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What would have been the performance of two Spitfires merged into one?
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Mike Waller (U4782937) on Thursday, 26th August 2010
Wonderful plane though the Spitfire was during the first years of WW2, by the end it was relatively obsolete. Indeed, one US writer speaks of the 16 thousand Spitfires held by the RAF in the final year of the war as an "incubus" which shape policy rather than merely implementing it. Thinking about this, I wondered what would have been the effect of taking 2 Spitfires, removing their left and right wings respectively, and then linking their fuselages and tails in the fashion usual for twin-boom (?) aircraft and flying the result with only one cockpit occupied. Any thoughts?
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Message 2
Posted by U3280211 (U3280211) on Thursday, 26th August 2010
Mike,
I think you might have invented the P-38.
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Message 3
Posted by RedGuzzi750 (U7604797) on Thursday, 26th August 2010
The Spitfire was by no means obsolete by the end of the war, or at least no more obsolete than any other piston engined fighter. To the end it was superb at what it had been designed to do - be a defensive interceptor. The marks used at the end of the war were a match for anything in the skies powered by a piston engine.
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Message 4
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Thursday, 26th August 2010
As opposed to the P38 however, a similar, hybrid Spitfire wouldn't have had the manoeverability that it enjoyed during the Battle of Britain, and the resulting dog-fights over London and the home counties might not have gone our way.
The P38 was good at what it did in the far east, but would have been next to useless in close combat.Link to this forum: What would have been the performance of two Spitfires merged into one?
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Message 5
Posted by RedGuzzi750 (U7604797) on Thursday, 26th August 2010
It would probably performed as well as the Twin Mustang.
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Message 6
Posted by TrailApe (U1701496) on Friday, 27th August 2010
Wonderful plane though the Spitfire was during the first years of WW2, by the end it was relatively obsolete??????
Love to know where you got this appraisal from. The aircraft was constantly updated and I think the last marque - the MK24 was first flown AFTER the war in 1948 and I think there were still Spits knocking about in photo recon until 1957 - so not bad for something 'relatively' obsolete eh?Link to this forum: What would have been the performance of two Spitfires merged into one?
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Message 7
Posted by Mike Waller (U4782937) on Friday, 27th August 2010
My understanding was that its range was too limited by 1944 and, unlike the Hurricane which became the very effective Hurribomber, its airframe was too fragile to make it effective against tanks etc. Similarly, when used as an ultra-light bomber, its wings precluded anything but the lightest of bomb-loads.
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Message 8
Posted by RedGuzzi750 (U7604797) on Friday, 27th August 2010
Too limited for what though? And compared to what - the Mustang? The Griffon engined Spits I believe were the equal of any fighter at the end of the war and IIRC were superior 1 on 1 with the P51 in a dogfight, though they did not have the "sweet" handling of the earlier Merlin enginened marks. And of course the final marks 21? 24? were probably the acme of the single piston engined fighter.
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Message 9
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Friday, 27th August 2010
The Spitfire did indeed become relatively obsolete and very early on. In 1943 the American Grumman F6F Hellcat came into service and that had the effect of making obsolete the formidable Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero. The Zero itself had bested RAAF Spitfires earlier that year over New Guinea. Some even say that the Zero had already proved itself against the Spitfire as early as December 1941 over Malaya and Singapore but others deny that Spitfires were used during that campaign. Does anyone know if Spitfires were in theatre and played a role during the Battle of Malaya?
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Message 10
Posted by RedGuzzi750 (U7604797) on Friday, 27th August 2010
Not in Malaya I think all they had was Buffalos there and they stood no chance.
As with a few Allied fighters, the Spitfire did not fare well over Darwin until the pilots adapted to the particular tactics needed. This was to emphasise the superior dive speed and armament of the MkVs that were used there (and that Zeros were pretty much not armoured at all and it only took a few 20mm hits for them to blow up), and to avoid level turning combat at lowish speeds where the Zero was deadly even up until 1945. Using dive and zoom tactics (rather like the Hellcats and Corsairs did) they found that Zeros could be dealt with. But avoid the low speed dogfight at all costs.Link to this forum: What would have been the performance of two Spitfires merged into one?
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Message 11
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Friday, 27th August 2010
To say that "the Spitfire" became obsolete is definitely wrong and underestimates the enormous development potential of the airframe and the Merlin and Griffon engines. The basic design had the great merits of excellent handling characteristics and, more by luck than by anything else, a wing with a higher limiting Mach number than other WWII fighters. Joe Smith's team did an excellent job of upgrading the aircraft without doing too much damage to its handling characteristics, even if few parts were retained to the end.
By 1943, of course a Spitfire Mk.I was an obsolete fighter. But the Mk.IX was not. Even compared to the excellent P-51B, the Mk.IX was superior in rate of climb, roll rate, firepower and turning circle; the P-51B was about 40 km/h superior in level speed, faster in a dive, and above all superior in range. Roughly the same also applied in comparison with the Griffon-engined Spitfire Mk.XIV, except there was less difference in level speed. More to the point, by 1945 the latest models of the Spitfire were at least the equal of any German fighter except the Me 262, and certainly superior to all Japanese or Italian fighters.
In comparison with the A6M, the point has to be made that in initial encounters, RAF and RAAF pilots suffered because of unsuitable tactics and a foolish tendency to underestimate the opposition, not because their aircraft were inferior. And for all the merits the A6M had in 1940, the design had low development potential -- by 1943 the 'Zero' definitely was incurably obsolescent.
The Spitfire certainly did have the handicap of being designed as a defensive interceptor, and as the Luftwaffe was pushed more and more on the defensive in the later years of the war, its usefulness diminished. However, besides technical limitations, this was also determined by RAF policy. The USAAF, with its urgent need for long-range escort fighters, was willing to load its aircraft with fuel even to the point of making their flying characteristics unpleasant and even dangerous. The RAF was reluctant to do so and did not need or want a daylight long-range fighter nearly as much as the USAAF.
(The range potential of the type was only really explored in the reconnaissance versions, which could a heavy fuel load in the wing leading edge of the 'D wing', without guns. Right up to the end and for several years after the war, the performance of the Mk.XIX provided near-immunity from interception, even by the first jet fighters.)
This also removes some of the logic that would support a twin-fuselage Spitfire. The idea would of course be similar to the development of the P-82 from the P-51 (although that involved much more redesign), but the P-82 was a two-seater and its development was driven by the need to have a very-long-range escort fighter for the Pacific. The logic being that asking pilots to fly eight-hour combat missions was a bit too much. The P-82 did later prove valuable as a fighter-bomber and night-fighter, but in the RAF these roles were filled very effectively by more conventional twin-engined aircraft.
Drawings do exist of a German Bf 109Z ("Zwilling", i.e. twin), prepared in 1941 in an attempt to meet a requirement for a fast heavy fighter ('Zerstoerer') that could be built quickly on existing production lines. This program was later abandoned in favor of the Me 262, before the prototype was flown.
In Italy, SIAI-Marchetti built and flew a single-seat SM.92 with a twin-fuselage design. This was not derived from a single-engined fighter, but developed in parallel with the slightly more conventional SM.91, which features a central nacelle and twin tail booms. The crew of two both had seats in the left fuselage. Being flown (by the Germans) after the Italian surrender, it was of academic interest only.Link to this forum: What would have been the performance of two Spitfires merged into one?
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Message 12
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Saturday, 28th August 2010
Wonderful though the Spitfire was, did it not suffer the shortcoming that the engine was momentarily starved of fuel when the aircraft went into a dive? I think the Luftwaffe plots cottoned on to this during the Battle of Britain or later, and played on it.
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Message 13
Posted by MB (U177470) on Saturday, 28th August 2010
It did until Miss Shilling's orifice was fitted.
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Message 14
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Saturday, 28th August 2010
It is possible to argue realistically all piston-enginned fighters were obsolescent by 1945, and that the effort that would have been needed to produce a "twin Spit" wouldn't have been worth the candle. If work were to continue on i.c.e. fighters, it would probably have been better to continue with the laminar-flow wing types such as the Spiteful/Seafang. Certainly it would have been more useful to the FAA to produce something better suited to carrier landings, as was actually done with the Sea Fury.
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Message 15
Posted by RedGuzzi750 (U7604797) on Saturday, 28th August 2010
I think you are right as far as air superiority goes; piston fighters were obsolete after 1945. But then they turned thier hand to other jobs, the Marine Corsairs did sterling work in Korea as the first generation jets were pretty heavy drinkers and had marginal payloads. Unfortunately the Spitfire probably didn't have that particular capability, but the Furys of the FAA did and so did the Mustangs of the RAAF.
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Message 16
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Saturday, 28th August 2010
It did until Miss Shilling's orifice was fitted.Β
Miss Shilling's fuel flow restrictor -- installed in the fuel line, NOT in the carburettor -- did not fully cure the problem: It mitigated it, by limiting the maximal fuel flow to no more than the engine could consume at full power. Before this, a negative G dive would result in the carburettor being pumped full of fuel by the over-powerful fuel pump. (After an initial, but not nearly as harmful, fuel starvation.)
The longer term solutions were improved carburettors: In Britain RAE worked on "anti-G" devices for the float carburettor, which were effective enough. Packard provided the better solution when it introduced the Bendix-Stromberg injection carburettor on its American-build Merlins; this was adopted for British-built engines as well. The final Merlins had fuel injection into the supercharger inlet.Link to this forum: What would have been the performance of two Spitfires merged into one?
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Message 17
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Monday, 30th August 2010
Thank you MB and Mutatis_Mutandis for those helpful explanations.
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