The Price’s quote is from measurements at 20000 feet. The Soviet ones – hell if I know.
The best they tended to describe maneuverability was “(Plane A) gets on (Plane B)'s tail in 4 horizontal turns.” Hardly ever do they measure the turn performance with such details.
Still, they had a table in the article comparing Spitfire Mk.IX with other contemporary (mid-1942) fighters. Remind me to send it tomorrow even if just for reference.
Yes, and high speeds were also achieved during testing (Test Report Nr. 109 05 E 43; Date 15.4.43)
Yet, there are multiple accounts of written documents limiting the dive speed to 750 kmph IAS, caused by reoccurring wing breakages.
True, I’d happily see Zeroes face proper competition (balance-wise) for the price of not handling like UFOs in a dive. The real trouble would be teaching the average playerbase not to dogfight with a zero.
Good morning folks, here I am back again and I’ve got the table with me!
The table: "Maximum speeds and maneuverability coefficients of fighters
The planes (from left to right): Spitfire Mk.IX, P-40E, P-51, P-39, Bf 109 G-2 without gunpods, 109G-2 with gunpods, Fw 190 A-4. The last column is the average of all the machines listed. The measurements (from top to bottom):
Maximum speed at 5000m
The “Aircraft acceleration” (perhaps zoom-climb) from 5000m in the span of 60 seconds
And I had forgotten yesterday, but the spitfire’s wing itself is also a big reason for my doubts about its turn performance.
The wing root has the same profile as the 109, NACA 2300. Spitfire’s wing gradually transitions to NACA 2200 at the wingtip which is more symmetrical and doesn’t provide as much lift. Its wings have a significantly lower thickness ratio than the 109’s, some twist at the wingtips to improve stall behaviour, and a lower aspect ratio. Of course also no leading edge slats.
All these factors mean that the only advantage of the Spitfire’s wing is in wingloading, and it has to compensate for everything above. Wingloading isn’t everything, but it’s obviously important - and so is aspect ratio and having leading edge slats.
So again, I don’t have turn performance data to prove conclusively that it is overperforming, but I’m seriously doubting it is accurate at the moment.
Even then I don’t think it would be as bad of a nerf as some claim. Sure, the Zeros were quite bad at high speeds, but for our purposes in WT not that bad. According to the Planes of Fame guys, who had the Zero designer himself help them with restoring their A6M5, it only starts having issues at about 450kph, and some speed above that it was pretty much over for it. But below 450kph it’s the worst thing you can meet.
Well, I’ve provided what I had on comparing Mk.IX with a G-2, but there is plenty of similar comparisons between Mk.I and Emil and so on. As far as I know, the Spitfire still provided a tighter turn and lesser turn time than any contemporary 109.
The other problem is, it’s currently capable to perform near similarly at speeds closer to 650-700 kph
For one, the engine output numbers are all over the place. I mean, 109 going from 800hp to 2200hp by adding gunpods? A P-40E pushing almost 1800hp, while the P-51 (assuming an Allison model) doesn’t break 1400?
A P-40 beating a 109 G2 on turn time looks optimistic, and top speeds for both the 109 and 190 look way lower than what they should be.
Yes, but with their crappy engines the Zeros don’t spend much time at those speeds.
Also sorry for noticing it late, but I have yet to see even a single Soviet report calling the Spitfire “not maneuverable”. Their most common nitpicks to the aircraft were:
Poor taxiing performance at unprepared frontline airfields (and this moment was questioned by some more experienced pilots who said the plane “was shaking less than it seemed to”)
Not high enough maximum speed at lower altitudes. Some sources claim that La-7 was almost 100 kph faster than Mk.IX at ground level, although I’m feeling sceptic about the discrepancy being this high due to Lavochkin’s infamous overperformance at trials.
As an example, not even late-war and post-war productions of La-7 achieved the 630 kph at ground level shown by the test aircraft.
And still, the Soviets considered the Spitfire to be the best high-altitude interceptor they had, having it sent to the Air Defense squadrons. That was both for its ceiling and climb rate, as well as the cockpit having better instruments for flying at worse conditions.
Also, while I remember it, the Spitfire outclimbed all Soviet types to 5000m. The time to reach 5km with WEP was 4 minutes square for Spitfire, and the best La-7 got with WEP from the table above is 4,3 min.
Ah, I guess the numbers just lined up for power output on a few aircraft. But the top speeds are still way off.
Of course I am uncertain about trials done with damaged airframes. But IIRC stall speeds can also be compared, and that would rule out battle damage entirely.
To be honest I’m getting a bit tired of debating theoretical airspeeds when we have plenty of information from the trials, most of which were conducted by Messerschmitt AG. The website in general is a treasure trove of performance sheets, highly recommend it. Just don’t forget to also look at the altitude and settings at which the speeds were measured. From a quick glance I found Rechlin trials of Bf 109 G-1 with 622 kph TAS at 5000m, which is pretty close to the 610 kph achieved by the Soviet-captured Bf 109 G-2. But there are also trials where different modifications didn’t even cap the 600 kph mark at 5km.
Another point for your confusion could be the engine settings, since Gustavs had their engines capped at 1.3 Ata for quite a while, approximately until the 2nd half of 1943 to early 1944. That was caused by constant engine malfunctions at 1.42 Ata until it was finally fixed.
I dont actually think so, The F Mk IX is about right, I think its a problem with the performance increase due to 150 octane fuel on the merlin engine.
The griffons that take 150 octane fuel have a (relatively) smaller gain from the increased boost pressure.
For example, the Spitfire F Mk 24 is essentially (although not totally) just a Spitfire F Mk 22 with 150 octane fuel. I think you can agree that while the Mk 24 and Mk 22 differ in performance quite a bit, the gap is nowhere near as big as it is between the F Mk IX and the LF Mk IX.
And yes, I know that even w/o the 150 octane fuel, the Merlin 66 is more powerful than the Merlin 61.
To be fair the Griffon spits massively underperform in engine performance, the Mk24 is on something like 12-18lb of boost when it should really be 25 atleast.
Tbh i’d rather the griffon spits get proper boost instead of being artificially nerfed so we can get them proper performance even if it means something like the later Mk22 & 24 or the Later Seafire go up to 6.7,7.0 or even 7.3.
Would be very very capable, and I’d want to see how it stacks up against the Yak-3U which IMO should be 6.0-6.3.
I think when I made a bug report on the MK.XIV it would be up to 405mph below 1000 metres which is very very good. Still issues would arise from the radiators only being able to handle up to 5 minutes of WEP at a time and also causing the insane drag.
I must admit, I haven’t read the LF MK.IX stuff to check if it really is overperforming but if the LF MK.IX was to get a nerf, a rebuff for the Griffons would be appreciated.
There’s a reason the MK.XIVe is considered the best dogfighter across any nation during the war.
I think Griffons with properly-modeled +25lbs boost would make a great superprop to fit the ~6.3 bracket alongside planes like P-51H and Yak-3U.
And what comes to the LF nerf, currently the only difference is in climb as far as I understand, and that is somewhere between the in-game 31 m/s and trial 29 m/s, so not a tremendous one.
Merlin 66 if I remember correctly is the low altitude version of the merlin 63 found in late spitfires mkIX… if there’s any data for the 63 with 150 octane could be used for the 66
I’ll be the petty one and say that there was a bit more to the differences between Merlin 66 and 63, but whatever
Here is the basic-level comparison of Mk.IXs with Merlin 63, 66 and 70. F Mk.IX – – – – LF Mk.IX
Merlin 63 was not, though, cleared for use of 150 octane fuel, simply because F Mk.IX was mostly phased out by LF in 1944 when 150 octane became a thing.
Oh ok, then we need to find another way to know the Merlin 66 performance.
What were those differences? I always knew the 66 was basically a 63 with the supercharger tuned for the lower altitudes, but I am not an expert on the spitfire
There’re more than enough charts on the website most people here are referencing (spitfireperformance), and I personally have linked multiple such examples.
The differences were primarily centered around the fuel injection, since Merlin 66 incorporated a pressure carburettor instead of a float-type used in Merlin 61 and 63.
Here’s a good sum-up
