Heres a question i remembered to ask last night....Both the Me/bf109 and the Spitfire have a very short wheel base in the front landing gear...This is well documented to have directly contributed to many flying/takeoff accidents, even among the experienced....If these two were minor players i'd understand the lack of bother to correct the problem. But these two aircraft were instrinsic to Germany and Britain's airwar....Both aircrft saw many marks and structural changes to accommodate the upgrades they received....Why then oh WHY was the landing gear problem not fixed on both? Both the Hurricane and FW190 showed the way...Please don't tell me the wing was too thin...the 109 didn't even have any guns in the wings anyway. (mostly) Particlularly the 109...so many made...so many pilots having to crash it unessecarily....C'mon Willy! Whats your story mate!?
Both aircraft attached the landing gear to the fuselage and a strength member of the fuselage. Without major structurial upgrades to the wings of the aircraft to take the stress of the landing gear it wouldn't be possible to move those outboard to the wings. The F3B and F4F used similar systems for the same reasons. This wasn't uncommon in the mid to late 1930's as a landing gear system.
Having the gear retraction mechanism inboard created a better center of gravity, and easier construction.
Okay that is a REASON, but firstly i find that hard to beleive for the Spitfire...its wing was already very strong, plus "new wings" for the spitfire were common place....And secondly...why not give the 109 wing the structural integrity it needed? Types of the time (Hurricane - FW190 as just two examples) show that is was possible without significantly thickening the wing...
I'm replying to my own post again! Found this on another thread (worst fighters) - Many contemporary designers had figured out landing gear, and the standard was settling on a pair of oleostruts mounted as far outboard on the wing as possible providing a wide track. The penalty was the increased weight of the reinforced wing needed to mount the gear. The Hawker Hurricane and the Zero paid the price and got a strong undercarriage and easy ground handling as a benefit. Messerschmidt decided to mount the struts directly to the fuselage and avoid the weight penalty, consequently he Bf-109 got increased combat performance in trade for tricky (nay, downright dangerous) ground handling. Which is as i expected...was that increased combat performance really worth it? Especially after the FW190 came into service?
AFAIK the Me 109 was designed following "the smallest airframe that can take the engine" principle, while the wing was significantly altered from the E to the F series the change you envision would mean a practically new aircraft. The Fw 190 is not significant, the Heinkel 100 was an early competitor to the 109 and had an inward retracting undercarriage and very similar if not better performance with the same engine, had the Germans considered wide track undercarriage that critical they could have produced it. By the time the Fw 190 was in service the 109 design had reached it's development limit and would have needed a major redesign like the 209 (that had inward retracting undercarriage) but with jet fighters "just round the corner" it was kept in production. IMO the worst offender was the Seafire, that narrow track undercarriage was never designed for carrier landings and resulted in numerous incidents, the Me 109T would probably have been even worse if it ever saw shipboard use, strangely the F4F was not so badly affected.
You quoted me, I think, CAC. You must keep in mind that the Bf-109 first flew in 1935 and it took several years for the type to be wedded to the engine that would make it famous, the DB-601. Before that the early 109's flew with the JUMO 210, an engine with barely half the output of the Daimler-Benz, consequently any weight savings was generally beneficial. Reading further in my post about the F2A I mention that the landing gear was raised and lowered using just one hydraulic pump. The same was true of the 109, and for the same reason - weight and complexity. The wings of the 109 were designed from the outset to be extremely light -- there was no fuel in the wings, only guns and ammo. having a very light wing not only saved weight overall, but it increased roll rate for a given length of aileron. This was always a feature of the 109, and few veteran pilots would have traded roll rate for a wide landing track. Was it worth it? Should the 109 have been replaced by the Fw-190? In an ideal world I would have to say yes. However, the Fw-190 wasn't designed as a replacement for the Bf-109. In spite of its drawbacks (and what plane has none?) the 109 had proved itself more than adequate, but the Luftwaffe needed more planes, and not just newer planes. The limiting factor to deployments of Bf-109s was the engine, Daimler-Benz simply couldn't produce enough DB-601s to fill the need for fighters. However, BMW had an outstanding radial engine, which the Reichsluftministerium had ignored for use in fighters because they believed a high-speed plane needed the pointed nose a liquid-cooled engine allowed. Kurt Tank, Focke-Wulf's chief designer, prove that to be a myth based on research done by, of all people, Howard Hughes. Thus was born the Fw-190 Würger (Butcher Bird), not a replacement for the 109 but a supplement, a way to expand the Luftwaffe's fighter force beyond the numbers that could have been achieved with the 109 alone. In short, if the Germans retire the Bf-109 in favor of the Fw-190, then they lose the air war even sooner than they did.
It's amazing how much that plane resembles the Ki-61 Tony. One reason I've read for the official "thumbs down" on the He-100 was Ernst Heinkel's cantankerousness and his perceived "political unreliabilty." His firm was already the holder of too many contracts from Goering's point of view.
The MG 131 Rheinmetal Borsig were fitted in the Me-190 wings for later versions (for instance the G6 ) and added to extra weight (about 16 kilos each, without the electric boxes, wiring and 20 mm amno)
Yes isn't it amazing how much the "Hein" resembles the "Heinkle"...And how much the Mig-3 resembles it also...
