Performance data

Wow, this is worse than I expected. I know the data is out there, but I figured by now someone would have assembled it into a book or something. So many people consider it to be an interesting topic, such a book would be a hot item.

Lies, damn lies and statistics!!!! You only need to look at the discussion of the Sea Vixen performance in the thread on Simon’s Sircus to realise that published data is not always what it purports to be. I’ve seen two different tables of data for the relative performance of the Hurricane Mk1, Spitfire Mk1 and Messerschmitt 109E recently which disagreed in almost every detail. One said the Bf109E could turn inside a Hurricane and Spitfire at 10,000ft and 300mph. The other suggested that the turn of a Bf109E was almost double the radius of the Hurricane!

If you can find the RAE data for British aircraft, you will be well on the way. Also there is some useful comparison of British aircraft and captured German aircraft. This is available on the web at least in the case of the Fw190A in comparison with the Spitfire MkVc, MkIX and Mk XIV.

There is a vast amount of information out there but check, check and check again the source of anything you come by.

The importance is to compare like with like, i.e. representative aircraft with similar war loads, fuel loads in the same environmental conditions. This is why perf engineers deal in referred parameters for comparisons. There is lots of data (including old A&AEE reports which in many cases are more relevant and useful than those from RAE) and to do the job properly would take considerable time

Lies, damn lies and statistics!!!! You only need to look at the discussion of the Sea Vixen performance in the thread on Simon’s Sircus to realise that published data is not always what it purports to be. I’ve seen two different tables of data for the relative performance of the Hurricane Mk1, Spitfire Mk1 and Messerschmitt 109E recently which disagreed in almost every detail. One said the Bf109E could turn inside a Hurricane and Spitfire at 10,000ft and 300mph. The other suggested that the turn of a Bf109E was almost double the radius of the Hurricane!

If you can find the RAE data for British aircraft, you will be well on the way. Also there is some useful comparison of British aircraft and captured German aircraft. This is available on the web at least in the case of the Fw190A in comparison with the Spitfire MkVc, MkIX and Mk XIV.

There is a vast amount of information out there but check, check and check again the source of anything you come by.

Performance for each aircraft type is a huge subject! Obviously depending on factors such as temperature, altitude, aircraft mass, cofg, engine power, aircraft derivatives…blah blah. You need to be specific what you want.
Older aircraft have some data (though not exhaustive) in the pilots notes, more modern types (such as Beverly onwards) have operational data manuals.

Depending on what you want, it may be possible to get such data for a type from manuals and test reports (in the public domain). Handling quality wise, you need pilots notes, aircrew manuals, test reports and a still current pilot.

I have a large collection of pilots notes and may have leads on the other source data.

Thanks Paul!

Rocky,

I don’t know of one site that has this kind of data, but often a lengthy search can yield some of it.

As someone who dabbles in a bit of flight modelling for FS9, I know that this kind of thing can be hard to find! However, I have got some pretty good stuff that has these kind of things for different WWII aircraft but, as always, I’am always on the lookout for more! 😉

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spittest.html

This ain’t too bad for all stuff on Spitfires/Seafires. It also has some good info on the Tempest, Typhoon & Mustang too.

http://users.atw.hu/kurfurst/articles/MW_KvsXIV.htm?site=kurfurst.atw.hu/articles/MW_KvsXIV.htm

Some good stuff on the 109 series which takes on the findings of the above site!

http://mitglied.lycos.de/luftwaffe1/index2.html?

Contains some good wartime reports in both English & German.

If I can think of anymore, I’ll post them.

As for books, you might like to checkout the excellent book ‘America’s Hundred Thousand’ by Francis H.Dean. Well worth the search and price as it contains all the kind of stuff you are after for all of Americas top production fighters of WWII.

Cheers

Paul