Some theories about Asian Spitfires
1) We obtained a lot of second hand spits which were past their use by dates as supplied so their performance was inadequate from the start and a lot of the new aircraft were of obsolescent marks when they arrived.
2) Certainly in the begining when used over Darwin etc the tactic was to climb to intercept the attacking aircraft at high altitude which because of inadequate warning meant that their advantages as an interceptor were compromised as they lacked tactical equality with the adversary.
3) Australia is a long way from the UK and the servicability rate on Spits wasn’t as good as it could have been
4) The pilots of the Spits were inexperianced or were transfered from the middle east or europe where the tatics were different and the foe flew aircraft with different performance qualities – japanese machines were typicially lightly armed and constructed but handled / dogfought very well
5) A Spit is a good aircraft but not as robust in a tough environment as some others and they were prone to wear and tear and maintaince issues perhaps more so than say the p40 which was a very rugged and tough aircraft
6) In later years US types such as P51, p40N,Corsair and P38 became available and were more suited to the environment.
7) Spitfires lacked the effective range of their contemporaries.
8) I have no facts but i suspect the RAAF didn’t support the Spitfire in the best possible way.
9) The Japanese pilots were certainly in the early years highly experianced and capable and there were large numbers of them.
The above is garnered from my extensive reading of various texts on the subject as well as listening to Bobby Gibbs and others who flew the various aircraft. There is no doubt they liked Spit but the limitations from an operational perspective were such in the asian context as opposed to the european deployment of the type as to negate any advantage in performance it may have had in ideal circumstances.
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