CobberKane
Banned
- 706
- Apr 4, 2012
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I'll agree with everything you said, pretty much. However, I'll observe, that had the Japanese been taking on these Spitfires over Britain, we might have seen a different outcome.
Great things were expected of the Spitfire when it arrived in Darwin. Already a legend due to its role in the Battle of Britain the Spit, it was hoped, would be the fighter that really showed those pesky Zeros and Oscars what's what. It it never really happened, but today the Spitfire is still a legend whereas the Curtis P-40, which did far more to halt the Japanese air forces, has largely slipped from common memory. I would go so far to suggest that the P-40 was a better fighter in the PTO than the Spitfire could ever be for the following reasons.
1. It was tougher. The P-40 might have been the toughest liquid cooled single engine fighter of the war, in terms of it's capacity for withstanding battle damage. For all its virtues, no one would ever say that of the Spitfire.
2. With the exception of flat out speed, whatever the Spitfire could do better than the Zero or Oscar the P-40 could do better again. The weakness of the Japanese fighters was always their sluggish high speed handling, particularly in a dive. The The P-40 could out-dive and out-roll the Spitfire at speed, giving it a greater degree of superiority in these respects. The Spitfire could of course turn tighter and out-accelerate the P-40, but as the Zero was easily better than either of them these performance parameters were of limited use.
3. The P-40 was the better frontline fighter. It was more simply built and more able to be operated and serviced under the conditions that were typical of the PTO
The Spitfire was a Ferrari to the P-40s pick-up truck. But even today, people in Northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and Burma don't drive many Ferraris. Any thoughts?
Great things were expected of the Spitfire when it arrived in Darwin. Already a legend due to its role in the Battle of Britain the Spit, it was hoped, would be the fighter that really showed those pesky Zeros and Oscars what's what. It it never really happened, but today the Spitfire is still a legend whereas the Curtis P-40, which did far more to halt the Japanese air forces, has largely slipped from common memory. I would go so far to suggest that the P-40 was a better fighter in the PTO than the Spitfire could ever be for the following reasons.
1. It was tougher. The P-40 might have been the toughest liquid cooled single engine fighter of the war, in terms of it's capacity for withstanding battle damage. For all its virtues, no one would ever say that of the Spitfire.
2. With the exception of flat out speed, whatever the Spitfire could do better than the Zero or Oscar the P-40 could do better again. The weakness of the Japanese fighters was always their sluggish high speed handling, particularly in a dive. The The P-40 could out-dive and out-roll the Spitfire at speed, giving it a greater degree of superiority in these respects. The Spitfire could of course turn tighter and out-accelerate the P-40, but as the Zero was easily better than either of them these performance parameters were of limited use.
3. The P-40 was the better frontline fighter. It was more simply built and more able to be operated and serviced under the conditions that were typical of the PTO
The Spitfire was a Ferrari to the P-40s pick-up truck. But even today, people in Northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and Burma don't drive many Ferraris. Any thoughts?
A couple of points woirth mentioning about your post Cobber..............
4. It was far better at being shot down by 109s...... so I suppose it all depends on what you mean by 'better', the 109 boys in North Africa loved the P-40s. They thought they were much better ... targets ... than Spitfires.
Shame they never used them in Malta, the amount of Nights Crosses it would have earned the Luftwaffe fighter boys would have been humungous.
Note the heavy irony here.
Trouble with your Ferrari/truck analogy is that the other side had them .. and they were all at a race track where they were trying to kill each other.
lucky no one told boys like clive caldwell or john waddy that
Manoeuvrability is the keynote of the Zero but the Spitfire has the advantage of greater height, greater speed and can climb faster. The latter has a manoeuvrability factor which becomes more favourable at high speeds. So, the Spitfire can generally sieze the initiative against the Zero and retain it, thus forcing the Jap pilot to fight when the "Spit." pilot chooses.
As the Zero is an aircraft which can climb at a steeper angle and virtually "hang on its prop" we aimed to break away sideways and open the distance between his guns and ourselves at a faster rate by climbing gently in a slow turn at high forward speed. This manoeuvre also enabled us to watch him with greater ease.
The Zero has a better climb angle but it cannot gain height faster than the "Spit." and cannot go as high [nor, for that matte, could the P-40.
If I was three thousand feet above a Zero and about to commence a diving attack I would rather be in the P-40; better diving characteristics, plenty of ammo. Likewise if I had a Zero on my tail and my only good option was to put the nose down and firewall it, I would take the P-40; better roll to initiate the dive (or the option of shoving the stick forward without losing power) and better ability to take the hits until I'm out of range. And it I was in charge of procurement I think I'd say thank but no thanks to the Spit; more expensive to buy, harder to keep in service, less ability in secondary roles like ground attack and no more able to take on the Zero at it's own game than the humble P-40.
A very significant dive characteristic was the strong right yaw tendency requiring more left rudder as speed increased. As one P-40B pilot put it "The need for constant attention was dramatically illustarted during strafing runs; the aircraft had a tendency to skid."In addition there was some right wing heaviness. When diving a P-40 tended to roll to the right; the higher the speed the greater the tendency to roll. As the book said of the P-40E, trim tab action was required to counteract both turning and rolling forces in dives. Pilots had to keep hard on th eleft rudder pedal to avoid skidding. The rudder required excess pedal pressure in a dive, and as noted earlier, rudder tab action was too slow to completely alleviate the pressure during steep dive bombing attacks.
With the significant design changes making up the P-40E model, major faults in directional stability and control came to teh fore. As a NACA test report put it "Difficulties were experienced in P-40 series aircraft in dive demonstrations, and there were inadvertant entries into spins in service operations." Yawing led into snap rolls and then to spins. There were also rudder force reversals in sideslips using rated power at the lower speeds, as noted subsequently.
Later when a a more major change could be reasonably introduced into production, th elonger fuselage was born, first in the later P-40Fs. These fixes were succesful in taming the very worst of the directional problems, but P-40s still could be a handful (or more accurately perhaps a footful) in diving flight. One pilot who had flown both fuselage versions stated Äs far as I could tell there was no flying difference between short and long fusleage modesl". But pilots were told the short fuselage P-40s had greater rudder and elevator loads and required more rudder and elevator pressures.
The last war axiom of "get above him before you attack," applies to the Hap too. We tried it with the Spit at 19,000ft and the Hap at 15,000ft. The Spit could dive down, have a squirt, and be back up at 19,000ft before the Hap knew what happened. And there was nothing he could do about it.
And it I was in charge of procurement I think I'd say thank but no thanks to the Spit; more expensive to buy, harder to keep in service, less ability in secondary roles like ground attack and no more able to take on the Zero at it's own game than the humble P-40.
However, despite the gloomy overall assessment provided by the comparative tests, the relative situation was not unfavourable to the Spitfire. Given that the strong fighter and AA defence over Darwin forced the Japanese to penetrate Australian airspace above 25 000 feet, the Zeros were thereby forced to play to the Spitfire's strengths.