and
Once again I'm unsure if you are trolling or being serious. Since no-one addressed this particular objection of yours, here goes:Oh, and the word PILOT is crossed out....Mmmmmh.
It is not the word "Pilot" that was crossed out, it is the word "Pilots'" - i.e. belonging to the pilots. The A.S.I. reading in that line refers to the airspeed indicator reading as noted by the pilots involved in the test. Probably during proof reading of one of the versions of the report, someone decided that it would be better to refer to it as the A.S.I.R. It is not explained anywhere, but I assume they wanted to call it "Air Speed Indicator Reading" to avoid confusion. It was a typed report, so the correction was made by hand. However, the original reports still says "Pilots' A.S.I.". What it was called is not important - what the value meant is important and that is clearly explained in the report.
The line above the "Pilots' A.S.I." reading (or "A.S.I.R" if you prefer) is the indicated airspeed after applying the PEC (position error correction). Apparently, the practice at the RAE was to call the ASI reading after the PEC correction "indicated airspeed". Today, we would refer to it as CAS (calibrated air speed), depending on which corrections were all applied. It is the airspeed before correcting for compressibility, which results in EAS (Equivalent Air Speed) and then for density ratio, which gives TAS (True Air Speed). CAS (or the corrected indicated air speed as used by the RAE in this particular report) is needed when calculating lift coefficient, which was indeed done and further discussed in the same report.
You could have known all of this if you read through the actual report (MORGAN, M. B. and MORRIS, D. E. "Messerschmitt Me. 109. Handling and manoeuvrability tests," ARC, R&M No. 2361, 1940). I'll quote the relevant explanation for you:
"Pitot-static Head and Estimated Position Error. A drawing of the pitot-static head is given in Fig. 8. It is situated underneath the port wing at 0.68s, and in terms of the local wing chord is 0.32c from the local leading edge and 0.155c below the under surface of the wing. For some of the tests (trim curves and aileron forces) it was desirable to convert pilots' A.S.I. to indicated airspeed so that CL could be deduced. Accordingly the position-error correction curve was estimated from A. & A.E.E. generalised curves; the estimated position error curve is plotted in Fig. 8."
and later:
Throughout this report speeds quoted are pilots' A.S.I. unless otherwise stated.
Oh, and before you ask: 0.68s means 68% of the span and 0.32c means 32% of the chord.
The PEC curve is then shown later in the report as Fig. 8, and in addition to the calculated trend line it includes two experimental reference points. The curve is very typical for traditional pitot-static systems mounted underneath the wing, in that the PEC is positive at low speeds (the A.S.I. under-reads) and negative at high speeds (the A.S.I. over-reads). The correction is zero at an A.S.I. reading of around 180 mph. The PEC curve given in the report is for the 109 only since, presumably, they would already have had a published PEC curve for the Spitfire at hand.
The figures from the posted table are also real RAE figures. It resulted from an extremely comprehensive series of flight tests - first in France and then in England. The aircraft was tested at the RAE during May and June 1940, flown by three of the RAE's test pilots during the evaluation, and they flew a total of 35 hours of performance and handling tests. It would be difficult to find a more comprehensive set of test results for a given model of the 109.
What RAE Report B.A.1640 (Sept 1940) actually is
What kind of "tests" were actually done?
It was NOT a pilot dogfight test program
Turning radius results context
Were there pilots involved?
Short answer: No named pilots are associated with the turning-radius results
One airframe is clearly implied:
Dates of the "tests"
Why no pilots / serials appear (key insight)
No named pilots associated with turning-radius results
