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Having said this, the simplest and most efficient design from structures view is one continuous wing from wing tip to wing tip where there are no discontinuities in the wing spar. Not very elegant for repair or manufacturing considerations, however.
Both aircraft were state of the art when designed and there is no reason to believe that one was weaker than the other. I am sure everyone will agree that if you overstress the airframe then things are going to break. There is some evidence to believe that it was easier to overstress the 109 than the Spitfire.
I say this on the basis of two statements
1) The Luftwaffe did issue in a document issued on the 28th August 1942 an instruction that started 'Owing to the continual recurring accidents caused by wing breakages in Me 109 aircraft' It then proceeded to list new speed limitations at various heights and instruct that these limitations should be placed in all the aircraft.
2) The records for the losses incurred by Jg26 include the following line 'the Geschwader suffered many other losses which should be recognized. 121 pilots were killed in aircraft accidents—wing or engine failure, bad weather, lack of fuel, takeoff and landing mishaps, air collisions, and the catch-all "loss of control".
comment on (1) This is an improvement on the education process. I noticed on the Fw190 documents one of the small differences between the first 190 captured by the British and those that came after it, was a plate reminding the pilot of the speed limitations at various heights which was not on the first 190. It looks as if this became standard practice in the Luftwaffe.
It has been pointed out that the pilots notes on the Spit II give some warnings about what might happen in extreme cases as if this shows a weakness. This I disagree with, the point about Pilots notes is to educate the pilots in what might happen and how to avoid these situations. These are then taught as part of the learning process so the pilot knows how to deal with the situation.
To sum up the Luftwaffe clearly had a problem with wing breakages but the problem seems to have been in the training of the pilot not a weekness in the design itself.
Comment on (2) I have never seen wing failure mentioned in this way for any other aircraft, apart from the Typhoon which of course wasn't a wing problem.
Hello
I don't recall any wing failures on FAF's 109Gs during the war. One G-2 was lost when its pilot tried to disengage by a deep dive, plane probably went over max allowed speed and lost its elevators during pull-out, plane crashed, pilot KIA. And of course some 109s were lost to unknown causes. Clearly more losses happened because of engine failures. But from march 44 onwards Finns always checked the fastment of tailplane of new 109G-6s they got from Germany.
But FAF had rather few 109s, From Spring 43 to Spring 44 one laivue/sqn/gruppe, TOE 30 planes but usually badly understrength, on 1.1.44 it had only 13 109s serviceable + 3 in maintenance, from Spring 44 onwards two laivuetta/sqns/gruppen later a couple more sqns also got at least some, during heavy battles of Summer 44 say 30-60 Bf 109Gs serviceable daily.
Early 109G-6s designed load was 6,2G /3100kg(normal) and 5,6G / 3300kg (for ex. /R6 with two MG 151/20 gunpods). For later reinforced G-6s, or earlier when reinforced, figures were 7,0G / 3100kg and 6,5G / 3300kg.
Juha
VG-33 said:The security factor Q was certainly 12 for the 109, but it was 13 for french Standards and even 14-15 for soviet ones
14 to 15 G for Soviet designs??? Rubbish. I'd like to see even a single shred of evidence to support that.
You are welcome, VG
Hello Glider
Thanks for the info on German problems and their solution to it. The Finns as far as I remember didn't notice problems with 109G's wings but surely with DB 605A, especially early on, and with very heavy control forces at high speed.
Juha
excellent information VG
Look after Ostolsawki books or/and RDK manuals. Or better wright to Kosminkov.
Regards
I excpect that if prof Willy did no forget to reduce wing size from Emil to Fredrich, he forgot to reinforce it enough. Moreover we can see from 109E3 wing structure that main spar was positionned aft from the max profile thikness and was working in bad overhang conditions.
For the reduced chord 109F wing it was even worse, since due to the unchanged wheel size it was positionned even after in the profile.
We can also see that 109's wing had a lot of remouvable panels reducing it's rigidity.
spitfire wing was in one piece better for materials resistance items, but complicating maintenance and mass producing.
6) Its typical monospar wing. Stress efforts to breakage line are abosbed by the main spar. Aft spar is only working on torsion ones.
7) Strong leading edge skin alogether with the main spar is working as D shaped torsionnal half box.
8) The close positionned at 26.8% of the mean chord spar allows to use at best max profile hight, and to keep the whell inside the relatively small thikness wing.
9) Ellptic wing....is better for induced drag...difficult to build.
10) Superiority of the telescopic square made spare booms. No such...on other planes due to production difficulties.
11) The weight of spitfire wing structure is much lighter (20 kg/m²) than other contemporary fighter planes (25 to 30 kg/m²...even more for soviet wood ones). But relativly thin skin 0.6 mm that probably easy to deformate after some prolongated efforts.
I think it's not bad to have an educated and valuable but neutral point of view betwenn the both planes. And it seems that Spit's wing was better concieved for torsionnal efforts on the ending point.
Both aircraft were state of the art when designed and there is no reason to believe that one was weaker than the other. I am sure everyone will agree that if you overstress the airframe then things are going to break.
There is some evidence to believe that it was easier to overstress the 109 than the Spitfire.
I say this on the basis of two statements
1) The Luftwaffe did issue in a document issued on the 28th August 1942 an instruction that started 'Owing to the continual recurring accidents caused by wing breakages in Me 109 aircraft' It then proceeded to list new speed limitations at various heights and instruct that these limitations should be placed in all the aircraft.
It has been pointed out that the pilots notes on the Spit II give some warnings about what might happen in extreme cases as if this shows a weakness. This I disagree with, the point about Pilots notes is to educate the pilots in what might happen and how to avoid these situations. These are then taught as part of the learning process so the pilot knows how to deal with the situation.
2) The records for the losses incurred by Jg26 include the following line 'the Geschwader suffered many other losses which should be recognized. 121 pilots were killed in aircraft accidents—wing or engine failure, bad weather, lack of fuel, takeoff and landing mishaps, air collisions, and the catch-all "loss of control".
Comment on (2) I have never seen wing failure mentioned in this way for any other aircraft, apart from the Typhoon which of course wasn't a wing problem.
My understanding is that the paper says what I said it saidBasically true. I don't think there was any great difference between the stress limits of the two airframes, nor that it is to be blamed on the airframe if the pilot does not adhere the operational limits of the airframe.
Hmm, that paper is worded a bit differently, as it goes as noting that " in Me 109 aircraft, attention is brought to the following:
The maximum permissable air-speeds in the different heights are not being observed and are widely exceeded."
Its a bit different than how you put it - the 28th August 1942 does place limitations on diving speed, but the context is that the pilots routinely ignored and widely exceeded the existing dive limit speeds...
You clearly didn't read what I wrote. I was quoting the paper to prove that the Luftwaffe did have a problem with wing failures, that the problem wasn't that the wing was weak but the airframe was being overstressed and the paper outlined the corrective action taken. This I supported with the additional plate fitted to Fw190's to emphasise that this seems to have become standard practice in the Luftwaffe. There is nothing wrong with that.Secondly its a bit bizarre to argue that the German paper issued at the end of August 1942 is some sort of evidence that the Spitfire was less likely to be overstressed in dive,
I certainly agreed that some Spitfires had been lost due to overstressing the airframe and mentioned it in my posting. Did you not read that?as you were already shown (several times) the British papers preceeding the German papers by a couple of months, and dealing with the very subject of
"several accidents to Spitfire V aircraft in service... attributed to excessive accelerations in pullouts from dives with consequent failure of the wing structure"
Firstly it is blatantly evident from the British paper that Spitfire wing structure failures occured and were a serious concern to the RAF the same time the LW became concerned about the same in the 109 (and I guess it is true for a couple of other airforces, which just become aware of the dangers at high Mach speed).
Unfortunately you have chosen to present part of the paper that says what they are looking into not the piece that deals with the investigation. If this is the paper that I read in the entirety, the problem was associated to the change in the COG as new equipment was added to the Mk V which was easily fixed once the problem had been identified.Secondly there's a difference - whereas the structural failures of the 109s were attributed to the pilots disobedience of the dive limits of their aircraft, the Spitfire wing failure accidents were attributed to a design aspect of the Spitfire, namely that the aircraft had a tendency to tighten up the turns in high speed dives, and overload itself... that was a fault of the design, not the pilot who flew it.
Pilots notes are by definition to educate the pilot of the limitations of the aircraft. The pilots are then trained to avoid the problem and/or deal with the problem. I and no doubt other pilots on the forum will have had this experience, in my case the Pilots Notes said that intentional spinning was forbidden but I was intentionally put into a spin so I could learn how to recover.The Spitfire II Pilot's notes is very definietive about certain dangers stemming from the control characteristic of the aircraft (poor pitch stability, and overly sensitive elevator control). While indeed there are some generic limitations laid down in the manual which are valid for all aircraft, some are very specific to the Spitfire regardless how you blurr it.
The manual uses no uncertain terms that the aircraft has very sensitive controls, and it is easy to overload the design, and also notes that this could be easily done accidently, ie. due to unintenional movements of the pilot's hand in bumpy weather. Furthermore it makes clear warning not to trim the aircraft for level flight during dives because doing so exaggrevates the pilot's capacity to overload the airframe. Dives and bumpy weather are hardly ''extreme cases''...
This is priceless, suggest you stick to factsThe issue is simple to understand - the Spitfire had unusually low stick force stability, at about 4 lbs required to pull 1 G; the 109 was on the high side, at around 20 lbs/G.
Say a 109 and a Spitfire is a dogfight, both pilots pulling as much as possible on the stick, near their human limits, pulling 5 Gs... suddenly a blow of wind, a propeller from an aircraft or an AA shell exploding nearby shakes both aircraft and pilots, who accidentally pull another 20 lbs on the stick... the Spitfire is now pulling 10Gs all the sudden instead of 5, the 109 is now pulling 6Gs instead of 5...
I have never seen an RAF unit list wing failure as a type of loss. As a one off exceptional event yes, but not in the same manner that Jg26 did.You never seen Spitfire, Yakovlev, Mustang, Thunderbolt, Focke-Wulf 190 etc. pilots mentioned to be killed due to wing or engine failures, bad weather, lack of fuel, takeoff and landing mishaps, air collisions, and the catch-all "loss of control"...? I very much doubt that...
Hello Kurfürst
Quote:" The Spit had by far lower aileron reversal speed than any other aircraft (somewhere between 520 and 580 mph), and that being some 250-300 mph lower than that of the Bf 109F or the P-47 as a matter of fact."
Copy from an old thread from hitechcreations.com/forums, do you recall?
"gripen 10-04-2005 10:39 AM
Originally posted by Kurfürst
The aileron reversal speed for the Me109 can be derived in FB 1951 and is around 611 mph while the Spitfire had only 510 mph (source avia report 6/10126 from the RAE).
Actually FB 1951 gives the reversal speed in TAS and RAE data gives it IAS (or EAS). Feel free to convert values comparable. The RAE 1231 (DSIR 23/12865) gives reversal speed 580 mph EAS for the Spitfire V with standard wings and that value is calculated from flight test results.
Knegel 10-04-2005 03:59 PM
TAS IAS conversion at 3000m = 0,849"
To others IIRC the German test was flown at 3000m