
Click to expand...
This was a quote from Glider from information taken from Spitfire A Complete Fighting History. I don't have the book, and I should revise my posting to include this as a quote. I seem to recall that this was out of a chapter written by one of Britain's leading air crash experts.
 
NZTyphoon said:
Again, Kurfurst has used the " Pilot's Notes" several times in the past as evidence that the Spitfire was all but impossible to fly, yet the only place these pages can be found is on his own website
Click to expand...
So you think he fabricated them?
As for reliable information on the number of 109 crashes. That would be very hard to acquire. And without putting it into perspective (airfield conditions, crews...) not very representative of the plane. I thought I saw a comparison of the allegedly reliable and forgiving Fw190 vs the Me 109 on this forum a while ago and the difference was not very significant.
Then maybe Glider can shed some light into this.
 
Last edited:

I wonder if some types of plane lend themselves better to working in groups - bit like ants or bees working in organised teams / hives etc ?

They said the B17 was a better group formation plane than the Liberator for example - well I have read that here and there, although the Liberator could fly further more efficiently even if it did slip and slide etc etc
 
For the most part, no
the pilot makes the plane; put one of the best weapons of the Korean War, the MiG-15, in the hands of a bunch of farmers (N Korean pilots) and you may as well have just taken them up in a C-130 and chucked them out without parachutes.

Good pilot training, to incorporate team tactics that constantly evolve are what make good planes better, there'd need to be a serious gulf of performance between the aircraft of a nation flying like that and an opposing nation who aren't, in order for that to hold untrue.

I'm not familiar with the flight characteristics of the B-24 but your point holds true about strategic bomber formations of the period, these would obviously benefit from collaborative formations, both from the combinational effectiveness of their collective firepower, their statistically improved chances of survival and by extension, putting more bombers over the target area.

These are, however, reactive formations insofar as they can only sit and wait for the enemy to come to them. F-86 teams had the advantage of proactive behaviour where they could get in among the MiGs and impose the fight they wanted to fight, on them.
 
Last edited:

Exactly the same comments could be made about statistics on Spitfire crashes. Yet we have people using very select pieces of information to imply that the Spitfire was either inherently unsafe and/or accident prone. I repeat, the selected paragraph from a report on Spitfire V crashes in 1942 is related to a very particular set of circumstances caused by poor maintenance at a squadron level. It is, in fact, evidence that Supermarine and the RAF were very actively engaged in solving the problem.

This is the page, in full, presented by Kurfurst (only the first paragraph was shown originally)


(from #83 "Wing Breakages..." et al)

It is worth noting that the bob weights could be removed once the redesigned elevators, with larger balance weights, were introduced. The serial No's, BTW, are from Shacklady and Morgan.

riacrato said:
So you think he fabricated them?
Click to expand...

Just pointing out that they can only be found on Kurfurst's photobucket page (not his website, as I said earlier). A set of Spitfire II Pilot's Notes can be found here and they look nothing like those presented by Kurfurst. Nor do they look like any Pilot's Notes I have seen, from a variety of different RAF aircraft



Your guess is as good as mine. 8)

From Glider (edited extract from # 300)


'Nuff said...
 
Last edited:
This might be of interest. It should be noted that the words are very similar to Kurfurst's paper. He did post a link once and there were some problems with the paper he put a link to.

Namely it was dated June 1940 but gave the instructions for firing 2 x 20mm and 4 x LMG or 8 x LMG. Also it had the details for both 87 and 100 Octane fuel. In June 1940 the were no Spit IIB and they all had 100 Octane fuel.

The one I have posted is dated July 1940 and despite titled Spit IIa and IIb only gives the instructions for firing 8 x LMG. Also the fuel is only 100 Octane. This would be correct as in July 1940 all Spit II were in the front line and only had 100 Octane.

Kurfurst's paper must date from around June 1941 when Spit II were being issued to training command who did use 87 Octane.
 

Attachments

  • SpitIIAII and IIB.pdf
    2.8 MB · Views: 105
Glider said:
This would be correct as in July 1940 all Spit II were in the front line and only had 100 Octane.

Kurfurst's paper must date from around June 1941 when Spit II were being issued to training command who did use 87 Octane.
Click to expand...


there was only ONE spitII assigned to squadron in July40 and there still were a lot if them inJune41 assigned to front line active squadrons (not OTU's).

Statistics ongoing, will be posted when finished.
 

It should be noted that all the above claims by Glider are made up on his own regards the contents of the manual - it doesn't contain anything like he says, in fact he just posted exactly the same manual I have... OOPS, so much for NZT Typhoon conspiracy theories about 'forged' documents...

Glider said:
In June 1940 the were no Spit IIB and they all had 100 Octane fuel.
Click to expand...

I'd like to see your evidence of that. In the last discussion of the subject, you were able to post a paper, from the spring of 1940, which said that select bomber and fighter stations were to be supplied with 100 octane fuel. You claimed that this was allegadly revised at a later date . You gave several different dates of this was supposed to happened, but despite asked numerous times, you still couldn't provide a copy of the document that is supposed to say this...


Nope, you made up the contents of my paper, and in fact I have the exact same manual you have just posted. The manual makes clear notes of the risks of overstressing the airframe due to the sensitive pitch control and limited pitch stability of the aircraft. You have also failed to provide evidence to your 100 octane claims so far.
 
NZTyphoon said:
Yet we have people using very select pieces of information to imply that the Spitfire was either inherently unsafe and/or accident prone.
Click to expand...

On the contrary, we have a single Spitfire fan poster, you, migrated here from wikipedia, where he was shown a Spitfire manual previously.

He did not like the limitations and warnings laid down in that wartime manual, so he in desperation he made up a conspiracy theory that the documents are forgery, an accusation he continues to repeat, partly because that he has no source to offer to the contrary at all. His only option is to make various excuses to dismiss the presented flight manuals, British wartime reports of wing breakages caused by worsening pitch stability, and dimiss also respected works like Morgan and Shacklady who contribute two chapters to structural failure problems of the Spitfire, and two main causes being a, aileron stability problems b, the aircraft's newly developed tendency to tighten up turns on its own.


Contrary to your claim, it had nothing to do with poor maintenance at a squadron level.

Contrary to your claim, it was not limited to a 'few squadrons'. You refer to Quill having said that, which is false, and it is actually your own very liberal interpretation of his words: "However the importance of these loading instructions was not generally appreciated in squadrons and in the daily round of operational activity they tended to be disregarded. ... There was thus a real chance that, as of that moment, in almost every squadron in the Command Spitfires were flying in a dangerous state of instability...."

That is very far fetched compared to your claim that it only effected only a few squadrons - Quill states exactly the contrary.

Also contrary to your claims, the main cause of this defect was a faulty decision. Morgan and Shacklady details these on page 143: the RAF was well aware that the Mk V may have problems with the CoG shifting as a result of added equipment (given that it was originally meant as an interim solution, basically a Mk I with a new Merlin 45 engine). The idea of adding inertia for the Mk VA and Mk VB was already considered in June 1941. As a result of dismissive comments from pilots from operational Squadrons with this installation (compaints of inertia weights making the Spit difficult to land and reducing its manouveribility), and trials at RAE it was decided to fit the inertia weights only to the Mk Mk VI, PR IV, VI, VII and Seafire I and II.

However, the inertia weights were not to be fitted I, II, and V in 1941, provided several items were to be deleted. In retrospect this was a faulty decision, and lead to several fatal accidents with the MK V involving total structural failure, and prompted another investigation in early 1942 (the paper I have also posted, which you also implied to be forgery or manipulative ). Eventually the inertia weights were to be fitted after all, but not until several planes and pilots were lost to this design defect, that could prove fatal with the type's inherent low pitch stability characteristics.

I also suggest the readers to read the actual writing from Morgan and Shacklady which I have posted in the other thread in its full, original form, rather than the selected, cropped and 'interpreted' version of it by our friend NZT Typhoon. The full original text can be read here: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/polls/wing-breakage-109-spitfire-22553-5.html#post622314
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)

Similar threads

  • Poll
AH-4 Apache vs black hawk
2 3 4
Replies
76
Views
7K
Thumpalumpacus
K
  • Poll
P-40F vs P-40M
Replies
1
Views
1K
mjfur
M
  • Poll
Yak3 vs Spitfire IX?
Replies
10
Views
4K
bravenest0
  • Poll
Spitfire vs Hurricane
Replies
1
Views
2K
pbehn
P
  • Poll
Spitfire MK-IX vs Messerchmitt Me109G-6
Replies
2
Views
1K
Supermarine-SpitfireMkXIV
Menu
Log in
Register