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The key word there is "arguably". The Mustangs #1 advantage over other fighters was range, #2 would be speed but there were other late war fighters that were comparable in speed. In other areas of performance, climb, roll rate, turn, armament, toughness, there were other designs which held the edge.Arguably the best fighter of WW II was the Mustang
The Spitfire is probably my favourite aircraft and I have made several flying models but I wonder, why were it's wings so designed?
From what I can gather the wings were a pain for the production department. In the Battle of Britain they fought on equal terms with the Bf109 which had straight edged tapered wings. Arguably the best fighter of WW II was the Mustang, which again had straight edged wings.
Thanks
Mike
Excellent Maria.
Thanks Wurger.Anything (- almost!) for my fave plane-nutty boys and girls.
...just a stray thought about the name of the plane: What a fitting and appropriate name for that small but efficient fighter!
I thought the name of the aircarft was becuse of its initial armament and the fire power.
-cut-
Aeroplane orders were stopped around 1940 because the names were rubbish.
There were many things about the spitfire wing which were problematic, Supermarine was basically an aviation company with a racing shop and so the spitfire was designed like a racer with little thought for mass production, the Hurricane was completely the opposite. The "eliptical" wings were one problem so was the washout, so was the undercarriage (I believe it needed special tyres) The wing was so thin it needed to mount the guns along it laid horizontally which meant with wing twist in a curve it fired like a pepperpot.
While the wing t/c ratio was in the 10% range (13% root/6% tip ratio)where the Hispano's were mounted, it wasn't an issue of the Hispano being too large to mount upright.
IIRC they were side mounted to accomodate the 20mm ammo drums. There was plenty of room, per se, with such a huge chord that 9-10% thickness was around the same depth as the P-51..IIRC the P-51-1 had vertically mounted 20mm w/belt feed of 125 rounds each. All the .5 and .3 were mounted vertically in the Spit wing well outboard with no issues.
However one of the biggest problems for mass production was the wing spar which performed very well but was hard to produce "en mass".
If you look at the following link you may get an idea of the problem for the spars, sort of concentric square sections progressively thiner from the inside out with a bend for the dihedral. In 1938-40 very few people had experience of producing such a "THING"
It (main spar) was a very innovative, and as you say hard to mass produce. My recollection was rather than decrease the square tube wall thickness going outboard, they instead 'nested' sequentially smaller square tubes to accommodate the large root to tip decrease in t/c ratio? maybe this is a language thing?