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lying an inferior aircraft means you only win if you have the advantage, how is a A6M, Hurricane, Spit MkII, 109E or P40 going to catch let alone attack and defeat a Spit XIV, P51D, P47M/N if the pilot of those planes was aware they were being attacked?, they won't.
Supermarine didn't make Spitfires at West Bromwich, the government did Supermarine supervised with Vickers. If there is no Spitfire, you have to do things differently, like make more Hurricanes and sell or give them to the French, who had thousands of pilots.Where would the many more Hurricanes come from, Supermarine?, the British had an excess of Hurricanes, it was pilots they were short of, if they fought the BoB with only Hurricanes they would have had less pilots because the Hurri had a higher loss ratio. What Park would have done over France is irrelevant because he wasn't in charge, LM was, the RAF would have been in an even worse position because LM would have leaned on France regardless of what planes he had, instead of loosing around 1000 mostly Spitfires he would have lost many more Hurricanes. Not having Spitfires means Hawker is flat out making Hurricanes so no Typhoon or Tempest, what is the RAF going to fight the war with, Hurricanes till 1945?.
Started in 1939 but was still being done when the BoB started according to Wiki An all-metal, stressed-skin wing of duraluminium (a DERD specification similar to AA2024) was introduced in April 1939 and was used for all of the later marks.[11] "The metal skinned wings allowed a diving speed that was 80 mph (130 km/h) higher than the fabric-covered ones. They were very different in construction but were interchangeable with the fabric-covered wings; one trials Hurricane, L1877, was even flown with a fabric-covered port wing and metal-covered starboard wing. The great advantage of the metal-covered wings over the fabric ones was that the metal ones could carry far greater stress loads without needing so much structure beneath."[38] Several fabric-wing Hurricanes were still in service during the Battle of Britain, although a good number had had their wings replaced during servicing or after repair. Changing the wings required only three hours work per aircraft.[38]The Castle Bromwich operation was started in 1936, at what point was it decided to build Spitfires there?
The Hurricane go the metal wings in 1938 or early 39? many of the early Hurricanes got metal wings so no, the Hurricane was not built of tube and fabric.
The fuselage used a tube frame and it was fabric covered from the rear of cockpit to the tail. It was metal covered from the cockpit forward, still with the tube frame.
A big problem getting the Spitfire into production was the constant changing of small details.
Note that table from the same doc notes that 'roughness (including joints and rivets)' for Hurricane is just ~0.4% of the total drag at 100 ft/s. Certainly not worth 22 mph on a 315-320 mph aircraft.
Let's not get carried away. Defiant was not with a low-drag wing, not with a low-drag cooling system, tail wheel was still hanged in the breeze. The 'very high airframe tollerances' line looks like taken from B-P sales pitch.
Much more firepower - perhaps, though the 'The guns could be depressed for ground attack.' sentence at Wikipedia for P.94 is too good to be true.
Cube root law now applies to drag, too?
Twice the firepower, because 12 = 2x8? It will dearly need more lift, since it starts as heavier aircraft.
There is no Boulton and Paul sales pitch lie (didn't they build James Watts first steam engine).
1 Defiant/P.94 showed good production tolerances, flush riveting, no gaps, nice cowling, wing fillets. The advantages of fully covered wheels have more impact than a tail wheel in the breeze (non retractable tail wheel is something that Spitfire had as well). The Defiant/P.94 would have had non of the disadvantages of the Hurricane except a thickish wing but it was at least of advanced NACA type. It had advantages of high tolerance production. The fully covered main wheels probably have as much impact on speed as a thick wings.
Whereas the Hurricane had 35% more parasitic drag than the Spitfire the P.94 should have only 10%-15% with the thicker wing by far the main component of that with compensation from the full retraction and the ability to carry Hispano canon without bulges.
2 There is no Boulton and Paul sales pitch lie (didn't they build James Watts first steam engine). They built a P.94 test bed using actual components such as wing and engine installation so their speed estimates are therefore close. It was going to be much faster than Hurricane or Defiant but not quite as fast as Spitfire. Likely not even 10mph.
3 Boulton and Paul offered either 12 x 303 Browning or 4 x Hispano 20mm with 4 x Browning. That's close to twice the firepower of a Spitfire V and gave P.94 the fire power of a Beaufighter. You don't believe the P.94 could have depressed its guns, well there is room in the wings to change the elevation/depression markedly and you are really calling BP liars. AFAIKT it only applied to the Brownings but the Hispano would have been ground adjustable.
4 Cube root law applies to drag as well as power. Speed varies inversely with cube root of drag or varies proportionately with cube root of engine power.
5 You are saying P.94 didn't have a 'low drag cooling system'. How do you know? There could be a boundary layer bypass or splitter in the coolant radiator (like Me 109F) and its deep shape itself means less of the boundary layer effects the radiator inside. Placing the oil cooler in the nose position was done for a reason, Boulton and Paul clearly could have run the oil lines to the rear radiator at some cost in weight.
The P.94 should have been easy to make. Defiant tail was made by attaching the stringers to sheet metal and wrapping it around the ribs of the tai.
There's also the problem of heating all the guns. A wing full of guns will need a lot of hot air ducting.
Supermarine didn't make Spitfires at West Bromwich, the government did Supermarine supervised with Vickers. If there is no Spitfire, you have to do things differently, like make more Hurricanes and sell or give them to the French, who had thousands of pilots.
Again, name a situation, name a context, just saying the best aircraft always wins is proven not always to be the case. Again I'll say it. The Bf 109's superiority made NO DIFFERENCE to the outcome of the Battle of Britain. The Defiant's, Gladiator's and Hurricane's inferiorities made NO DIFFERENCE to the outcome.
Context is everything.
On Defiant, too? You can't be serious.
If you aren't making Spitfires then you make them at Castle Bromwich the ground was broken in 1936 for it, or anywhere else, Spitfire production was dispersed around Southampton, at government expense.You haven't answered my question, make more Hurricanes where, have supermarine make them?, what about pilots, selling Hurricanes to the French is not going to help you fight 109's and 190's over France Africa or the Med from 1941 onwards.
In fact many more Hurricanes was originally planned, from wiki "Hurricane production was increased as part of a plan to create a reserve of attrition aircraft as well as re-equip existing squadrons and newly formed ones such as those of the Auxiliary Air Force. Expansion scheme E included a target of 500 fighters of all types by the start of 1938. By the time of the Munich Crisis, there were only two fully operational RAF squadrons of the planned 12 to be equipped with Hurricanes.[44] By the time of the German invasion of Poland there were sixteen operational Hurricane squadrons as well as a further two more that were in the process of converting.[45]"You haven't answered my question, make more Hurricanes where, have supermarine make them?, what about pilots, selling Hurricanes to the French is not going to help you fight 109's and 190's over France Africa or the Med from 1941 onwards.
Did Supermarine make much of anything? I had the impression that most Spitfires were made by parent company Vickers or outside contract firms.make more Hurricanes where, have supermarine make them?
That is pretty much the case with any company making military stuff during a war. Their product depends on lots of stuff from elsewhere, the contracts can be cancelled on a whim and although you may own the factory, you cant insure it against the biggest risk of all, getting bombed. Supermarine was a small company it could design the Spitfire but didn't have the people to make it, but in 1936 who did?Did Supermarine make much of anything? I had the impression that most Spitfires were made by parent company Vickers or outside contract firms.
Here's the extent of Supermarine's aircraft manufacturing capability.
View attachment 617887
And not so much, once the Germans visited.
View attachment 617888
The decision to start with the Griffon was made due to a Navy request, it could easily have been made by the RAF as soon as anyone found out what Germany was developing. To keep the Hurricane competitive more power from a bigger engine is an obvious route, work on the griffon was shelved for a while to work on the Vulture which was eventually shelved anyway. Start making the Griffon in Glasgow and you have a more powerful Hurricane and a reliable engine to put in the Tornado which with a two stage engine would be the front line all altitude fighter from 1942 and before that adapted for naval fighter, dive bomber, torpedo bomber by other manufacturers (specialists in maritime designs) as the Pr Spitfires were.
My point was that the Griffon was paused and the Vulture wasn't. The Vulture first ran in May 1937, purely with hindsight it would have been best to work on the Griffon and have Hawkers develop the Tornado around that, its first versions produced the BHP that the Vulture was specified for.Griffon development was paused during the BoB in order to concentrate on improving the Merlin for the Hurricane and Spitfire.
Griffon development started in 1938. Several revisions were made at some time in 1939 in order to repackage the engine to fit in a Spitfire airframe.
If the Spitfire didn't exist, I presume the person who suggested putting the Griffon in it would have, instead, proposed the Griffon Hurricane. The question is, would the Griffon need as an extensive repackaging to make it fit the Hurricane? Maybe 3-6 months saved off the time to get the Griffon into production?
My point was that the Griffon was paused and the Vulture wasn't. The Vulture first ran in May 1937, purely with hindsight it would have been best to work on the Griffon and have Hawkers develop the Tornado around that, its first versions produced the BHP that the Vulture was specified for.