how are people likely to deal with ejection seats? are there companies out there that can service such items (not prohibitively expensive? ) or would they need to be disarmed?

Airbus aircraft do not have dry bays in the wing. The fuel tank boundaries are arranged such that no uncontained failure can pierce more than one tank. Interestingly the GenX engine has much higher loads from a fan blade off event than the equivalent rr engine – this is due to the 3 spool design and the fewer number of fan blades. This means that, along with the containment casing the system is doubly redundant (at least).

looks bit like a popeye on a B52 wing pylon…..

edit: pretty sure it isn’t tho….must be british given the pylon triangle marking…..

i though that they were rather ‘interesting’ to fly…??

Bristols had a car manufacturing arm – which is still going if you are able to paper walls with £50 notes, you might like to pay them a visit………..

The problem with independant and ‘automatic’ slats is that the airflow over the left wing in a banked tight turn can be different to that of the right wing such that the slat may deploy only on one wing, and this, of itself can lead to a spin, besides any other problematic immediate manouveres.

If I recall correctly, clipped wing spits were produced to effectively tackle the ‘190 at low level.

I’m interested in the issue of the leading edge slats as used on the 109. The suggestion that an experienced pilot could use the slats to give a tighter turn at low speed is given in what appears to be a rather biased account in ‘Messerschmitt 109 at War’ and I’d like to see if there is anything to back it up.

It strikes me that this tactic would need a lot of skill as the slats were automatic and worked on negative air pressure, so as one wing was about to stall, the slat would pop out. As this happened unevenly you get the ‘bucking’ that John Dell referred to, and as the aircraft was so close to the stall would surely have needed a master to keep it on the knife-edge. As has been pointed out, because of the Spitfire’s washout, an inexperience pilot could quite easily hold the Spitfire on the cusp of a stall without danger.

Correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I’m aware the slats were primarily an anti-spin device rather than a tool for reducing the stalling speed as in, say, the Twin Pioneer or Storch where the operation of the slats can be controlled by the pilot.

The same account suggests (in contrast to the post immediately above) that the 109 had a superior roll rate to the Spitfire. I wonder which it is, or if it switches depending on speed? As far as I was aware the Spitfire’s roll rate was never that good, and it had heavy ailerons (hence the replacement with metal skinned ones and to an extent, the clipping of wings in some models)

it is a totally new wing.