I’m currently reading Jeffrey Quill’s ‘Spitfire – A test pilot’s story’ and in it he says that in June 1939 the Air Ministry were seriously looking at halting Spitfire production at Supermarine after the original order for 310 had been completed and turning production over to the Beaufighter, Gloster Fighter (not sure which one he means here), Lysander or Westland Whirlwind. The Castle Bromwich plant could have handled any additional orders, which may have been needed, but it had been designed to build bombers as well as fighters so the Ministry had the flexibility of choice. What would have been the result of only 310 Spitfires being built not only on the battles that followed but also on Merlin development and the aircraft that depended on this?
Oof, disaster... Maybe, just maybe the Hurricanes would have coped with the Battle of Britain, but if you see how near the victory was for Britain in the actual event I sincerely doubt this. After that, who knows what would have happened to Britain and hence to the course of the war?
As for the Battle of Britain, I think the Hurricanes would have coped. The Luftwaffe would have managed to do a bit more damage and the R.A.F. would take a few more losses, but the battle would still be won by the R.A.F. It took more time, and more resources to produce a Spitfire, so one consequence would actually be that more fighters would have been available to the R.A.F.
Besides which the Merlin was also employed in other aircraft (Hurricane, for example, and most 'heavy' bombers had a merlin-engined varient - this would just be the Wimpey at this stage) so development would probably not be effected too much. We may even have seen enough Merlins freed up to allow for a Merlin-engined Westland Whirlwind! Yes, I know that duff engines were not the only fault of this aircraft, but if the engines were right, they may well have got round to fixing the other faults too.
Indeed. The R.A.F. would still be left without a decent high altitude fighter, but the Whirlwind had, at low altitudes, superiour performance to any other fighter in production in 1940. And its four 20mm cannons could, at least to some extent, have made up for the lack of Spitfires.
I posted a reply here which has vanished... I asked if the addition of Merlins would have improved the high-level performance of the Whirlwind. Plus - imagine the effect on the BoB if the RAF had had a 4-cannon bomber-interceptor!
Perhaps, but I´m not familiar with the Peregrine, so I don´t know if it was primarily the engine which caused trouble at higher altitudes. However, Westland went on to design a high altitude fighter a couple of years later, the Welkin, which was similar in design to the Whirlwind, but with a considerably longer wingspan. This was equipped with Merlin engines. I believe the Whirlwind could have benefitted from a slightly increased wing area as well.
The British problem was not lack of fighters but of pilots, and therefore more fighters would be an inferior alternative to better fighters. I don't think the Hurricanes could have held their onw if you see the legendary reputation the Sptifires got out of the BoB. They must have had more psychological impact, and probably a higher kills/losses ratio.
Well, Hurricanes scored more victories in the BoB than all other arms combined. The Spit got its great reputation for the same reason the B17 is better known than the B24 - Publicity.
...and the fact that it was a better fighter. Not the most numerous or succesful, but quality-wise it was a lot better than the Hurricane and the plane never caught up.
It was better - no 2 ways about that. But Hurricanes got more kills, despite rough equivalence of numbers. Maybe this was a result of the tactic where Spits take on the escort fighters, Hurris take on the bombers (although this did not in practice often work out!) A look at comparative kill ratios would certainly be interesting...
The Spitfire was the better fighter. It was also the new fighter, which was taken advantage of by the propaganda machine and turned it into a symbol. But it was the Hurricane which won the Battle of Britain. It did, as Ricky pointed out, shoot down more enemy aircraft than all other fighters and defences combined. And it actually had a couple of very important advantages over the Spitfire; It was much easier to handle than the Spitfire, which enabled pilots under training to reach an acceptable level of capability more quickly. A factor which was never more important than during the Battle of Britain. And secondly, its sturdy and simple form of construction which enabled it to operate from allmost any airfield including poorly prepared grass airfields. The Hurricane was also better suited for flying in poor weather, and superiour to the Spitfire at night flying. And finally; The difference in performace between the late production Hurricane Mk.I, fitted with the three bladed Rotol propeller, and the Spitfire was more or less indistinguishable at altitudes up to 18,000 ft.
Help! I wasn't degrading the Hurricane, in fact I am its advocate and I think it deserves more honour and remembrance than it gets. I was just pointing out a reason why the Spit get so much more attention, now and during the BoB. The Hurricane could do much more than it is credited for in historic works, and in fact it did. But I don't think the British could have overpowered the Germans at all if they hadn't had a superior fighter; I mean, as someone pointed out in another thread, Britain didn't win the BoB but Germany lost it. Had the Spitfire not been there, the German planes may have had the final edge over the strained, overstretched squadrons of the RAF.
Well, the Hurri and Bf109 were fairly even. Bf109 was faster. Hurri could turn tighter, and could sustain more damage.
But the Bf109 had heavier armament. I don't know about the fuel, however; as far as I know the Bf109 carried too little to be very usefukl after the flight over the channel. The German pilots could only afford one hour of dogfighting before they had to return to base, or they wouldn't make it!
The issue of comparative BoB armaments (8 x .303in mgs vs. 2 x 20mm cannon & 2 x 7.62mm mgs) has been discussed long & hard on the www.tgplanes.com forum. Basically, neither has much of an advantage over the other! This is partly due to the rather duff cannon installed on the 109s...
Its not just fule they needed The effect of German fighters having drop tanks or longer range on internal fuel on the outcome of the battle of Britain is quite often discussed. In his book ‘The Most Dangerous Enemy – a history of the Battle of Britain’ Stephen Bungay makes an interesting argument, what do you think of it? ‘Suppose the Bf109 had the range of the Mustang. What would the Luftwaffe have done with it? Similar endurance would have enabled the Germans to send escorted bombers to John O’Groats. Why would they have wanted to do that? Given the goal of establishing local air superiority, there was no point in attacking any target north of London. A bit more endurance would have helped in raiding Hornchurch, North Weald and Debden, but unless the RAF could be caught on the ground, attacking airfields was not in itself going to win the battle. The key aircraft factories (at the time) were at Kingston-upon-Thames and Southampton, which were within range. The range of the fighter escorts was only critical if the plan was to conduct economic warfare as part of a long-term siege. It was not critical to gaining air-superiority over the invasion beaches. Had they had an extra margin of 15 – 20 minutes, the 109 pilots would probably have been able to do a bit more damage and somewhat reduced their losses. They would certainly have been more relaxed. However, their cannon only had seven seconds worth of ammunition and although they had sixty seconds worth machine gun rounds, their two machine guns alone would have greatly reduced their effectiveness. So if their fuel had not been used up, their ammunition would have been. Any pilot who spent more than five minutes in a dogfight would have been exhausted anyway. When the Mustangs went to Berlin they spent most of their time in getting there and back, not dogfighting. When RAF Fighter Command took the offensive in 1941, the pilots carrying out sweeps over Northern France in order to draw up the Luftwaffe complained about many things, but not the range of the Spitfire. It was only when the target was further away that range became critical’ Note he is making a difference between the Luftwaffe goals (air-superiority over the invasion beaches) and the later Allied goals (economic warfare as part of a long-term siege).
That is good reasoning, but I'd still rather be able to draw on long range if I ever had to fight a plane with superior manoeuverabilty. If the plane I was fighting was able to out-turn me (Spits and Hurries both were more manoeuverable than Bf109s), then I would try to make him do so until the pilot was utterly exhausted and I could get a nice shot at him; not before such a shot occured would I fire. So in such a fight range is all that matters; it is the weapon to beat the mobility of the enemy. Also, in such a fight it matters less that I have little ammo to spend. But indeed this applies more to the superiority goal than to the economic goal, and so would be the case only in the early fights of the BoB. Adn I don't know how German fighter pilots themselves would fight more manoeuverable planes?
According to "The Luftwaffe War Diaries", Germany did fit drop tanks to the Me 110 in the Battle of Britain. They had a nasty habit of refusing to drop after they were emptied, and you can guess what happened if they got hit by gunfire.
A few comments: There were twice as many Hurricanes as Spitfires in the BoB, and they shot down twice as many aircraft. However, their loss rate was higher. For a comparison between the armaments of the opposing fighters, see: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/BoB.htm Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
