Or better… a football pitch..11 a side 😀
Upstairs, bedrooms, lounges, kitchen, meeting room etc… downstairs………18 hole golf course!!:diablo:

…be easier to install a holodeck wouldn’t it?

Druine?

LE slats

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)

WV838, you think you’ve got problems – I had a little tinker with my VCR only to find out it was the fuse :p

As any one of Trenchard’s little b******s will tell you ALWAYS CHECK THE POWER SUPPLY FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In an issue of Warbirds Worldwide, there was an article on the rebuild of different engines at Mike Nixon’s Vintage V12’s. There was a photograph of a Centaurus with the crank case covers removed. The drive train for the sleeve drive maked it look like a swiss watch churning out 2500HP. It didn’t look “fundamentally simpler”.

Christer

Yes, but it’s all gears which run off the engine. No cams knocking into pushrods, no chains, no pushrods going backwards and forwards several times a second, no valves going up and down, no springs squeezing and expanding – every time a component reciprocates it has to gain energy, move, then lose energy to decelerate and do the same thing all over again. A gear gets up to speed then just keeps on moving. It may look complex but there’s actually a lot less going on there. All the ‘swiss watch’ is for is to reduce the speed of the crankshaft to the speed the valve needs to revolve – looks complex but is actually straightforward. The fact that sleeve valve engines idle so much more quietly tells you a lot – everything’s just spinning away and not needing to rattle backwards and forwards. The only real downside to a sleeve valve engine is adequate sealing of the valve and modern materials would probably solve that easily as well.

The type 224 was designed and built to an air ministry specification of 1931, a mistake that Supermarine didn’t make again, it’s interesting to note that however ungainly the 224 may look compared to the Spitfire,Supermarine were sufficiently pleased with it to enter it in an air race in 1934; whilst I don’t have a top speed for the A/C , when fitted with a very early griffon (or maybe a Buzzard) the cruising speed was 250mph, in the event the Air Ministry curtailed the idea, saying that a top secret A/C shouldn’t be entered in a race.

If there was any element of luck involved with the Spitfire, I would say it was lucky for us as a nation, that a terminally ill man had the mental fortitude to carry on with his work rather than to go and sit in the garden .

The Merlin XII had a higher supercharger gear and produced another 200hp approx) it made the mk2 Spitfire even faster than the Hurricane, the mk 2b’s had hispano cannon fitted; yes they managed to build the CBAF in that time wheras Hawkers couldn’t even fit a bubble canopy to the hurricane, the rear fuselage is a box tube affair, and re shaping that would have simply been a matter of rearranging the wooden lathes of the spine, and wrapping another pillow case around it; but as you say ,they probably didn’t have the time.

I don’t remember a IIB, the IB had Hispano cannon which failed to work and were exchanged for 8 Browning versions. Setting up a shadow factory with masses of government money (and which until the management had their heads knocked together, by which time it was too late, produced Spitfires at a slower rate than the Southampton factory) hardly compares to unnecessarily shutting down a production line when replacement aircraft were desperately needed in order to effect a modification that wasn’t top of anyone’s list of priorities. When did the first ‘bubble’ Spitfire appear? The Hurricane’s ‘doghouse’ was designed for ease of manufacture. Design work for Supermarine’s on the MkII was nil. While we’re on about modifications, Camm produced a metal wing for the Hurricane and retrofitted most a/c during wartime. There were actually around 24 differences between the earliest and latest MkI Hurricanes.

Lucky for us indeed, that Mitchell got it right when he did. The majority of his designs were pretty workmanlike, not bad, just not genius. As Supermarine’s basically failed to improve on the basic design of the Spitfire during the war the majority of the performance upgrades for the Spitfire came from Rolls Royce, and later from Westland who did the cut-down fuselage versions.

Possibly also lucky for us that Camm and Hawker’s applied their talents where they were best used, developing the Typhoon and Tempest, rather than tinkering with the Hurricane after its day had past.

We’ve wandered away from the point somewhat. I don’t think we’re going to persuade each other so I’m prepared to call it a day. One of my Dad’s school reports said ‘Willis has the irritating habit of always wanting the last word’ and I undoubtedly inherited that dubious quality. Fun sparring though. Good day.

The Spitfire and the Hurricane were able to work together, whether intentionally or otherwise ; you could argue that the Hurricane performed the more vital role asigned as it was (in the main) to the role of bomber attack, however without the cover provided by the Spitfire, tackling the 109’s, it would have been very different;

Though this was supposedly policy, I don’t think it can ever have been as clear cut as this. Hurricanes shot down plenty of 109s and 110s, though fewer than Spitfires did. Park’s policy was to get whichever squadrons were available to the nearest available target whether that was Spitfires or Hurricanes. The 109 squadrons didn’t act as ‘top cover’ until later in the battle when Goering ordered them to. Until that time they roved around looking for whatever targets they could attack. Once Park had cottoned onto the ‘fighter sweep’ tactics, he stopped sending any aircraft, Spitfires or Hurricanes, after them. I’ve never seen any suggestion that Spitfire units were used as top cover to Hurricane units – they were just sent wherever they were needed, as quickly as possible.

if the roles were reversed ,the Spitfire would have been more than up to the task of shooting down the much slower and considerably less agile bomber, but across the board could the Hurricane have reproduced the figures that the Spitfire achieved? I personally don’t think so.

This is moot, though in the end it makes little difference. I’d say the Spitfire’s margin of speed makes little difference but the Hurricane’s more effective battery would have finished the bomber off a little more quickly. Against the fighters it’s slightly different. The Spitfire was a smaller target and faster, hence could be bounced less easily, but once it got into dogfighting (below 20,000ft at any rate) the Hurricane would have the better time of it. As pilots in the field flying captured 109s in France found, later confirmed by the RAE, a Hurricane could always get on the tail of a 109 if the Messerschmitt hung around to dogfight.[/QUOTE]

The performance figures for both A/C (previously quoted) speak for themselves, in an attempt to provide conclusive proof (as impossible, and to some extent pointless action that it is) we look at “what if’s” scenarios; I have seen (somewhere in on the internet) proposals for modifications for the Hurricane ,which include a cut down fuselage ,bubble canopy and 4 blade prop and also latterly the instalation of a griffon engine; in fact it looked a fine and potent A/C, I don’t know whether any of these mods were ever tried out, but you can see why they weren’t adopted, as the RAF already had that A/C, it was called the Spitfire.

This is slightly disingenuous. The main reason no major modifications were made to the Hurricane was that to do so would interrupt the production line at a time when large numbers of MkIIs were needed in overseas theatres, then as easily adaptable ground attack aircraft. (Indeed, there was at least one battle in North Africa in which the IID ‘tankbuster’ was decisive). In addition to the Spitfire being available, the Typhoon also was and as a low level interceptor and fighter bomber, the latter was without peer. It was lucky the Spitfire could take the installation of more powerful Merlins and ultimately Griffons as a high level stop-gap until the Tempest and Mustang were available though.