Realistic max speeds WW2 fighters / Speeds of the late 109s

[Siegfried]

There is information here on different wing construction types:

wing | main spar | construction note | 1940 | 0363 | Flight Archive
"The principal advantage of the single-spar wing is
that it is an easy production job. The spar and nosing
can be built as separate units, and need not remain long
in an assembly jig. The rear portion of the wing can be
attached afterwards, and, as the strength of this is not
so important, detachable panels can be included to facilitate
erection. Present examples of this type of construction are the
Spitfire, Hampden, Flamingo, and Heinkel 112."

There are secondary spars but they carry little of the load or are there to attach constrol surfaces to. One advantage of the Spitfires single spar wing may have been that under load it twisted in such a way as to increase washout and thus reduce stall. The FW 190's much stiffer two spar wing twisted less, but in the wrong direction. Roll is important: if it takes you a second or two longer to do a role into a split s or to bank into a turn having a smaller turn radious may be a mute point: your enemy will be fully into the turn and one step ahead.

The Mk. 20 wing structure was designed to be much stiffer and this was to improve roll rate, extra armament options may also have been a driving factor but certainly the Spitfire would have been a miserable machine with the old wing at the kind of speeds the Mk 22 was capable of.

I have found anecdotal data on Me 109 roll rate:

A Messerschmitt document (Rollwendigkeit 109 F [Me 109G]) on the
matter shows roll rate as following:

263mph 425 km/h - 84 deg./sec.
298mph 480 km/h - 95 deg./sec.
341mph 550 km/h - 109 deg./sec

Don't know if this is TAS or IAS or what altitude or what stick force without the actual report but it is better than the Me 109F2 report.

Small numbers of Me 109 were produced which had spring tabs to reduce aileron forces.

 

[pbfoot]

of course, you can find them on the net. I have two, one in German one in English translation. Whether they refered to them all all, I suspose so.

Then why don't 109's that are airworthy today have them (to the best of my knowledge) this is the one I was associated with

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

 

[GregP]

Jim,

I'd suggest you study your history better, too.

I never said Hartmann was shot down by a fighter. I said he was shot down (and SHOULD have said went down or was forced down) 14 times, and he was. I am a BIG fan of Hartmann's.

The German army was beaten by the Russian winter and lack of supplies from their own military services, and then was overrun by the Soviet Army and VVS Air Force. If they were not, I suppose they simply stood aside and let the Soviet Army march into Berlin unopposed, like they actually did at the end of the real war in 1945? Whatever history books you have read paint a different picture from the 20+ books I have read say.

By late 1944 / early 1945, the Luftwaffe wasn't completely beaten, but could not live in a Soviet sky unless they took off, got high and stayed that way. If they came down, they sometimes scored a victory, but were much more often shot down. The late-war Russian planes were better down low, they were much more numerous, had pilots, had gas, and had propellers. The Luftwaffe was present in dwindling numbers and was definitely on the defensive, if not on the run.

I also saw a post above where it was claimed the Me 109 could roll at 91° per second at 600 kph.

Sorry guys, I have seen absolutely zero flight reports that corroborate that except for quoted excerpts in here, without original documentation. I HAVE the documentation for many 109 flight reports and NONE of them come close to the numbers related in that earlier post. In fact, only a very few address roll at all in any reasonable form. The Me 109G-10 we own NEVER got anywhere NEAR those numbers in the hands of the Planes of Fame, and we defeintely did dogfights with Mustangs in our Me 109. According to our Me 109 pilots, it won't come anywhere NEAR a Mustang in a dogfight unless the Mustang driver lets things get slow ... so they don't.

Yes, Steve Hinton knows how the slats work ... they work the same on his F-86F Sabre. In fact, thay are automatic, and are not under pilot control at all. Unless the ball is centered, the slats don't even open symmetrically, and so throww the aircraft around directionally when they deploy, spoiling any aim going on at the time. Personally, I have overhauled the slats on our Hispano Ha.1112, and they are simple slats without springs. When on the ground, gravity brings them out on their own. They retract with air pressure and open when the airflow over the leading edge pulls them open.

There is nothing mysterious about the flaps and tghere are no "detents". They wind down with the flap wheel to any point the pilot wasnts. The flap actuator wheel is mounted on the same axis as the elevator trim wheel (within an inch of each other ... the same size wheels), and you can move them together or independently easily. In fact, if you roll in the elevator trim as you move the flaps down, there is very little to no trim change at all. The Me 109 is a VERY simple airplane with very simple systems, and I am rather intimately famailiar with it, having working on our Hispano for more than 2 years. From the firewall back it is a standard Me 109G, with a simple change to the wing armament and the addition of outer wing panel fuel tanks being the only difference from German models. The rest of the differences are from the firewall forward. We removed the outer wing panel fuel tanks since ours will be an airshow machine going forward.

Before you trash me too hard about the 109, remember, we HAVE one (a real Messerschmitt Me 109G-10) and it flew for many years in our collection (Planes of Fame). It's flight characteristics are extremely well known to our pilots. We also fly WWII aircraft every week, and my opinions about them come from presentations by WWII aces at our museum (every month, and not always American aces), our own warbirds pilots who fly them today including a Flugwerk Fw 190 as well as Paul Allen's REAL Fw 190, and several friends who own and fly warbirds, including P-40's, Mustangs, Skyradiers, Yak-3's, Yak-9's, P-39's, P-63's, P-47's, several Sea Furies, and several mark Spitfiores including a Mk V, a Mk IX, and a Mk XIV.

While I'm not a certified warbird pilot myself, I AM a pilot and I DO have stick time in several with dual controls including a CJ-6, a Yak-52, several T-6's, and several takeoffs and landings in a real Fiesler Storch on my own from the back seat, as well as several hours in a P-51 in the back seat while we were playing about the sky. So I didn't exactly walk in from the street and start saying things from nowhere.

I've seen so much false posted about the Me 109 in here that I simply ignore most of it, just as I ignore most of bad press posted about the Allison V-1710. We have more than 20 customers who have more than 800 hours on our Allisons and they are still running great. Try THAT with your Merlin, and good luck. Wer like to say we can fly an Allison farther than you can ship a Merlin. More than 5 have 1200+ hours on theirs and they are still running great! That ain't bad for an engine with a wartime overhaul life of 250 - 350 hours. I'd love to see someone with a Daimler-Benz try that, but there simply aren't very many around. I wish there were because we LIKE the DB engines. Too bad there are not more around.

Maybe I'm off base on the Me 109. If so, a lot of current warbird pilots are ALSO off base ... and they FLY the 109 ... admittedly on an infrequent basis when compared with wartime pilots, but they DO fly them.

 

[Ratsel]

well its settled then. a museum flown 109 cannot do what German WWII pilots said the 109 could do. thanks for the information! =)

 

[kettbo]

GregP

Thanks for you interesting post #223. If you could, do not know about the record keeping, but at what weights were the planes flown at in these mock combats?
I know the guns are typically removed, certainly "de-milled".... how about ammo, armor, typical stuff a wartime plane would have? I know plane CG is important so with some goodies removed, weight is added or internals shifted around to get the balance correct. I'd think that a Mustang Jock would want substantial fuel onboard to get back to the UK or Western France late summer of '44. I am sure the 109 is not full weight either and I am sure you'll agree that the 109 essentially had little fuel once it reached bomber altitude

So what weights are we looking at for these mock battles Greg?

 

[Edgar Brooks]

There is information here on different wing construction types:Mr. Lickley is on the technical staff of Hawker Aircraft,Ltd., and is one of Mr. Camm's assistants. The views.expressed may, therefore, be taken as representing also those ot
his chief.—ED.There are secondary spars but they carry little of the load or are there to attach constrol surfaces to. ..

You are, of course, free to accept the word of a Hawker employee; I much prefer to use the Supermarine (Spitfire manufacturer) drawing, which refers to the item as the "rear spar," shows all of the ribs as being attached to it, the outer skinning also being riveted to it, and the spar, itself, attached to one of the main frame members of the fuselage. I'm no engineer, but that doesn't sound like "secondary," or "carrying little of the load," to me.

The Mk. 20 wing structure was designed to be much stiffer and this was to improve roll rate, extra armament options may also have been a driving factor but certainly the Spitfire would have been a miserable machine with the old wing at the kind of speeds the Mk 22 was capable of

Mk.18 (old wing) capable of 442 mph at 19,000' with a ceiling of 43,500'; 22/24 450mph at 25,000' with a ceiling of 44,500'. Those differences might be "miserable," in your eyes, but not in mine.

 

[Juha]

Hello Tomo
I completely agree with you.
I would like to add, that Jim's point 4 is, while predictable, also stupid. In fact some of us aviation buffs have admired the British Air Intelligence MED report on 109G-2. The plane was slightly damaged so its max speed suffered a bit, but Brits calculated from results of the test flights that a prima G-2 would have a max speed of 395mph (636km/h). When Finns test flew one their new Bf 109G-2s, MT-215, some months later, they got its max speed, 636km/h. To me Brits had made an excellent job.

Juha

Yep, lets like tis post:



Asian hordes? One can wonder what type of a propaganda (rasistic?) bull is one reading, to make such a statement.

As per 7) - it's so convenient to forget a sounding defeat during the Battle of Moscow, or a wholesale defeat of the 6th Army at the outskirts of Stalingrad.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I also saw a post above where it was claimed the Me 109 could roll at 91° per second at 600 kph.

Sorry guys, I have seen absolutely zero flight reports that corroborate that except for quoted excerpts in here, without original documentation. I HAVE the documentation for many 109 flight reports and NONE of them come close to the numbers related in that earlier post. In fact, only a very few address roll at all in any reasonable form. The Me 109G-10 we own NEVER got anywhere NEAR those numbers in the hands of the Planes of Fame, and we defeintely did dogfights with Mustangs in our Me 109. According to our Me 109 pilots, it won't come anywhere NEAR a Mustang in a dogfight unless the Mustang driver lets things get slow ... so they don't.

Yes, Steve Hinton knows how the slats work ... they work the same on his F-86F Sabre. In fact, thay are automatic, and are not under pilot control at all. Unless the ball is centered, the slats don't even open symmetrically, and so throww the aircraft around directionally when they deploy, spoiling any aim going on at the time. Personally, I have overhauled the slats on our Hispano Ha.1112, and they are simple slats without springs. When on the ground, gravity brings them out on their own. They retract with air pressure and open when the airflow over the leading edge pulls them open.

There is nothing mysterious about the flaps and tghere are no "detents". They wind down with the flap wheel to any point the pilot wasnts. The flap actuator wheel is mounted on the same axis as the elevator trim wheel (within an inch of each other ... the same size wheels), and you can move them together or independently easily. In fact, if you roll in the elevator trim as you move the flaps down, there is very little to no trim change at all. The Me 109 is a VERY simple airplane with very simple systems, and I am rather intimately famailiar with it, having working on our Hispano for more than 2 years. From the firewall back it is a standard Me 109G, with a simple change to the wing armament and the addition of outer wing panel fuel tanks being the only difference from German models. The rest of the differences are from the firewall forward. We removed the outer wing panel fuel tanks since ours will be an airshow machine going forward.

Before you trash me too hard about the 109, remember, we HAVE one (a real Messerschmitt Me 109G-10) and it flew for many years in our collection (Planes of Fame). It's flight characteristics are extremely well known to our pilots. We also fly WWII aircraft every week, and my opinions about them come from presentations by WWII aces at our museum (every month, and not always American aces), our own warbirds pilots who fly them today including a Flugwerk Fw 190 as well as Paul Allen's REAL Fw 190, and several friends who own and fly warbirds, including P-40's, Mustangs, Skyradiers, Yak-3's, Yak-9's, P-39's, P-63's, P-47's, several Sea Furies, and several mark Spitfiores including a Mk V, a Mk IX, and a Mk XIV.

While I'm not a certified warbird pilot myself, I AM a pilot and I DO have stick time in several with dual controls including a CJ-6, a Yak-52, several T-6's, and several takeoffs and landings in a real Fiesler Storch on my own from the back seat, as well as several hours in a P-51 in the back seat while we were playing about the sky. So I didn't exactly walk in from the street and start saying things from nowhere.

I've seen so much false posted about the Me 109 in here that I simply ignore most of it, just as I ignore most of bad press posted about the Allison V-1710. We have more than 20 customers who have more than 800 hours on our Allisons and they are still running great. Try THAT with your Merlin, and good luck. Wer like to say we can fly an Allison farther than you can ship a Merlin. More than 5 have 1200+ hours on theirs and they are still running great! That ain't bad for an engine with a wartime overhaul life of 250 - 350 hours. I'd love to see someone with a Daimler-Benz try that, but there simply aren't very many around. I wish there were because we LIKE the DB engines. Too bad there are not more around.

Maybe I'm off base on the Me 109. If so, a lot of current warbird pilots are ALSO off base ... and they FLY the 109 ... admittedly on an infrequent basis when compared with wartime pilots, but they DO fly them.

Great post Greg! I made my comments about flap position detents based on what I was seen (and told) on "White 14" which is now in Canada (Perhaps Pb Foot could give some information as this aircraft I believe lives in his locale). It was up at Mojave for a few years and I remember one of the folks talking about flap positions and "detents" and I assumed that the flap wheel was either marked or had something built into it as an indicator to flap position. This was in reference to a statement about British test pilots evaluating the -109 and didn't know the flap positions . I think we more than addressed the challenges test pilots on both sides had when evaluating captured enemy arcraft.

Like you I fly as well and also hold an A&P/IA. I'm CFII and I have time in L-29s 39s, T-33s, T-34s and about a dozen different GA aircraft. I think what we have here is folks who have little or no flight experience trying to be authorities about subject matter based on what they read or were told rather than somewhat experiencing the situation for themselves. I've never had the opportunity to fly in any type of WW2 fighter and hope to do that some day, but agree - there's a lot of "stuff" out there that needs to be ignored and not to boast or brag but maybe some of those folks should listen and learn from those of us who have "been there done that" by either turning wrenches on the aircraft or actually flying them.

Hope to visit the museum the next time I'm down your way!

 

[Ratsel]

Me 109 G10 through the opposition's eyes:

"BF109 was very good, very high scale fighter plane. If was superior to our Yaks in speed and vertical combat. It wasn`t 100% superiority, but still. Very dynamic plane. I`ll be honest with you, it was my dream during my war years, to have a plane like this. Fast and superior on vertical, but that didn`t happen.
Messer had one extremely positive thing, it was able to be successful fight Yak`s at 2000m and Aircobras at 6000m. This is truly unique ability and valuable. Of course, here Yak and P-39 were inferior. As far as combat on different altitudes, BF109 was universal, like La-5.
Me109 was exceptional in turning combat. If there is a fighter plane built for turning combat , it has to be Messer! Speedy, maneuverable,(especially in vertical) and extremely dynamic. I can`t tell about all other things, but taking under consideration what i said above, Messerschmitt was ideal for dogfight. But for some reason majority of german pilots didn`t like turn fight, till this day i don`t know why.
I don`t know what was stopping them, but it`s definitely not the plane. I know that for a fact. I remember battle of Kursk where german aces were starting "roller-coaster" rides where our heads were about to come off from rotation. No, seriously... Is it true it`s a common thing now that Messer wasn`t maneuverable?
Interviewer: Yes.
Heh.. Why would people come up with something like this... It was maneuverable...by god it was."

- Major Kozhemyako, Soviet fighter ace. Source: translation from Russian language


GregP,

What were the power settings on the G-10's "mock dogfights".

 

[pbfoot]

Can't recall what was the flap handle/ wheel set up but flap position indication was a mechancal rod that rose and descended on the wing visible to the pilot IIRC it was marked in degrees only on the side visible from cockpit .You can see the silver rod sticking out from upper surface
Bouncing Clouds - Flying the Messerschmitt Bf-109 > Vintage Wings of Canada
Once again I implore anyone who wants to know about flying the 109 read the above article by Rob Erdos Test Pilot National Research Canada

 

[Ratsel]

Nothing seen here this would be a G-6:

 

[pbfoot]

Probably closer to fuselage but then I lay no claim to being an expert , also it might be on other side of aircraft

 

[Ratsel]

same... closer would be the radiator cooling flaps. both views are for quick reference from the pilot.. no need to hunt for it.

 

[pbfoot]

Sorry to ask but you have any better pics those are pretty rough with the glare and all besides your flaps are upso its hard to see

 

[Ratsel]

Sorry to ask but you have any better pics those are pretty rough with the glare and all besides your flaps are upso its hard to see

View attachment flap.bmp

Edit: dunno whats up with the pic, but there is no FPI on this model.

 

[Milosh]

Don't the indicator(s) only show when there is some flap deployed? Ratsel's photos show no flap deployment, therefor no indicator.

 

[Ratsel]

now it works :/

 

[Milosh]

The flaps had indicator marks to show how much flap was deployed.

Photo of a G-2:
http://data.primeportal.net/hangar/luc_colin/me109g2/Me 109G-2 Black 6 017.JPG

Since Ratsel's photos show no deployment, no indicator marks show.

One would think someone who is so 'in the know' on the 109 would know this.

 

[Ratsel]

The flaps had indicator marks to show how much flap was deployed.

Photo of a G-2:
http://data.primeportal.net/hangar/luc_colin/me109g2/Me 109G-2 Black 6 017.JPG

Since Ratsel's photos show no deployment, no indicator marks show.

One would think someone who is so 'in the know' on the 109 would know this.

He's talking about the indicator like the ones used on the Emils. I showed none like that for a G-6. So please refrain from personal attacks. As I have never did the same to you. Also, in the field, those degree markings become useless in no time as a reference.

But from now on I'll watch quitely in the background. Thanks.

 

[pbfoot]

He's talking about the indicator like the ones used on the Emils. I showed none like that for a G-6. So please refrain from personal attacks. As I have never did the same to you. Also, in the field, those degree markings become useless in no time as a reference.

But from now on I'll watch quitely in the background. Thanks.

is it possible to get a shot of the g whatever that shows more detail of the upper wing particlarly within 20cm of fuselage , it is hardly noticeable when flap not deployed at least in the pics i have which are numerous.