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It is not a straightforward answer.
2,500 LW pilots who made 5 kills or more would agree I am sure.A negative on one hand, versus a very strong positive relative to portability, weight and performance on the other hand. Most pilots would prefer the latter
Not if it made the 109 a more compact lighter faster machine. No 109 pilot would trade the undercarriage for a fixed one that took away its advantage in speed and handling. Of all the planes in the war the 109 was the most dangerous to the opposition from 1939 to 45. The Spitfire was much easier to fly in 1940 than it was in 1945, no pilot would want to get rid of the weight and power unless they were having a pleasure flight post war.
The Corsair was such a handful that it took the British to teach the Americans how to land it on a carrier!Corsair had much better performance but was a hand full for less experienced pilots. After the war, the Corsair remained operational while the Hellcat was relegated to the Reserves or for use as drones.
I had in mind a previous post explaining why thin wings could not be fixed to the Hurricane, It was explained with photos how big the box structure was to contain the undercart mechanism. I believe the Spitfire needed a new type of tyre to fit its wing.
Swept wings were discovered to suffer from "pitch up" causing the "sabre dance". Were planes re designed without swept wings or were training and flying procedures changed to allow swept wings to be flown safely?
Procedures, man! !)
Exactly my point, no one suggested doing away with swept wings,.
No, because they were a huge aerodynamic advantage, all subsequent high performance aircraft adopted swept wings.
There was no advantage to attaching the Bf 109 chassis to the fuselage, other than to met a transport specification. No subsequent German aircraft (or other nationality off the top of my head) adopted this system and its inherently dodgy geometry. There were some other chassis attached in a somewhat similar way, but they used some very complicated construction to overcome the geometric problem (think F-4F, which despite better geometry still had less than ideal ground handling characteristics, described variously as 'tricky' and 'terrible' and everything between.)
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No subsequent aircraft used the Spitfire set up, because no subsequent aircraft was a spitfire.
The F4F landing gear was, in my opinion, an elegant solution it was also not continued because it would not work on the F6F which also had an elegant solution that would not work on an F15. Put an inverted V12 water cooled engine on an F4F and see how it performs. The landing gear is where the engine is.
These are the facts. The Bf109 was the most produced fighter in history, it had the most aces of any aircraft produced, it was a front line fighter from before WW2 started until the LW collapsed. I have never read any report by any Bf109 fighter that said he was completely outclassed one on one with any allied fighter. Show me a LW pilot saying he wished the LW had Hurricanes instead of 109s because they were easier for novices to land. You never will, because the argument is preposterous. All RAF pilots said the Spitfire was more difficult in take off landing and ground handling than the Hurricane, none of them would trade the Spitfire for the Hurricane except for the few seconds they fired the guns and would like the concentration of the Hurricanes 8MGs.
Steve, if you want you talk about subsequent aircraft tell me how they perform on 85 octane fuel and 1000BHP maximum. I have quoted the accident rates in USA TRAINERS, if you wish to continue the discussion tell me how many German pilots were killed or injured in BF109s and how this compares to the Fw190, Spitfire Hurricane and US fighters.
Having seen your complete BS on the other thread, dont bother.
The advantage of attached the landing gear to the fuselage is that the landing forces are transmitted from the landing gear directly to the fuselage and therefore the wing structure doesn't have to be reinforce as much. The further outboard on the wing that landing gear are mounted equals a longer lever arm between the landing gear and fuselage and the wing must be designed to withstand.
At the time when Mitchell and Messerschmitt started to design Spit & Bf 109 the theory of bending and stretching of plates was in its infancy, so structural designers were very conservative about the loads that wing could support,
The b26 still had a higher accident rate (and fatality rate) than the b17,b24 and b25 right up to the end. Only the b29 was worse.The FW 190 was a later design with a more powerful engine, the 109 first flew with a Kestrel engine. I have already said I consider the "inexperienced pilot" argument to be misleading, I guarantee that I would crash all of them. The 109s centre of gravity was further behind the front wheels than that of a spitfire, it was tail heavy and much less likely to "nose over".
Ray Hanna flew one and said it was easier than many aircraft to make a three point landing, maybe that was because it was designed to do just that. He also said that on the ground it was much different to other planes, you should not roll off the runway after landing but come to a halt and slowly taxi.
Pilots were killed taking off and landing in all sorts of aircraft, statistics would probably "prove" that basic trainers were more dangerous than some combat aircraft, I would think the most difficult flight a pilot ever makes is his first solo and every pilots remembers it My opinion is that given correct training the 109 was safe to fly, its record shows that, with incorrect training it was dangerous but they all are. The B26 gained a terrible reputation for landing crashes purely because of its high landing speed, pilots ignored the manual tried to land too slow and crashed, is that the fault of the plane or its designer? It went on to have one of the best safety records of any bomber.
Procedures, man! The "Sabre dance" resulted from pilots using take-off techniques learned in straight wing aircraft that were inappropriate in the Sabre.