FIGHTER COMBAT COMPARISON No.2: Bf109E-3 vs Spitfire MkI

[Tante Ju]

Read Muttray,it's in German. I'm not an aerodynamicist.

He does not seem to say anything around your lines. He does note the importance of using a fillet, and the major point seems to be that the fillet must be designed appropriately, ie. to preserve the original lift distribution of the continous wing. This seems to be straighforward, since drastic changes of lift distrubtion would likely cause turbulance. From that it also follows that the proper fillet design is unique for each wing's lift distrubution, which could vary greaty between design and design. Just like elliptical wing shape was not a "best" solution, neither the shape of the spitfire wing fillet would work for a Mustang, Fw 190 or Me 109 which had different lift distribution characteristics.

Essentially you thrown around his name and the people he lists as references without him actually saying something along your lines of Spitfire hyping...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZljRxXsBpc

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgvfklVzYZo

 

[Aozora]

He does not seem to say anything around your lines. He does note the importance of using a fillet, and the major point seems to be that the fillet must be designed appropriately, ie. to preserve the original lift distribution of the continous wing. This seems to be straighforward, since drastic changes of lift distrubtion would likely cause turbulance. From that it also follows that the proper fillet design is unique for each wing's lift distrubution, which could vary greaty between design and design. Just like elliptical wing shape was not a "best" solution, neither the shape of the spitfire wing fillet would work for a Mustang, Fw 190 or Me 109 which had different lift distribution characteristics.

Essentially you thrown around his name and the people he lists as references without him actually saying something along your lines of Spitfire hyping...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZljRxXsBpc

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgvfklVzYZo

Anything the Spitfire could do, the 0-9 could do better: the Germans could do everything better than you


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO23WBji_Z0

 

[Tante Ju]

Very mature...

 

[Aozora]

Very mature...

Mainly tired of these endless 109 v Spitfire "debates" which mostly go nowhere because both "sides" are so fixed in their opinions and will quote anything which confirms their own POV to the exclusion of anything else. For instance, you didn't bother to include other parts of the Spitfire v 109 film because they had some complementary things to say about the Spitfire, as well as pointing out some weaknesses.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBCnsjuCExk


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vihSJOBN1zE


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0yWzgDsHNI

the latter, amongst other things, points out twice as many Spitfires were built during the B of B than 109s, despite the early problems experienced getting the Spitfire into production, and despite its apparent complexity, as does the article extract below. (Of course, according to 109 partisans, who seem to want things both ways, the Spitfire was far too complex, yet its construction was crude cf the 109. Somehow the British managed to fumble around enough to manufacture 22,000 of them with relatively few problems).

The 109 might have been more simple and advanced structurally, but that didn't mean a thing when the production lines were set at idle. Question, when did 109 production start to overhaul that of the Spitfire, was it 1943 or 1944?

Nor did you provide any evidence to show that the wing fillets of the Spitfire were problematic throughout its career, just a whole lot of opinion.

Fact is both the 109 and Spitfire were fine aircraft, each of which had design limitations.

 

[GregP]

I'll go out on a limb here and say the 109 and Spitfire were very well matched. If the fighters had been swapped the British would have fixed the canopy, landing gear and added a bit of range. The Germans would have used the Spitfire as-is and would have done well.

They were quite comparable for most of the war with Spitfire being a better in 1944 -1945, but not by enough for the outcome to not have been decided by the pilots.