Let me answer your 'protestations' one by one..
1/. My "protestations" are corrections to your fabrications.
One.
The battle of Britain wasn't won by the "iconic" Spitfire which in itself would have need the numbers of the Hurricane anyway, it was "thrown"
Dear Lord, is there no end to your manipulation of history? So, now, we're to believe that the Battle was deliberately lost, and hundreds of elite German aircrew thrown away on a whim? Truly that means that the German hierarchy were even more incompetent than we first thought. Oh, and the Spitfire persuaded thousands of people, as far apart as Japan, South Africa, America and Argentina, to raise £5,000 for each aircraft (when the average weekly wage, in the U.K., was £1.5) to a total of over 1400 aircraft, so your "iconic" is a compliment, not an insult.
Two
"Meredith" invented nothing. Hence the term "So called Meredith effect". All he did was write an non-academic explanatory paper on heat recovery that became popular in the UK and perhaps US. The idea was reasonably known and started to make sense with the appearance of pressurised cooling loops which raised coolant temperature enough so as to allow smaller radiators.
What Meredith wrote, in fact, was the germ of the idea for jet propulsion (and I have a copy of his letter, headed, "Invention relating to jet propulsion of aircraft," sent to the Air Ministry in 1935, taken from our National Archives, if you insist on arguing the point.)
Three.
Sorry for answering the question "what was good and what was bad" re Spitfire aerodynamics. A picture is worth a thousand words. Any Google image search of "Spitfire underside" versus "P-51 underside" will show how messy the Spitfire was in comparison.
But you didn't answer it, you simply made a rude comment about it. We have never-ending references to the "draggy" radiators, and I'm simply asking where are these references to be found? I've been through dozens of test reports, on the Spitfire (and other aircraft,) in our archives, and have never yet found one condemning the radiators; all I ask is where are these reports to be found? I have regular access to our National Archives, and should be able to find them, if you would just indicate where to look.
The retractable tail wheel versions (mainly Mk VII,VIII,XIV) were little produced in terms of overall numbers of 25000 spitfires. I stand by that statement.
Out of 20,334 Spitfires (do stop massaging figures, there's a good boy) and 2,408 Seafires, 4,255 Spitfires and 786 Seafires had retractable tailwheels, which is a little over 22%, so not as insignificant as you like to make out.
On the other hand all P-51 and Fw 190, P-47 and P-40 had retractable tail wheels as did all Me 109F, some Me 109G, Most Me 109K. Gun bulges, partially uncovered wheels, no less than 3 separate coolers, various antenna, non flush rivets(I believe) all marred the Spitfire underside.
Do show me where the three coolers are, under the Spitfire; in all my years, crawling under them, I've only ever found two. Your "belief" in non-flush rivets is another fabrication; the only area of domed rivets was on the fuselage, aft of the cockpit, and then only until June 1943. Allow me to tell you a little story, well-known among those who
do bother to carry out research:-
K5054 was entirely flush-rivetted, but the process was expensive, so Supermarine glued half a dried pea onto every rivet, to see how a dome would affect the speed, then progressively removed lines of peas, checking as they went. It was found that domes made virtually no difference on the aft fuselage,
but that was all, so the rest
had to be flush. At the time (1936, remember) the technology for "blind" rivetting didn't exist, so every wing and tailplane rib had a strip of wood added underneath, to which the skins were fitted, using countersunk woodscrews, which were then filled and sanded smooth. When the ability to do so was available, rivets took over.
Look at the underside of the Spitfire to reveal what is likely 10-20 mph of speed losses due to the superior construction values of the P-51 and more modern aircraft
.
You're guessing again; got any figures to back that up? Oh, and the Spitfire employed exactly the same "construction techniques," namely filled and smoothed wing surfaces, plus smooth synthetic, rather than rough matt cellulose, paints, from August 1942.
Of course these things were likely known but production demands meant what appear to be trivial changes were not be made
Yet another complete fabrication; I have a copy of the complete ledger of the modifications, carried out to the Spitfire and Seafire ( there were more than 2900,) which include production-shattering items like, ""To introduce adhesive tape for electrical cables," and "To secure egine data plate with bolts and nuts in place or rivets." Every single change had to go before, and be approved by, the Local Technical Committee (there was a war on, remember,) so stop talking nonsense, and
learn.
In 1959 I went to work in a factory, which repaired Service vehicles, and, over every door, there was a sign "When in doubt, ask, don't guess," but I suppose the word "doubt" doesn't exist in your vocabulary?