No interviews, deviations from the topic, no exaggerated narrative. Just physics, statistics, and engineering. If you had a TV show when I was a kid, I would watch it every chance I got. Good job on this one.
@Tech God forbid someone provide positive feedback to a content creator. It's better than scouring the comment section to find someone to talk down on. Of course the information is on the internet, do you think I woke up this morning thinking "I want to do research on the engineering of a spitfire"? Of course not. Did a 20 minute video sound enticing? sure. I'm not going to change your opinion on the mater, so this conversation is a waste of my time.
The wing armament was actually seen as a disadvantage because each gun needed to be configured to converge at a particular distance, which reduced overall accuracy. The BF109's nose guns concentrated firepower and improved roll rate by centralising mass.
True! However, the convergence point meant you _had_ to be a _specific_ distance from the target for maximum accuracy. But this _also_ meant that you could _opt_ for a more spray-and-pray approach at different distances. So, like, you can put all your eggs in one basket, or decide that a few rounds on target was better than none. Which was a "luxury"(?) that the Bf-109 did not have. Right? 🤔😅
When compared one to one the wing armament could be considered a disadvantage and less pilot friendly. However when fielding planes and maintenance it could be a great advantage to have fewer moving parts and a greater number of guns firing.
Really depends on what each gives up. Its much harder fitting a heavy nose armament on a single engine prop fighter because the prop and the engine are in the way. So while the armament is arguable more accurate, you have far less throw weight. Mount those guns in the wings however and you can fit more of them, arguably less accurate, but more throw weight, especially with the B and C wings which were the cannon armed wings. Accuracy is only part of the equation, throw weight is just as important, how many rounds can you throw at the target in the very limited period of time you have it in your sights. Given the ranges those pilots were firing at, typically less than 400 metres, often *much* less, then the argument about gun convergence become less critical, and that increased throw weight that Spitfires armed with the later wings were able to deliver to their target becomes more important. After all, that convergence is only growing less and less severe as the range closes. In other words, their are costs and benefits to both wing mounted and nose mounted armaments in prop fighters, and it really depends on what the priorities are for the air forces involved. It is no accident that the prop aircraft that mounted the heaviest nose armament were ALL twin engine designs....
in that case both armament configurations can be seen as equally advantageous and disadvantageous, as wingmounted is preferable for flight performance but nosemounted is preferable for combat performance
Ever heard of the 303rd? They were a bunch of poles that flew in Huricanes for the brits in the battle of britain. They were so pissed that they lost to the germans they would routinely run their planes into german bombers once they ran out of ammo. Thats waht Id call a mad lad.
@@firewolfy_6 It's you making the assertion, it's up to YOU to prove it, not a person to disprove it :) I've heard some Polish people say we don't respect what they did in the war. That's not true from my viewpoint, I always knew they did well. Indeed the other day the Battle Of Britain film was shown here in the UK and it makes a point of showing the Polish pilots in a good light .. ramming not being a part of it :)
I really love how despite being a Spitfire video, it takes time for the 109 too. It's fascinating to see the ingenious and different ways both sides approached various technical challenges.
Yes, and all this under pressure of military heads busting your chops. Fascinating that the Brits got an advantage because the German engineers weren't allowed to enter their designs in races. The jolly good old Treaty of Versailles, old chap
@@james6401 There's no reason that the germans couldn't have learned the lessons of racing aircraft design from Brits, French or Italians. Heinkel and the Guther brothers seem to have lived in a bubble and ignored their own governement's wind tunnel research.
Wonderful documentary. my father was British and worked on the early warning system for the Battle of Britain. he wanted to fly a spitfire so much but his vision wasn't good enough - he wore glasses., but he was so proud of that plane. He gave me a model version of the plane to assemble one Christmas, and I was so proud of the plane too. God rest his soul.
He could have taken a tip from Woods-Scawen who memorised the optician's sight card for the medical test. He got through as many of his own Hurricanes as 109s he shot down. He did not survive BoB but well done him and his generation.
I'm an aeronautical engineering student who loves military aviation history and the technologies involved in it. I've spent my fair amount of time learning about and making models of the Spitfire but it's so awesome to still learn new details of this beautiful bird and see all the information, videos, graphics and 3d models that the Real Engineering team put together. I dearly thank you and salute your work.
I was born in 47, and as a small child my parents were still in the habit saving any bits of aluminium foil they came across. It seems that during the war years there was country- wide effort to secure as much aluminium scrap as possible with which to build Spitfires. This is easily one of the best and thorough Spitfire documentaries I've yet seen...
Towns around the UK would hold fundraising events during WW2 to raise the money to build a Spitfire. My Grandad used to tell me stories of collecting scrap metal, wood and paper to raise money for the fund.
Mounting the guns centerline is beneficial when it comes to aiming and gun convergence. Wing mounted guns are typically set at angle so their shots converge at a certain range, making that range the optimal range. But that also means that outside the optimum aiming is harder and half your shots will always miss. Great video! The Spitfire is just beautiful!
While true, it's not as much of an impact as you think. You generally didn't take shots until you were *very* close, so you didn't exactly have much of an effective firing distance to allow the convergence to break up the shots much. This effect is much more prominent in video games than it ever was in real life. You really only had an effective range of 250m, and around 400m for bombers under best conditions, otherwise you're just wasting ammunition.
@@Stealth86651 Oh it had an impact for sure. The Bf-109 spent a lot of time also shooting at bombers, which with a centerline armament meant they could shoot accurately while keeping out of the bombers defensive guns.
@@Kman31ca Yes, it had an impact as a technology. People just assume it had a lot bigger impact at ranges that were unrealistic, that's all. You can read the pilot reports or statistics on that though.
Proud to say my Dad was a member of the RAF - an aircraft fitter - and his job was to help to keep those planes 'fit to fly'. He was a young man in his 20s when he also had that great responsibility in signing off those planes, after being serviced, AS 'fit to fly'. Years later - in middle age - he admitted he would never have the nerve to do that type of job again. But youth is a wonderful thing, and he - and many more like him - did their jobs, and did them well. He was one of the lucky ones to survive the war, live to raise a family, and lead a good life. RIP Dad, and to all the other young men and women who fought during WWII - and the many who did give their lives - may you rest in peace, also, and know that you ALL were from the 'Greatest Generation'. :)
As someone who has studied the Spitfire all my adult life and also flown one, can I say that this documentary is of impeccable quality. There are a few misplaced clips of Hurricanes and Hispano Buchons, but that's forgivable. Your explanations of aerodynamic principles are very clear and accurate, and you rightly focus on the key points that made the Spitfire an apex predator: Bev Shenstone's wing design; the power to weight achieved by Rolls Royce engines; and the radiator technology that Supermarine had developed during the Schneider Trophy campaign. I'm really impressed and Nebula has instantly become a trusted brand. I have taken out a sub and look forward to much more.
I'm a bit sad you haven't mentioned Meredith when talking about the radiator, the bloke basically saved the Spitfire a couple of miles/hour when they had to abandon vapor cooling.
@@MDzmitry Meredith was working with RJ Mitchell on the "new Spitfire" in 1937 when Mitchell died. It had a carb intake under the spinner and a ventral radiator, which freed up the wing space for the fuel tanks as originally planned. Such a revision would have made the Spit faster, climb better and increase its range. Kindelberger visited Supermarine in 1938 and asked him to build Spitfires. He declined. Sadly, Vickers would not let Smith revisit this concept or disrupt the production lines
4:10 - "the pilot will deflect the elevators downward to increase lift". No. You pull on the stick, the elevators deflect upwards to increase the down force on the tail causing the angle of attack to increase, thus increasing lift.
Thank you for this video. My Father in law is Major General Carroll McColpin. He was a Spitfire Ace with the Eagle Squadron. He loved this plane and talked about it often. Look him up online, his story is fascinating. He and his wife are buried at Arlington National Cemetery a True war Hero.
5:58 I would recognize that voice anywhere! It was a very welcome surprise to hear Mustard, considering all the aviation videos he does. Keep up the fantastic work, you two!
To this day, I think the Spitfire is still one of the most beautifully elegant machines ever devised by man. It's amazing to me that engineering decisions based on hard numbers aimed at making a weapon of war as powerful and efficient as possible happened to result in a shape that is so aesthetically pleasing to so many people. It's one for the ages for sure.
At every airshow I have ever attended, the Spitfire gets the most sincere 'oohs and ahs' of any WW2 plane there; especially from the Boomers raised on their fathers' true stories of valor, bravery, horror and glory of their young manhood.
Dude…. You’ve outdone yourself with this video…. Thank you for taking the time to educate us in these matters. As a history major I really appreciate it!
Hey! I'm sorry but I think you messed up in 4:07. To increase angle of attack and thus, the aircraft's lift, the elevator must be deflected upwards, not downwards. Hope, I'm helping and excellent video! :)
As a pilot, I confirm. On animation, the elevator should be deflected the opposite way. Regardless, awesome video!!! Keep with the good job, I love your videos on things that fly and always learn tons of amazing stuff
@@somedude2492 Its not counter-intuitive, when the elevator points up it makes ur nose go up, pretty simple. And im sure that mistake was on purpose so people make comments about this because everyone knows this. And thanks to this the video will have bigger engagement=more views
I love how you integrated the tactics of dogfight into each section of the engineering script. Giving us a full understanding of not just how but also why. Top video as always!
You gotta do the Mosquito now- utilizing unexploited manufacturing resources in the form of woodworking shops, while also taking advantage of the benefits a wood construction could give? It's a perfect blend of engineering and manufacturing knowledge.
Yeah, turns out being able to carve and sand in smooth 3D curves rather than needing multiple sheets of metal allows a VERY clean finish. One of the only fast bomber designs of the war that was ACTUALLY fast enough for the speed to act as a defensive measure
4:07 - Is that correct? Pushing forward on stick pitches the nose down (elevator deflects down). Wouldn't that decrease lift? You'd gain airspeed but not lift, right?
You're right, it's the wrong way around. Deflecting the elevator that way will decrease the angle of attack and reduce lift, not increase like said in the video.
Not only was the Spitfire a very capable aircraft right from the start but it served as an exceptional development platform so that with upgrades it was able to compete both with the BF 109 and the Fw 190 throughout the course of the war.
@@matthewvincent8971 Sounds like you don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about. Oh...wait...I get it. You're just trolling. Okay, troll, you've had your fun and you've provoked me into giving you the attention that you so desperately need. You can go now. Bye.
Another thing to note is that an aircrafts turn performance is not solely dependent on it's turn radius, although it is important for many maneuvers of a dogfight (one circle, scissors, etc.). The other crucial component is turn rate, or how many degrees per second the aircraft can complete in a turn. This is important for two circle dogfights, as well as other fights. If you want to learn more, look up one circle vs two circle dogfights!
The Bf-109 did have 2 advantages. The first was a higher rate of climb due to lower wing loading. The second was the high pressure fuel injection engine which meant it could perform high speed dives. The merlin engine was fed by a carburetor which meant it would stall if put under the same forces. The main reason the Germans were unable to achieve air superiority though was the home field advantage. British fighters could afford to fight far more aggressively than their German counterparts as they had full fuel tanks and could use them up as they would just land. The Germans had to consider the distance back home as well. Also quite a few planes that are shot down don't crash. Holes in the fuel tanks or a compromise of the engine or limited damage to the flight controls can render a plane unable to fly but still capable of landing safely. If a British plane got disable by light damage the pilot would just be put in a different plane and the plane would be repaired. If the same thing happened to a German both the pilot and plane were lost. When the roles reversed the British didn't fare much better than the Germans had with their bombings. What made the bombings successful was the collapse of Germany's air defenses due to the overstretching of the eastern front and the incompetence of Gouring. Germany never developed a well functioning fully integrated air defense network like Britain did and by 1943 even if the British lost a lot of planes that didn't matter due to the practically infinite resources provided by the US.
@@MrMarinus18 First of all, in wing loading a Spitfire would always outperform a contemporary Bf.109 model. Secondly, 109's advantage in climb rates (albeit not tremendous and at times non-existent) was provided by the sheer horse power per kilogram ratio. And the never-ending stanza about fuel injection falls apart since 1942 and the implementation of Merlin 66 (alongside US-produced 266 model), 70-series and every later iteration. Even if you consider 1942 "late", fuel injection alone doesn't win battles, it only gives a chance to escape alive. Didn't stop Mk.I and (later on) Mk.V Spits from warding the Germans off above Britain, Malta and North Africa until Mk.IXs arrived.
Spitfire overrated. Nostalgia. Merlin was great in anything it was put in with Americans driving most of the upgrades. Looks better with cropped wings.
Actually in a turn, you increase the deflection of the elevator, not decrease it as stated in the video; that is the rear edge of the elevator move upward. This works to move the tail downward and the nose upward, which increases the angle of attack, and thus increases lift to compensate for the loss of the vertical lift component while banking.
Thanks for using 601 squadron Spits in the CG sequences - my grandfather was a flight sergeant in 601, he knew that Merlin like the back of his hand and I am now the proud owner of his RR Merlin manuals.
Just purchased the Nebula bundle and honestly the entire price is worth it just for the logistics of D-day and the Battle of Britain series’s. Absolutely fantastic content, keep it up
Hey, I have been taking to introduction to aerospace engineering. I love how those concepts applied here. It's cool to see with knowledge and apply how it works.
Very good presentation, one minor flaw that has already been covered a lot. The saddest part of the whole Spitfire story is the death of RJ Mitchell before he got to see what his plane was truly capable of, perhaps a brief mention of that would be nice.
@@koitorobYes - apparently, he was in hospital when a friend told him that the aircraft was going into production. "They're going to name it the Spitfire" Mitchell - "Just the sort of bloody stupid name they would give it."
RJ was working with Meredith on the "new cannon Spitfire" Type 312, when he died in 1937. It had the carb intake under the spinner and a ventral radiator scheme, which would free up the wing space for fuel tanks, as originally intended. The result would have made it faster, with better climb and longer combat range. Kindelberger was asked to build Spitfires on his visit to Supermarine in 1938. He declined. Vickers prevented Smith from pursuing Type 312 soas to keep the production lines running.
Another clever innovation in the radiator design was that cool air drawn into the radiator was heated by the radiator core causing it to expand, then when it left the radiator, it was travelling significantly faster than when it entered, thereby creating a small amount of thrust (in effect a jet) which also partially negated the drag created by the radiator. Clever man Mr. Mitchell. we can only imagine what kind of designs he would have come up with if he'd had access to turbojets.
Actually, that radiator cooling scheme you describe was due to Meredith (1935) at RAE. The Spitfire radiators were a bandaid solution when the glycol liquid / radiators were adopted. That space in the wings was originially intended for fuel tanks. Meredith and RJ Mitchell collaborated on an upgraded version of the Spitfire (Type 312) with a more efficient ventral radiator which RJ was working on when he died in 1937. The square, wing-mounted radiators were a main source of drag and didn't really enable the Meredith effect unfortunately.
Great content, as always! However, I’m not sure your explanation of a narrow radius turn is correct: in a steep turn a pilot will pull on the stick to add some nose up attitude which adds a vector complementing aerodynamic lift of the wing to increase vertical lift and a centripetal force thus diminishing the turn radius an keeping the aircraft in horizontal flight. A pull on the stick will deflect the horizontal stabilizer upward, creating a downward force on the tail (nose up of airplane) In the video the contrary is shown and told. Second small correction: the pressure equalization on the wingtip will produce a VORTEX (plural vortices) around the wing contributing to induced drag. Keep up the good work. I always enjoy your videos. Thanks!
we get ourselves into this kind of trouble when we decide to use pluralization rules from other languages. 'vortexes' sounds like a perfectly cromulent English word to me.
yes, the video made an error regarding the elevator direction, but was bang on regarding the induced drag due to increased AoA. The Spitfire elliptical wing generated less induced drag than other fighters, especially at higher altitudes, despite having a thin wing. Brilliant design.
Just one of many Jr. engineers who solved problems at Supermarine and RAE. Meredith was a more famous engineer with a broader impact on WWII, like the P-51 design. Shenstone was perhaps the most brilliant engineer in the Supermarine crowd after RJ.
17:00 The armament layout was mixed up in this take. It features a 109 firing 6 guns from its wings, like a Spitfire, instead of the usual machine guns on top of the nose plus nose cannon and/or dual wing cannons.
Great video! One thing I noticed though, at 4.15, you say the elevator goes down. I think it should be up, otherwise the plane would come out of the turn. At a steep bank angle, the elevator effectively functions as the rudder.
My grandfather was in the Airforce and I remember how he landed the Spitfire in a field after an engine failure. But despite this, the spitfire was his favorite plane. He flew many of the MIG models as well but he always said that the Spitfire fought back with it's controls and felt like you actually did the flying.
I have read Spitfire pilot reports that the Spitfire just goes where you think about where you want it to go. In other words an easy plane to fly. This has to improve survival ability in a war situation.
Thank you for making videos like these. I really love these (especially) WW2 aviation videos! I'm currently studying (and struggling since Online learning) Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering. WW2 aviation has always been my passion, for as long as I can remember. So thank you for videos like this, it really keeps me motivated throughout my studies ❤️
Thanks for your work, in general, but specifically on airplanes. Your videos on the P-47 Thunderbolt and the A-10 Warthog were amazing. This video on the Spitfire is awesome, too. The Spit was the most beautiful fighter of WW2, imho. The P-51 Mustang would be a great analysis for you. The way it was mediocre until is got the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine would be interesting. Thanks for your efforts, from a guy who lacks the math skills but can understand your explanation.
Ive always felt like people dont appreciate the absolute workhorse that its the p-47. It was a vital plane introduced at a vital time, and while it had its issues, much like the m4 sherman, it was the right weapon at the right time. Not the best, but far from the worst.
The P51 was much more aerodynamically advanced than the Spitfire, especially in cooling drag reduction. However the Americans struggled with supercharger design, and it was the introduction of the Merlin 66 that greatly improved high altitude performance. This is what made the difference.
@@sheldonholy5047 P51 was a great plane, although it couldn't climb or turn like a Spitfire. Its strengths were in other areas - especially range. Also, and this is not meant disparagingly, the P51 was cheap to build which gave it a big advantage over the P47 and the Spitfire in wartime. US mass production made a huge difference to the outcome of WW2 and the careful use of strategic materials was a big part of that.
@@slammerf16 also a very good point - the spitfire did take around 30-40% more man hours to manufacture than most of its contemporaries, namely the Bf109. This is quite often overlooked. The Germans did well considering their lack of many materials which the allies had access to, which forced them to use ball bearings instead of sleeve bearings, which is quite undesirable in large engines.
Great video and great visuals as always! Please note that at 4:11 the elevator should be deflected upward to make the airplane pitch up, increase the angle of attack and, ultimately, produce more lift (and more drag).
The wing is also where all the appreciable lift comes from. The elevator just produces a rotational moment to increase the wing's angle of attack. I'm surprised Real Engineering made this mistake. He's usually a lot better at getting his facts straight, even on the topic of aviation.
There's another critical benefit of the lower wing loading of the Spitfire vs 109: future proofing. Modifications to an aircraft will almost ALWAYS make newer models heavier than the older models, even if overal capabilities improve. Since the 109 already had a rather small wing, the late war G and K models were beginning to feel very sluggish in low speed flight, while the Griffon Spitfires were still quite elegant to fly.
I think you made a mistake at 4:07, in a turn, one would need to the elevator deflect up, rotate the nose up to pitch the main wing up for more lift, to compensate for the lost lift. Not pitch down as shown in the animation. Pitching down may keep a plane flying in a straight line, even when the plane is rolled to one side (wings are tilted), although that usually also requires rudder input. This is rarely done except when trying to looking for land marks or in an air show.
The layout of the guns in the Bf-109 did have its advantages, since all the guns, especially in the later models from the 'F' onwards, were located in a small frontal area, two above the nose and one through the propellor spinner, the fire was concentrated and meant a shorter burst did more damage.
@@kommandantgalileo of course. As Stalin said, "quantity has a quality all its own". ...but that's an endorsement of attrition warfare, meaning loss of our young lads barely out of their teens. Better quality means saved lives and less profiteering.
Awesome video. Though there might be a mistake in the discussion on turn performance. The elevator should deflect trailing edge up to increase lift on wing (and drag) instead of up.
Not mentioned is the huge difference between the prototype Spitfire wing and that of the production planes. The prototype wing was so poor aerodynamically that its initial performance was no better that that of the Huricane. Being well down on the expected top speed. This being due to parasitic drag of the prototype wing pannel shapes and orientation. These had to be changed along with the internal support frames. This in turn required a serious redesign of the wing and took around two years to implement. Which was one of the reasons for the long gap between the first flight of the prototype and those of the Mark 1 producion Spitfires.
You have missed one point when discussing the benefit of the elliptical wing, the lower induced drag does not seem much flying straight, but induced drag varies with the SQUARE of the Lift coefficient so in a 4G turn the induced drag is X 16 times. This fact also impacts the ability to turn tightly, the Me 109 had automatic slats which allowed its wing to achieve much higher lift coefficients in a tight turn, but at the cost of much higher induced drag. This caused Me 109s to loose speed or altitude or both in a tight turn if they tried to keep up with a Spit. Later in the War, the improved Octane rating of the fuel allowed the Merlin to be boosted much more than Nazi engines.
Exactly, less induced drag especially at high altitude means less power (boost) needed to maintain altitude during the turn. The Spit excelled at that and the stall buffet let the pilot ride the edge of the stall without fear of flick rolling like the Hurricane, P-40 and Mustang, etc.
I think you should read "Secrets of the Spitfire" - the biography of Beverley Shenstone - the senior aerodynamicist working for Mitchell . The elliptical wing was not merely chosen to cover the guns. Apart from the reduction in induced drag, the wing , which was actually 2 semi ellipses with a common major axis on the 25% chord line, had many other benefits apart from providing enough depth to cover the guns and undercarriage.
The benefits of the elliptical wing were first described by english aerodynamicist, Fredrick Lanchester in 1907. Prantl expanded on his work in 1918 with the Lanchester-Prandtl wing theory. Operationally, its gentle pre-stall buffet allowed the Spitfire pilot to ride the edge of the stall in combat without fear of sudden wing stall/ snap roll. Hurricane pilots didn't have the same warning and hence were more reluctant to push their aircraft to the limit. Kittyhawk pilots also were afraid of the aileron snatch and flick roll if too agressive in the turn. The P-40s also had a tendency for the rudder to lock up in certain manouvers. Spitfires saved many a pilot due to its fine handling.
20:41 I’m not a history buff or even a fan of this material but I was complementing the high quality of the models sets and animations of this video during my viewing. Fantastic video.
@@edwardgatey8301 The pilot did a few low altitude high speed passes. The sound was amazing. You could feel the power. There must be a few still flying. Check your local airshows.
IIUC, that He-111 was more likely to have been shot down by a Hurricane. The Spitfires mostly engaged the escorting fighters, leaving the Hurricanes to go after the bombers.
Watching this channel grow is amazing! I'm now studying aerospace engineering and I hope I get to work on a project that turns up on this channel for good reasons!!
Most noticed the wrong elevator in the turn, but I think that also the ailerons have problems too: you use them just to enter into a turn, but they return flat during the turn, otherwise you will continue to increase the bank angle. Flat during the turn, then in the opposite direction to return to straight flight.
Super video! You might want to mention Miss Shilling orifice - her tweak to the carburettor design that allowed a few seconds negative G in later models.
Not really in "later models", just from ~Mk.II to Mk.V until the Mk.IX arrived (mid 1942 - early 1943). The latter had Merlin models with pressure carburetors instead of float ones. Same about late-war Griffons.
@@MDzmitry some Mk.V's and corresponding Seafire III's had the pressure carbs and were quite the hotrods. Many pilots preferred the Mk.V with its better manouverability than the IX.
@@bobsakamanos4469 Yeah, later Merlin 50s had pressure carburettors if I'm not mistaken. And they were indeed good machines, but fine-tuned for low altitude, and we're not talking "LF Mk.IX" kind of low, we're talking "soviet fighters" low
@@MDzmitry Yes, LF Mk.V's could take on the 190's (but would of course have top cover) and LF Seafire III's were faster than Corsairs. The late production Mk.Vs met the needs of the 2nd TAF at low level.
Love this. Recently went to the RAF museum and saw quite a few Spitfires! Would love a video on the Hurricane too. While the Spitfire is iconic, I think of the Hurricane as the unsung hero of the Battle of Britain, especially as it accounted for 60% of all enemy losses
that may be true, but the spitfire was a anti fighter fighter where as the hurricane was anti bomber. without the spitfires luring and engaging the 109's the hurricane's would not have such a high kill rate
People who use that argument fail to mention that during the battle of Britain, the Spitfire only had 19 squadrons compared to the Hurricane's 30, yet the spitfire shot down a greater percentage of aircraft in relation to its smaller numbers. Had there been parity in the numbers of the two aircraft, the Spitfire would have easily outstripped the Hurricane's figures on a one-to-one basis. Leaving that aside, these two fighters, along with the many other aircraft involved in WWII, helped turn the tide of the war.
while Hurricanes made up about 61% of the fighter force, they only knocked down about 53% of e/a. Hurricanes had the worst kill ratio of the battle and were a fire trap to pilots. The Me110 had the best kill ratio, and that was against fighters not bombers like the Hurricane task.
@@bobsakamanos4469 killing fighters is not how you win a battle intended to result in aerial superiority for the enemy by bombing your aircraft production, airfields, AA defences and radar defences out of existence so my point is valid and stands.
The Germans captured an intact Spitfire in 1942. They put a DB 605A engine in it and found that it outclassed the BF 109e in every respect except top speed below 15,000ft. Records show that it was superior in all respects to the Spitfire Mk 5 as well. But the Germans couldn't reverse engineer the airframe and thus went nowhere with the project. The " Messerspit " got bombed in 1944.
When I saw this show up in my recommendations I figured it'd be the same wikipedia history as all the others I've seen on the subject. Because I felt like listening to some low-intensity background noise while playing games on the other monitor, I opened the video... ...and found it's actually an in-depth look into the science and technology involved in designing a WW2 fighter. On one hand, I found a new channel to follow. On the other, I completely forgot about the game I was playing and died while afk. You win some, you lose some :D.
I have always loved the content you have had in your videos, but I am especially enjoying the quality as of late. I really appreciated the voiceover by Mustard, too.
Funny how so many thigs that are used as examples of advantages for the Spitfire over Britain which ignore how wel it did over France for the evactuation at Dunkirk or over the channel, then again for Malta and the many paces where the Spitfire performed so well.
"small margins" in a celestial equation including the overwhelming lufwaffe against early radar and the early graves of hurricane pilots before the spitfires showed up
Great to hear so many subtle technical details that made the Spitfire the evocative icon it is. I learned much, thank you. However... The slower, stubbier Hawker Hurricane got a lot more lift from its thicker, draggier wings. Which gave it a greater climb rate than the early Spitfire. Back in 1940, given the same amount of flying time, the Hurricane could get higher than a Spitfire, even though it was flying much more slowly. So... during the Battle of Britain, after scrambling, it was by far the more numerous Hurricanes that climbed higher to tackle the BF109s. The enemy fighter escort usually flew higher than the bombers, ready to dive down and swat any Allied fighters threatening the bombers. Thus the Spitfires mostly only intercepted the bombers (during the Battle of Britain - to repeat this crucial timing detail). Sorry to pop the nostalgia bubble, but the notion that the Spitfire was the dog-fighting hero of the Battle of Britain is simply not correct, even though it was certainly only the Spitfire that had the raw performance to defeat the BF109 in one-on-one combat. It's just that, at that time of the war, there was not that much dogfighting. It was squadrons of interceptors trying to bring down vast armadas of bombers, while watching out for limited fighter escort diving on them from above. Of course, IF the BF109's managed to evade the Hurricanes and dive down to bomber level to protect the bombers and tackle the Spitfires, then yes, there was some dog-fighting. But the primary role of the Spitfire during the Battle of Britain was bomber interception, while the Hurricanes climbed higher to intercept (and keep busy) the German escort fighters. On the other hand, the Hurricane could take vast amounts of battle damage and still remain airborne, which is how it could last long enough to hold it's own against a superior BF109 when taking on the fighter escort higher up. It could absorb all the ammunition from an enemy plane, and still be flying. The size of the guns thus became a major factor in the effectiveness of any fighter at defeating the opposition. The razor-thin margin of victory in that particular conflict would be completely swamped in defeat, if any one link in that complex chain of strategic defense had not worked. Including the absense (or reduced numbers) of either Spitfire or Hurricane, and the priceless early warning from radar that enabled the Allied fighters to scramble, climb to altitude, and be ready and waiting to intercept the incoming enemy aircraft before they even got to their target drop area. Britain was also helped by the BF109 only being able to spend about 10 minutes in the combat zone, before being forced to turn for home by fuel limits. That's that "over their home territory" advantage mentioned. The other curious fact I find astounding, is that the pilot only had about 14 seconds of guns firing at their disposal. All that effort and fuel to maintain the planes, scramble, climb up, and then try to manouvre into a position to score a hit, and they had just 14 seconds of ammunition to do enough damage to the enemy to force their retreat or crash. Squandering bullets meant you could go home as soon as your 14 seconds were fired, whether you hit anything or not. That's a staggering amount of resource being spent, for such tiny margins of actually hitting an enemy plane. Not everyone was an ace... Much easier to hit a ponderous bomber... which a Spitfire did easily, bringing down significant numbers, and ultimately halting the Battle because the Luftwaffe could not afford to sustain the loss rate. Which is why they get so much credit for winning the battle, even if it was for "the wrong reasons". In later war years, long after the battle of Britain was over, the Spitfire continued to evolve with ever more powerful engines while the Hurricane stuck around, but mostly ceased development. Thus it was the Spitfire alone that continued defeating the enemy all the way to 1945, and is another reason why it is this plane that carries the accolade as the Battle Winner.
. The Hurricane was outdated and the RAF was so concerned in spring 1940 with its poor performance that they issued instructions to modify its engine to upgrade boost to 12 lb. A remedy perhaps up to 10,000' but that was well below the bomber stream. Because of its poor performance, the Hurri pilot often pushed the throttle though the gate (overboost), meaning that erks had to spend time inspecting the engine (if it survived the sortie). So much for quick turnaround time. Hurricane performance was lacking in speed, climb, acceleration, roll rate and especially dive (less than 400 mph), which is why it had the worst kill ratio of the battle of britain. Had Goering not ordered his fighter pilots to stick with bombers (vs taking the initiative as hunters), the Hurricanes would have continued to be at a gross disadvantage. Replacement pilots were poorly trained as it was and the Hurricane didn't help them with its tendency to burn its pilots. As for top cover, it was the Spitfires that climbed faster and took on the 109's first. Slower Hurricanes took longer to climb and to catch up to a bomber stream - late to the party. As Bader said, they (Spitfires) always had to wait for the bloody Hurricanes. Outdated. Shame on Hawker.
@@bobsakamanos4469 You seem to know your stuff. Much of what I wrote was information passed on by someone I considered to be an extremely knowledgeable expert in the field, and had no reason to doubt it. He made it very clear that AFTER the Battle of Britain the Spitfire improved significantly while the Hurricane did not, such that the top cover role was usurped by 1941. I'm wondering just WHEN (Douglas) Bader made his comment - because timing would mean a lot. On the face of it, your information seems to contradict everything I thought I knew. However, the Spitfire only just saw first active duty over Dunkirk. I'm unclear as to when the original 2 blade fixed pitch propeller got upgraded, but this (along with a more than doubling of engine horsepower over the years) transformed performance. So they couldn't be that plentiful or evolved just a few months later during BoB. Or could they? Also seems unfair to criticise Hawker for failing to develop, when most of the Spitfire development was Rolls Royce improving the engine power for the Spitfire. The "Shame on Hawker" at the end thus feels a little harsh. The fact that the RAF had any fighters at all at the start of the war, was because Hawker personally funded the mass building of Hurricanes, when the RAF refused to buy anything. With Chamberlain still hoping appeasement would work, the UK was not spending much on acquiring hardware. But Hawker had Hurricanes built and ready to go at the outbreak of war. Of course the Hurricane was outdated - it began life much earlier, and went into production earlier, without the benefit of the secret wind tunnel facility at Farnborough, because Hawker felt the UK should be ready with something. And single wing fighters were very much a novelty at the time, that Germany was storming ahead with technologically. But with all that investment coming out of his own pocket, I would not expect it to be as advanced or developed as the Spitfire. Can you imagine how an F1 car that you or I design on a scrap of paper might compare aerodynamically with the wind-tunnel honed, CFD calculated cars of today? Hurricane versus Spitfire wasn't quite that bad, but Spitfire certainly had a huge advantage right from the outset. I am trying to view this without any rose-tinted Spitfire goggles, as much as I love and admire the plane myself. I just happen to appreciate the Hurricane for what it was, and don't expect it to ever match a Spitfire in any contest. But then, I am also partial to the Mosquito and the ME262 as "gorgeous aeroplanes". But I digress. I have some documentaries about this stuff recorded on DVR. I should go watch them again. Thanks for prompting me to "go and check".
@@bythelee thanks for your calm reply. Firstly, be cautious of "documentaries", which historically are guarded scripts to prevent corporate legal lashback, that usually includes interviews with vet pilots. Getting to the heart of issues requires examination of service documents, test pilot reports, losses analysed/verified from both RAF and LW records, just to name a few. Now, ref Hawker, Camm was notoriously hard to get along with and had chased away a number of good engineers, including the famous Shenstone, who was later involved with Supermarine, RAE and the NAA Mustang. Camm could have produced a thinner wing and a proper Meredith cooling scheme in the four years since (1936) they realized their mistake. Instead he repeated the mistake on the bulky Typhoon "interceptor", which had numerous other defects. A good design team needs a good project manager, which Camm was not.
First time I heard a balanced treatment of the (semi) elliptical wing. When they chopped off the wingtips*, it struck me that they had to work pretty hard to find differences. You still have one guy, one ~150p hp engine, aspect ratio 6 and wing loading similar to contemporaries. Excellent and informative job here
The clipped wingtips reduced the turning performance a little bit, but the reduced drag gave a higher top speed. Also, the roll rate improved, since the tip of the wing isn't being dragged obliquely through the air as the aircraft rolls. These were tiny margins indeed, and done only when the trade-off was deemed important to better match local enemy aircraft. But it kills the aesthetics, too!
The fact that in the WW1 era we as a human race learned to make a machine gun(or pair of machine guns) fire in between the blades of a propeller spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute, without hitting them, is an engineering marvel and masterpiece in it's self. absolutely amazing.
I wouldnt mind a video about the hurricane. I loved that plane in il2. It had such wacky fire power you could decimate another dudes plane in a split second.
I've been fascinated with spitfires ever since I was a young kid. There was one junked in the woods nearby my home. I used to walk by it every morning on my way to school. I have no idea how it got there. It was in pretty bad shape, missing the wings and parts of the fuselage, etc. Nonetheless, I could still sit inside the cockpit and imagine I was the pilot. It was so cool! They eventually hauled it out of the woods. I heard they were able to salvage some parts from it to restore other spitfires.
The groundreaking Spitfire is quite easy to understand and it has nothing to do with being patriotic or not, the Spitfire was well ahead of it's time and remained unmatched right through the war, as said by William Dunne USAAF pilot, no other aircraft was close to perfect as the Spitfire.
One interesting fact of the Spitfire that was not mentioned is that in order to improve the plane's range, some of the later generation Spitfires used powerful electromagnets on the fuel lines to improve combustion efficiency. This, of course was years before the advent of powerful neodymium magnet which can perform the same function in a much smaller form factor.
@@jessewilson7415 Clearly so, or Mister Calles would have been able to provide the links that I asked him for. I was thinking of using his technology on my Camry - on a good day, I get 45 miles per gallon (Imperial measurements) - and, with the price we pay for our petrol, I'm always on the lookout for any improvement in economy.
I had the privilege of getting up close to a present day operational Spitfire a few years ago. The owner of my previous company restored it to full flight over a period of about 10 years. So we spent the day at the hangar where it was located and then just before the provided lunch the pilot flew it and did several rounds over the airfield and the hangar. Spectacular!
Where I live in Hamilton Ontario I can simply look up above my house in the summer months and watch the Lancaster fly over on its way to the Hamilton war plane heritage runway. What a noise those four Merlins make !
This is unbelievable, real engineering has done such an incredible job to explain such complex matter within a shortspan, I bow my head with deep respect, appreciation and admiration
No interviews, deviations from the topic, no exaggerated narrative.
Just physics, statistics, and engineering.
If you had a TV show when I was a kid, I would watch it every chance I got. Good job on this one.
@Tech God forbid someone provide positive feedback to a content creator. It's better than scouring the comment section to find someone to talk down on.
Of course the information is on the internet, do you think I woke up this morning thinking "I want to do research on the engineering of a spitfire"? Of course not. Did a 20 minute video sound enticing? sure.
I'm not going to change your opinion on the mater, so this conversation is a waste of my time.
@Tech find some grass to touch snowflake
I think you’ll like this channel. He covers a lot of WWII aircraft in depth
ua-cam.com/users/GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles
@Tech sure its easily available, but are they reliable? This is as easy as easy gets, with the added sprinkle of entertainment.
Excellent commentary Joseph, these videos are gems eh?
The wing armament was actually seen as a disadvantage because each gun needed to be configured to converge at a particular distance, which reduced overall accuracy. The BF109's nose guns concentrated firepower and improved roll rate by centralising mass.
True!
However, the convergence point meant you _had_ to be a _specific_ distance from the target for maximum accuracy.
But this _also_ meant that you could _opt_ for a more spray-and-pray approach at different distances.
So, like, you can put all your eggs in one basket, or decide that a few rounds on target was better than none. Which was a "luxury"(?) that the Bf-109 did not have.
Right? 🤔😅
When compared one to one the wing armament could be considered a disadvantage and less pilot friendly. However when fielding planes and maintenance it could be a great advantage to have fewer moving parts and a greater number of guns firing.
Really depends on what each gives up. Its much harder fitting a heavy nose armament on a single engine prop fighter because the prop and the engine are in the way. So while the armament is arguable more accurate, you have far less throw weight.
Mount those guns in the wings however and you can fit more of them, arguably less accurate, but more throw weight, especially with the B and C wings which were the cannon armed wings.
Accuracy is only part of the equation, throw weight is just as important, how many rounds can you throw at the target in the very limited period of time you have it in your sights.
Given the ranges those pilots were firing at, typically less than 400 metres, often *much* less, then the argument about gun convergence become less critical, and that increased throw weight that Spitfires armed with the later wings were able to deliver to their target becomes more important. After all, that convergence is only growing less and less severe as the range closes.
In other words, their are costs and benefits to both wing mounted and nose mounted armaments in prop fighters, and it really depends on what the priorities are for the air forces involved. It is no accident that the prop aircraft that mounted the heaviest nose armament were ALL twin engine designs....
I once saw a video which said that the nose gun caused reliability issues
in that case both armament configurations can be seen as equally advantageous and disadvantageous, as wingmounted is preferable for flight performance but nosemounted is preferable for combat performance
The sheer imagination of getting into a plane and going into an air battle like this makes my skin shiver. These pilots were absolute madlads.
if I am not mistaken they were indeed "lads". Some started training at age 18 and then graqduated to busting NAZIs in the sky by age 20 ! Respect.
Ever heard of the 303rd? They were a bunch of poles that flew in Huricanes for the brits in the battle of britain. They were so pissed that they lost to the germans they would routinely run their planes into german bombers once they ran out of ammo. Thats waht Id call a mad lad.
@@firewolfy_6 that's not true :P
@@piotrkosciuszko9835 prove me wrong.
@@firewolfy_6
It's you making the assertion, it's up to YOU to prove it, not a person to disprove it :)
I've heard some Polish people say we don't respect what they did in the war. That's not true from my viewpoint, I always knew they did well. Indeed the other day the Battle Of Britain film was shown here in the UK and it makes a point of showing the Polish pilots in a good light .. ramming not being a part of it :)
I really love how despite being a Spitfire video, it takes time for the 109 too. It's fascinating to see the ingenious and different ways both sides approached various technical challenges.
Especially the fluid coupling.
One side used genocide. One didn’t. Go figure.
Yes, and all this under pressure of military heads busting your chops. Fascinating that the Brits got an advantage because the German engineers weren't allowed to enter their designs in races. The jolly good old Treaty of Versailles, old chap
@@james6401 There's no reason that the germans couldn't have learned the lessons of racing aircraft design from Brits, French or Italians. Heinkel and the Guther brothers seem to have lived in a bubble and ignored their own governement's wind tunnel research.
Wonderful documentary. my father was British and worked on the early warning system for the Battle of Britain. he wanted to fly a spitfire so much but his vision wasn't good enough - he wore glasses., but he was so proud of that plane. He gave me a model version of the plane to assemble one Christmas, and I was so proud of the plane too. God rest his soul.
Great story, could do with a few more dragons though.
He could have taken a tip from Woods-Scawen who memorised the optician's sight card for the medical test. He got through as many of his own Hurricanes as 109s he shot down. He did not survive BoB but well done him and his generation.
@@myjizzureye LOL
@Bob Dobalina Good story indeed, may your dad rest in peace.
@@neilparsons7250 Aha, his dedication negate the bad view...
Albeit it's not that hard to memorize I guess, ingenuity maybe? ^^
@@myjizzureye Such fun you 🥰
6:00 I'm pretty sure this is Mustard's iconic narrating, glad to see him voicing over the quote
Love the Mustard cameo! Great to see collaboration like this between great channels
As soon as I heard the first "bugger" I got all excited!
was looking for this comment
@@christopherthompson2004
This channel must be one of the reasons that Mustard doesn't upload his own original content more regularly.
And where is Mustard credited?
Timestamp?
I'm an aeronautical engineering student who loves military aviation history and the technologies involved in it. I've spent my fair amount of time learning about and making models of the Spitfire but it's so awesome to still learn new details of this beautiful bird and see all the information, videos, graphics and 3d models that the Real Engineering team put together. I dearly thank you and salute your work.
The channel Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles may be interesting for you. He gives a lot of details in his videos.
@@sebotto5149 I will take a look, thanks
@@victorherr101 Get a copy of Not Much of an Engineer by Sir Stanley Hooker. It’s inspirational.
@@alexnather7614 Bravo.
Edit: I see Alex Nathers post has disappeared. It was attempting to correct a spelling mistake.
Look up the Blackbird. You will enjoy the clip. I don't remember the U Tube title
I was born in 47, and as a small child my parents were still in the habit saving any bits of aluminium foil they came across. It seems that during the war years there was country- wide effort to secure as much aluminium scrap as possible with which to build Spitfires.
This is easily one of the best and thorough Spitfire documentaries I've yet seen...
Towns around the UK would hold fundraising events during WW2 to raise the money to build a Spitfire. My Grandad used to tell me stories of collecting scrap metal, wood and paper to raise money for the fund.
Mounting the guns centerline is beneficial when it comes to aiming and gun convergence. Wing mounted guns are typically set at angle so their shots converge at a certain range, making that range the optimal range. But that also means that outside the optimum aiming is harder and half your shots will always miss.
Great video! The Spitfire is just beautiful!
While true, it's not as much of an impact as you think. You generally didn't take shots until you were *very* close, so you didn't exactly have much of an effective firing distance to allow the convergence to break up the shots much. This effect is much more prominent in video games than it ever was in real life. You really only had an effective range of 250m, and around 400m for bombers under best conditions, otherwise you're just wasting ammunition.
@@Stealth86651 Oh it had an impact for sure. The Bf-109 spent a lot of time also shooting at bombers, which with a centerline armament meant they could shoot accurately while keeping out of the bombers defensive guns.
@@Kman31ca Yes, it had an impact as a technology. People just assume it had a lot bigger impact at ranges that were unrealistic, that's all. You can read the pilot reports or statistics on that though.
Later versions will be at 109 had Wing ornaments as well so that only works for the first years
It also has the advantage of moving mass closer to the centre reducing inertia resulting in quicker roll rate
That’s “Hydraulics”
But really, an insane presentation! Even as a former pilot, I learned a lot in this video
I clearly heard him say "Hydrolics", so phonetically correct, abeit not the correct spelling 😀
I love iiit. hydrolics aaaa
7:01 for timestamp
Also: carburetor (American English)
It’s actually ‘pneumatics’; there are no hydraulics in the wing.
Proud to say my Dad was a member of the RAF - an aircraft fitter - and his job was to help to keep those planes 'fit to fly'. He was a young man in his 20s when he also had that great responsibility in signing off those planes, after being serviced, AS 'fit to fly'. Years later - in middle age - he admitted he would never have the nerve to do that type of job again. But youth is a wonderful thing, and he - and many more like him - did their jobs, and did them well. He was one of the lucky ones to survive the war, live to raise a family, and lead a good life. RIP Dad, and to all the other young men and women who fought during WWII - and the many who did give their lives - may you rest in peace, also, and know that you ALL were from the 'Greatest Generation'. :)
My late unck was flight engineer on Halifaxes with Coastal Command based in Stornaway and the fitters ran a book. Nobody was bothered either.
Women did not fight WW2 on the allied side, unless you count the soviets as """allies"""
As someone who has studied the Spitfire all my adult life and also flown one, can I say that this documentary is of impeccable quality. There are a few misplaced clips of Hurricanes and Hispano Buchons, but that's forgivable. Your explanations of aerodynamic principles are very clear and accurate, and you rightly focus on the key points that made the Spitfire an apex predator: Bev Shenstone's wing design; the power to weight achieved by Rolls Royce engines; and the radiator technology that Supermarine had developed during the Schneider Trophy campaign.
I'm really impressed and Nebula has instantly become a trusted brand. I have taken out a sub and look forward to much more.
I'm a bit sad you haven't mentioned Meredith when talking about the radiator, the bloke basically saved the Spitfire a couple of miles/hour when they had to abandon vapor cooling.
@@MDzmitry Meredith was working with RJ Mitchell on the "new Spitfire" in 1937 when Mitchell died. It had a carb intake under the spinner and a ventral radiator, which freed up the wing space for the fuel tanks as originally planned. Such a revision would have made the Spit faster, climb better and increase its range. Kindelberger visited Supermarine in 1938 and asked him to build Spitfires. He declined.
Sadly, Vickers would not let Smith revisit this concept or disrupt the production lines
4:10 - "the pilot will deflect the elevators downward to increase lift". No. You pull on the stick, the elevators deflect upwards to increase the down force on the tail causing the angle of attack to increase, thus increasing lift.
Yeah that part made no sense at all…
Your no expert. Don't be a pilotsplainer you patriarchal oppressor 😡😡😡
Thank you for this video. My Father in law is Major General Carroll McColpin. He was a Spitfire Ace with the Eagle Squadron. He loved this plane and talked about it often. Look him up online, his story is fascinating. He and his wife are buried at Arlington National Cemetery a True war Hero.
According to the book about Hub Zemke, the US Spitfire pilots hated to give up their Spits for the P-47s.
5:58 I would recognize that voice anywhere! It was a very welcome surprise to hear Mustard, considering all the aviation videos he does. Keep up the fantastic work, you two!
Yeah it surprised me!
I'm glad I wasn't going insane!
HAHA i was about to comment that, that voice was so familiar, and it's so surprising for me that Mustard show up right here as RJ Mitchell
I was gonna say, I believe that was RJ Mustard lol
And where is Mustard credited?
To this day, I think the Spitfire is still one of the most beautifully elegant machines ever devised by man. It's amazing to me that engineering decisions based on hard numbers aimed at making a weapon of war as powerful and efficient as possible happened to result in a shape that is so aesthetically pleasing to so many people. It's one for the ages for sure.
I agree 100%.
At every airshow I have ever attended, the Spitfire gets the most sincere 'oohs and ahs' of any WW2 plane there; especially from the Boomers raised on their fathers' true stories of valor, bravery, horror and glory of their young manhood.
Yes so elegant and harmonious! I love the Messeschmit but it's just CUBES EVERYWHERE ^^
It's almost as if aesthetics and function and intrinsically liked when dealing with aerodynamics.
@@theallseeingmaster That is so true. Seeing the Memorial Flight, especially the Spitfire raises so many emotions.
Dude…. You’ve outdone yourself with this video…. Thank you for taking the time to educate us in these matters. As a history major I really appreciate it!
Kiss ass 💋
I'm gonna need to see a video on the F-102, F-106, and SAGE
It's such a complicated yet fascinating system, while also having a ton of flaws
Look up Bruce Gordon here on UA-cam. He has was a real deal, F-102/106 jock. He also has a book out on the planes and his experiences.
@@ramosel Yep, been watching him for a good few years now
The quality of these animations is absolutely staggering! I can’t begin to understand how much time and effort has gone in to them
Not as much as it went to the vending machine animation XD
Even the technical Illustrations he showed were sublime.
Question: How did the Spitfire work?
Answer: Pretty well!
Well that's one answer.
240 likes and only 1 reply? Lemme fix dat
Hey! I'm sorry but I think you messed up in 4:07.
To increase angle of attack and thus, the aircraft's lift, the elevator must be deflected upwards, not downwards.
Hope, I'm helping and excellent video! :)
you're correct
As a pilot, I confirm. On animation, the elevator should be deflected the opposite way. Regardless, awesome video!!! Keep with the good job, I love your videos on things that fly and always learn tons of amazing stuff
he pinned a different comment pointing out the same thing and replied to it btw
@@StanislawPusep a bit counter-intuitive, huh?
You learn a new thing every day...
@@somedude2492 Its not counter-intuitive, when the elevator points up it makes ur nose go up, pretty simple. And im sure that mistake was on purpose so people make comments about this because everyone knows this. And thanks to this the video will have bigger engagement=more views
I love how you integrated the tactics of dogfight into each section of the engineering script. Giving us a full understanding of not just how but also why. Top video as always!
You gotta do the Mosquito now- utilizing unexploited manufacturing resources in the form of woodworking shops, while also taking advantage of the benefits a wood construction could give? It's a perfect blend of engineering and manufacturing knowledge.
Yeah, turns out being able to carve and sand in smooth 3D curves rather than needing multiple sheets of metal allows a VERY clean finish. One of the only fast bomber designs of the war that was ACTUALLY fast enough for the speed to act as a defensive measure
4:07 - Is that correct? Pushing forward on stick pitches the nose down (elevator deflects down). Wouldn't that decrease lift? You'd gain airspeed but not lift, right?
You're right, it's the wrong way around. Deflecting the elevator that way will decrease the angle of attack and reduce lift, not increase like said in the video.
Maybe hes dyslexic
Your no expert. Don't be a pilotsplainer you patriarchal oppressor 😡😡😡
wait a minute, your on to something
Not only was the Spitfire a very capable aircraft right from the start but it served as an exceptional development platform so that with upgrades it was able to compete both with the BF 109 and the Fw 190 throughout the course of the war.
ꜱᴇɴᴅ ᴀ ᴍᴇꜱꜱᴀɢᴇ👆👆
The spitfire was a dog from the start. Absolutely terrible. The Merlin engine won the war. Not the Spitfire or the Lancaster.
@@matthewvincent8971 sounds like a cope
@@matthewvincent8971 Sounds like you don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about.
Oh...wait...I get it. You're just trolling. Okay, troll, you've had your fun and you've provoked me into giving you the attention that you so desperately need.
You can go now. Bye.
@@matthewvincent8971 bruhh
4:11 The elevator deflects UPWARDS to create lift into the turn...
Another thing to note is that an aircrafts turn performance is not solely dependent on it's turn radius, although it is important for many maneuvers of a dogfight (one circle, scissors, etc.).
The other crucial component is turn rate, or how many degrees per second the aircraft can complete in a turn. This is important for two circle dogfights, as well as other fights.
If you want to learn more, look up one circle vs two circle dogfights!
The Bf-109 did have 2 advantages. The first was a higher rate of climb due to lower wing loading. The second was the high pressure fuel injection engine which meant it could perform high speed dives. The merlin engine was fed by a carburetor which meant it would stall if put under the same forces.
The main reason the Germans were unable to achieve air superiority though was the home field advantage. British fighters could afford to fight far more aggressively than their German counterparts as they had full fuel tanks and could use them up as they would just land. The Germans had to consider the distance back home as well.
Also quite a few planes that are shot down don't crash. Holes in the fuel tanks or a compromise of the engine or limited damage to the flight controls can render a plane unable to fly but still capable of landing safely. If a British plane got disable by light damage the pilot would just be put in a different plane and the plane would be repaired. If the same thing happened to a German both the pilot and plane were lost.
When the roles reversed the British didn't fare much better than the Germans had with their bombings. What made the bombings successful was the collapse of Germany's air defenses due to the overstretching of the eastern front and the incompetence of Gouring. Germany never developed a well functioning fully integrated air defense network like Britain did and by 1943 even if the British lost a lot of planes that didn't matter due to the practically infinite resources provided by the US.
@@MrMarinus18 First of all, in wing loading a Spitfire would always outperform a contemporary Bf.109 model. Secondly, 109's advantage in climb rates (albeit not tremendous and at times non-existent) was provided by the sheer horse power per kilogram ratio.
And the never-ending stanza about fuel injection falls apart since 1942 and the implementation of Merlin 66 (alongside US-produced 266 model), 70-series and every later iteration. Even if you consider 1942 "late", fuel injection alone doesn't win battles, it only gives a chance to escape alive. Didn't stop Mk.I and (later on) Mk.V Spits from warding the Germans off above Britain, Malta and North Africa until Mk.IXs arrived.
@@MrMarinus18 impressive german pilots can shoot down more planes than british
@@MDzmitry well said. People always try to use 1940 Spitfire Merlin III performance for the entire war.
Truly one of the best pieces of engineering of all times.
Truly one of the engineerings of all time
@@Qwertype315 My favourite part was when he said "It's spittin' time", and started spittin' everywhere.
Spitfire overrated. Nostalgia. Merlin was great in anything it was put in with Americans driving most of the upgrades. Looks better with cropped wings.
@@Qwertype315 bro you just the comment
BF-109 was better with fuel injection. Some serious rose colored glasses with the spitfire. The Hurricane was 99% as good.
Actually in a turn, you increase the deflection of the elevator, not decrease it as stated in the video; that is the rear edge of the elevator move upward. This works to move the tail downward and the nose upward, which increases the angle of attack, and thus increases lift to compensate for the loss of the vertical lift component while banking.
Glad you said this, I found that odd as well. Flying model airplanes is my reference point and you'd go straight into the ground with down elevator.
Thanks for using 601 squadron Spits in the CG sequences - my grandfather was a flight sergeant in 601, he knew that Merlin like the back of his hand and I am now the proud owner of his RR Merlin manuals.
Just purchased the Nebula bundle and honestly the entire price is worth it just for the logistics of D-day and the Battle of Britain series’s. Absolutely fantastic content, keep it up
Hey, I have been taking to introduction to aerospace engineering. I love how those concepts applied here. It's cool to see with knowledge and apply how it works.
The amount of research and hardwork behind both the spitfire and this animated video is amazing in itself 💯
Maybe. I want to know if the guy filmed tightening the prop nut was paid for each time he appeared 😁
This summer I had the honour of sitting inside the cockpit of one of the Duxford IWM Spitfires. What an amazing machine. ❤
If you ever visit Stoke-on-Trent they have a Spitfire museum as the home of Reginald
This is an awesome video! Thank you very much! I really like how you explain how things were made and how they changed with time.
Very good presentation, one minor flaw that has already been covered a lot. The saddest part of the whole Spitfire story is the death of RJ Mitchell before he got to see what his plane was truly capable of, perhaps a brief mention of that would be nice.
He barely even worked on it though
He also HATED the name Spitfire!
@@koitorobYes - apparently, he was in hospital when a friend told him that the aircraft was going into production.
"They're going to name it the Spitfire"
Mitchell - "Just the sort of bloody stupid name they would give it."
RJ was working with Meredith on the "new cannon Spitfire" Type 312, when he died in 1937. It had the carb intake under the spinner and a ventral radiator scheme, which would free up the wing space for fuel tanks, as originally intended. The result would have made it faster, with better climb and longer combat range.
Kindelberger was asked to build Spitfires on his visit to Supermarine in 1938. He declined.
Vickers prevented Smith from pursuing Type 312 soas to keep the production lines running.
Glad you gave the Spitfire an updated video since the last one 6 years ago! It's very cool to see how far this channel has come since then.
Another clever innovation in the radiator design was that cool air drawn into the radiator was heated by the radiator core causing it to expand, then when it left the radiator, it was travelling significantly faster than when it entered, thereby creating a small amount of thrust (in effect a jet) which also partially negated the drag created by the radiator. Clever man Mr. Mitchell. we can only imagine what kind of designs he would have come up with if he'd had access to turbojets.
Thats like saying the pilots ate beans before every flight because farting added extra thrust.....
@@mikeland3453 lol, true though very clever design of the radiator inlet and outlet
Actually, that radiator cooling scheme you describe was due to Meredith (1935) at RAE. The Spitfire radiators were a bandaid solution when the glycol liquid / radiators were adopted. That space in the wings was originially intended for fuel tanks.
Meredith and RJ Mitchell collaborated on an upgraded version of the Spitfire (Type 312) with a more efficient ventral radiator which RJ was working on when he died in 1937.
The square, wing-mounted radiators were a main source of drag and didn't really enable the Meredith effect unfortunately.
Great content, as always! However, I’m not sure your explanation of a narrow radius turn is correct: in a steep turn a pilot will pull on the stick to add some nose up attitude which adds a vector complementing aerodynamic lift of the wing to increase vertical lift and a centripetal force thus diminishing the turn radius an keeping the aircraft in horizontal flight. A pull on the stick will deflect the horizontal stabilizer upward, creating a downward force on the tail (nose up of airplane) In the video the contrary is shown and told.
Second small correction: the pressure equalization on the wingtip will produce a VORTEX (plural vortices) around the wing contributing to induced drag.
Keep up the good work. I always enjoy your videos. Thanks!
we get ourselves into this kind of trouble when we decide to use pluralization rules from other languages. 'vortexes' sounds like a perfectly cromulent English word to me.
yes, the video made an error regarding the elevator direction, but was bang on regarding the induced drag due to increased AoA. The Spitfire elliptical wing generated less induced drag than other fighters, especially at higher altitudes, despite having a thin wing. Brilliant design.
Disappointed that you didn't talk about Beatrice Shilling and how she fixed the spitfire's carburetor problem.
Still a great video.
Check out an older video, "the spitfires fatal flaw"
Just one of many Jr. engineers who solved problems at Supermarine and RAE. Meredith was a more famous engineer with a broader impact on WWII, like the P-51 design. Shenstone was perhaps the most brilliant engineer in the Supermarine crowd after RJ.
Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.
this video is insane man. You are already the best engineering channel on UA-cam and managed to step it up a whole another level. Congrats!
🤖
The person saying R.J. Mitchell's statement kind of sounds like Mustard's voice
Possibly the most beautiful machine ever made.
17:00 The armament layout was mixed up in this take. It features a 109 firing 6 guns from its wings, like a Spitfire, instead of the usual machine guns on top of the nose plus nose cannon and/or dual wing cannons.
Props to the animators on this video! Really nice work on the visuals to help explain everything.
Great video! One thing I noticed though, at 4.15, you say the elevator goes down. I think it should be up, otherwise the plane would come out of the turn. At a steep bank angle, the elevator effectively functions as the rudder.
Both Nebula series have been a dream to watch!
And I love how even though this is a long video, it's only a taste of what those series have.
My grandfather was in the Airforce and I remember how he landed the Spitfire in a field after an engine failure. But despite this, the spitfire was his favorite plane. He flew many of the MIG models as well but he always said that the Spitfire fought back with it's controls and felt like you actually did the flying.
I have read Spitfire pilot reports that the Spitfire just goes where you think about where you want it to go. In other words an easy plane to fly. This has to improve survival ability in a war situation.
This has got to be an interesting story: how did he end up going from Spitfire to MIG?
@@enterthekraken lend Lease
@@enterthekraken I can only think he might have been Russian - they were given Spitfires.
Was your grandfather Russian or Polish?
I love the SPITFIRE as it was seen in the 1944 war film set in the movie town of Chillingbourne.
Thank you for making videos like these.
I really love these (especially) WW2 aviation videos!
I'm currently studying (and struggling since Online learning) Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering. WW2 aviation has always been my passion, for as long as I can remember.
So thank you for videos like this, it really keeps me motivated throughout my studies ❤️
Thanks for your work, in general, but specifically on airplanes. Your videos on the P-47 Thunderbolt and the A-10 Warthog were amazing. This video on the Spitfire is awesome, too. The Spit was the most beautiful fighter of WW2, imho. The P-51 Mustang would be a great analysis for you. The way it was mediocre until is got the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine would be interesting. Thanks for your efforts, from a guy who lacks the math skills but can understand your explanation.
Ive always felt like people dont appreciate the absolute workhorse that its the p-47. It was a vital plane introduced at a vital time, and while it had its issues, much like the m4 sherman, it was the right weapon at the right time. Not the best, but far from the worst.
The P51 was much more aerodynamically advanced than the Spitfire, especially in cooling drag reduction. However the Americans struggled with supercharger design, and it was the introduction of the Merlin 66 that greatly improved high altitude performance. This is what made the difference.
@@sheldonholy5047 P51 was a great plane, although it couldn't climb or turn like a Spitfire. Its strengths were in other areas - especially range. Also, and this is not meant disparagingly, the P51 was cheap to build which gave it a big advantage over the P47 and the Spitfire in wartime. US mass production made a huge difference to the outcome of WW2 and the careful use of strategic materials was a big part of that.
@@slammerf16 also a very good point - the spitfire did take around 30-40% more man hours to manufacture than most of its contemporaries, namely the Bf109. This is quite often overlooked.
The Germans did well considering their lack of many materials which the allies had access to, which forced them to use ball bearings instead of sleeve bearings, which is quite undesirable in large engines.
Thanks!
Great video and great visuals as always!
Please note that at 4:11 the elevator should be deflected upward to make the airplane pitch up, increase the angle of attack and, ultimately, produce more lift (and more drag).
Yes. Elevators up gives downward lift causing the aircraft to pivot around the center of mass which pitches the nose upward increasing lift.
The wing is also where all the appreciable lift comes from. The elevator just produces a rotational moment to increase the wing's angle of attack. I'm surprised Real Engineering made this mistake. He's usually a lot better at getting his facts straight, even on the topic of aviation.
@@米空軍パイロット nobody is an expert in everything.
he pinned a different comment pointing out the same thing and replied to it btw
what's better the Elliptical wing of the spifire or the laminar flow wing of the P51 mustang??
Nice Mustard cameo/Easter egg at 6:00.
There's another critical benefit of the lower wing loading of the Spitfire vs 109: future proofing. Modifications to an aircraft will almost ALWAYS make newer models heavier than the older models, even if overal capabilities improve. Since the 109 already had a rather small wing, the late war G and K models were beginning to feel very sluggish in low speed flight, while the Griffon Spitfires were still quite elegant to fly.
I think you made a mistake at 4:07, in a turn, one would need to the elevator deflect up, rotate the nose up to pitch the main wing up for more lift, to compensate for the lost lift. Not pitch down as shown in the animation.
Pitching down may keep a plane flying in a straight line, even when the plane is rolled to one side (wings are tilted), although that usually also requires rudder input. This is rarely done except when trying to looking for land marks or in an air show.
Your no expert. Don't be a pilotsplainer you patriarchal oppressor 😡😡😡
The layout of the guns in the Bf-109 did have its advantages, since all the guns, especially in the later models from the 'F' onwards, were located in a small frontal area, two above the nose and one through the propellor spinner, the fire was concentrated and meant a shorter burst did more damage.
ꜱᴇɴᴅ ᴀ ᴍᴇꜱꜱᴀɢᴇ👆👆..
Met an American who flew these in combat..
He's gone on but talks with him were priceless and taught me a lot about proper aspirated engines
Then again, the Hawker Hurricane also did just as much work, so maybe you should do a video on it.
The Hurricane was the real Hero and did all the dog work!
The Hurricane, outdated by mid-late 1940 & had the worst kill ratio of the Battle of Britain.
@@bobsakamanos4469 outdated does not mean useless my friend.
@@kommandantgalileo of course. As Stalin said, "quantity has a quality all its own". ...but that's an endorsement of attrition warfare, meaning loss of our young lads barely out of their teens. Better quality means saved lives and less profiteering.
@@bobsakamanos4469 well, at least the hurricanes prevented more lost lives.
6:05 that’s Mustard! Top job lads!
5:58 I do give a bugger that RJ Mitchell is portrayed as an American here - he was British born and bred.
Awesome video. Though there might be a mistake in the discussion on turn performance. The elevator should deflect trailing edge up to increase lift on wing (and drag) instead of up.
Excellent video but there's a typo @7:01 it says "hydrolics" when it's presumably meant to be "hydraulics"
Not mentioned is the huge difference between the prototype Spitfire wing and that of the production planes. The prototype wing was so poor aerodynamically that its initial performance was no better that that of the Huricane. Being well down on the expected top speed.
This being due to parasitic drag of the prototype wing pannel shapes and orientation. These had to be changed along with the internal support frames. This in turn required a serious redesign of the wing and took around two years to implement. Which was one of the reasons for the long gap between the first flight of the prototype and those of the Mark 1 producion Spitfires.
You have missed one point when discussing the benefit of the elliptical wing, the lower induced drag does not seem much flying straight, but induced drag varies with the SQUARE of the Lift coefficient so in a 4G turn the induced drag is X 16 times. This fact also impacts the ability to turn tightly, the Me 109 had automatic slats which allowed its wing to achieve much higher lift coefficients in a tight turn, but at the cost of much higher induced drag. This caused Me 109s to loose speed or altitude or both in a tight turn if they tried to keep up with a Spit. Later in the War, the improved Octane rating of the fuel allowed the Merlin to be boosted much more than Nazi engines.
ꜱᴇɴᴅ ᴀ ᴍᴇꜱꜱᴀɢᴇ👆👆
Exactly, less induced drag especially at high altitude means less power (boost) needed to maintain altitude during the turn. The Spit excelled at that and the stall buffet let the pilot ride the edge of the stall without fear of flick rolling like the Hurricane, P-40 and Mustang, etc.
I think you should read "Secrets of the Spitfire" - the biography of Beverley Shenstone - the senior aerodynamicist working for Mitchell . The elliptical wing was not merely chosen to cover the guns. Apart from the reduction in induced drag, the wing , which was actually 2 semi ellipses with a common major axis on the 25% chord line, had many other benefits apart from providing enough depth to cover the guns and undercarriage.
ꜱᴇɴᴅ ᴀ ᴍᴇꜱꜱᴀɢᴇ👆👆..
The benefits of the elliptical wing were first described by english aerodynamicist, Fredrick Lanchester in 1907. Prantl expanded on his work in 1918 with the Lanchester-Prandtl wing theory. Operationally, its gentle pre-stall buffet allowed the Spitfire pilot to ride the edge of the stall in combat without fear of sudden wing stall/ snap roll. Hurricane pilots didn't have the same warning and hence were more reluctant to push their aircraft to the limit. Kittyhawk pilots also were afraid of the aileron snatch and flick roll if too agressive in the turn. The P-40s also had a tendency for the rudder to lock up in certain manouvers.
Spitfires saved many a pilot due to its fine handling.
20:41 I’m not a history buff or even a fan of this material but I was complementing the high quality of the models sets and animations of this video during my viewing. Fantastic video.
The effort you guys put into making the graphics in these videos is crazy. Top notch!
I love the explanations of the engineering. I got to see a Spitfire flying at an airshow around 1980. It is an incredible aircraft.
Tough choice: seen a Mustang in flight (beautiful sound); like to see a Spit, even a wreck, love to see one flying!
@@edwardgatey8301 The pilot did a few low altitude high speed passes. The sound was amazing. You could feel the power. There must be a few still flying. Check your local airshows.
IIUC, that He-111 was more likely to have been shot down by a Hurricane. The Spitfires mostly engaged the escorting fighters, leaving the Hurricanes to go after the bombers.
Watching this channel grow is amazing!
I'm now studying aerospace engineering and I hope I get to work on a project that turns up on this channel for good reasons!!
Most noticed the wrong elevator in the turn, but I think that also the ailerons have problems too: you use them just to enter into a turn, but they return flat during the turn, otherwise you will continue to increase the bank angle. Flat during the turn, then in the opposite direction to return to straight flight.
Yes noticed this, quite a big mistake to not notice this when reviewing the video before uploading
This channel is a joke.
You keep the ailerons deflected during the entire turn
@@anthonyserafin4931 no, you don't
@@MatteoCanella and you know this how?
The brave men that flew the spitfires, no matter the danger. Long live the free world.
It’s ending. 😢
Super video! You might want to mention Miss Shilling orifice - her tweak to the carburettor design that allowed a few seconds negative G in later models.
Not really in "later models", just from ~Mk.II to Mk.V until the Mk.IX arrived (mid 1942 - early 1943).
The latter had Merlin models with pressure carburetors instead of float ones. Same about late-war Griffons.
@@MDzmitry some Mk.V's and corresponding Seafire III's had the pressure carbs and were quite the hotrods. Many pilots preferred the Mk.V with its better manouverability than the IX.
@@bobsakamanos4469 Yeah, later Merlin 50s had pressure carburettors if I'm not mistaken.
And they were indeed good machines, but fine-tuned for low altitude, and we're not talking "LF Mk.IX" kind of low, we're talking "soviet fighters" low
@@MDzmitry Yes, LF Mk.V's could take on the 190's (but would of course have top cover) and LF Seafire III's were faster than Corsairs. The late production Mk.Vs met the needs of the 2nd TAF at low level.
17:05 props to the cameraman who got shot multiple times in order to film the plane
War Thunder is calling me
Don’t give in to the dark side brother
and how many g's are you pulling on your office chair?
@@bobsakamanos4469 Right now my current record is 1 and it was in the vessel that's called earth
@@D4rk-Bl1zz4rdno need to repeat
Feed the snail
Love this. Recently went to the RAF museum and saw quite a few Spitfires! Would love a video on the Hurricane too. While the Spitfire is iconic, I think of the Hurricane as the unsung hero of the Battle of Britain, especially as it accounted for 60% of all enemy losses
60% of air to air kills maybe
that may be true, but the spitfire was a anti fighter fighter where as the hurricane was anti bomber. without the spitfires luring and engaging the 109's the hurricane's would not have such a high kill rate
People who use that argument fail to mention that during the battle of Britain, the Spitfire only had 19 squadrons compared to the Hurricane's 30, yet the spitfire shot down a greater percentage of aircraft in relation to its smaller numbers. Had there been parity in the numbers of the two aircraft, the Spitfire would have easily outstripped the Hurricane's figures on a one-to-one basis. Leaving that aside, these two fighters, along with the many other aircraft involved in WWII, helped turn the tide of the war.
while Hurricanes made up about 61% of the fighter force, they only knocked down about 53% of e/a. Hurricanes had the worst kill ratio of the battle and were a fire trap to pilots. The Me110 had the best kill ratio, and that was against fighters not bombers like the Hurricane task.
@@bobsakamanos4469 killing fighters is not how you win a battle intended to result in aerial superiority for the enemy by bombing your aircraft production, airfields, AA defences and radar defences out of existence so my point is valid and stands.
The Germans captured an intact Spitfire in 1942. They put a DB 605A engine in it and found that it outclassed the BF 109e in every respect except top speed below 15,000ft. Records show that it was superior in all respects to the Spitfire Mk 5 as well. But the Germans couldn't reverse engineer the airframe and thus went nowhere with the project. The " Messerspit " got bombed in 1944.
When I saw this show up in my recommendations I figured it'd be the same wikipedia history as all the others I've seen on the subject. Because I felt like listening to some low-intensity background noise while playing games on the other monitor, I opened the video...
...and found it's actually an in-depth look into the science and technology involved in designing a WW2 fighter.
On one hand, I found a new channel to follow.
On the other, I completely forgot about the game I was playing and died while afk.
You win some, you lose some :D.
I have always loved the content you have had in your videos, but I am especially enjoying the quality as of late. I really appreciated the voiceover by Mustard, too.
Funny how so many thigs that are used as examples of advantages for the Spitfire over Britain which ignore how wel it did over France for the evactuation at Dunkirk or over the channel, then again for Malta and the many paces where the Spitfire performed so well.
Yes, the poor Hurricane pilots in Malta were elated when Spits finally arrived.
Absolutely incredible renders and editing!
Amazing video! What 3d software did you use for animation?)
"small margins" in a celestial equation including the overwhelming lufwaffe against early radar and the early graves of hurricane pilots before the spitfires showed up
Its insane how the level of quality on stuff like this is better than literaly any documentary made by a huge studio xD
Not 'literally any' but better than most
Great to hear so many subtle technical details that made the Spitfire the evocative icon it is. I learned much, thank you.
However... The slower, stubbier Hawker Hurricane got a lot more lift from its thicker, draggier wings. Which gave it a greater climb rate than the early Spitfire.
Back in 1940, given the same amount of flying time, the Hurricane could get higher than a Spitfire, even though it was flying much more slowly.
So... during the Battle of Britain, after scrambling, it was by far the more numerous Hurricanes that climbed higher to tackle the BF109s. The enemy fighter escort usually flew higher than the bombers, ready to dive down and swat any Allied fighters threatening the bombers.
Thus the Spitfires mostly only intercepted the bombers (during the Battle of Britain - to repeat this crucial timing detail).
Sorry to pop the nostalgia bubble, but the notion that the Spitfire was the dog-fighting hero of the Battle of Britain is simply not correct, even though it was certainly only the Spitfire that had the raw performance to defeat the BF109 in one-on-one combat. It's just that, at that time of the war, there was not that much dogfighting. It was squadrons of interceptors trying to bring down vast armadas of bombers, while watching out for limited fighter escort diving on them from above.
Of course, IF the BF109's managed to evade the Hurricanes and dive down to bomber level to protect the bombers and tackle the Spitfires, then yes, there was some dog-fighting. But the primary role of the Spitfire during the Battle of Britain was bomber interception, while the Hurricanes climbed higher to intercept (and keep busy) the German escort fighters.
On the other hand, the Hurricane could take vast amounts of battle damage and still remain airborne, which is how it could last long enough to hold it's own against a superior BF109 when taking on the fighter escort higher up. It could absorb all the ammunition from an enemy plane, and still be flying. The size of the guns thus became a major factor in the effectiveness of any fighter at defeating the opposition.
The razor-thin margin of victory in that particular conflict would be completely swamped in defeat, if any one link in that complex chain of strategic defense had not worked. Including the absense (or reduced numbers) of either Spitfire or Hurricane, and the priceless early warning from radar that enabled the Allied fighters to scramble, climb to altitude, and be ready and waiting to intercept the incoming enemy aircraft before they even got to their target drop area.
Britain was also helped by the BF109 only being able to spend about 10 minutes in the combat zone, before being forced to turn for home by fuel limits. That's that "over their home territory" advantage mentioned.
The other curious fact I find astounding, is that the pilot only had about 14 seconds of guns firing at their disposal. All that effort and fuel to maintain the planes, scramble, climb up, and then try to manouvre into a position to score a hit, and they had just 14 seconds of ammunition to do enough damage to the enemy to force their retreat or crash. Squandering bullets meant you could go home as soon as your 14 seconds were fired, whether you hit anything or not. That's a staggering amount of resource being spent, for such tiny margins of actually hitting an enemy plane.
Not everyone was an ace...
Much easier to hit a ponderous bomber... which a Spitfire did easily, bringing down significant numbers, and ultimately halting the Battle because the Luftwaffe could not afford to sustain the loss rate. Which is why they get so much credit for winning the battle, even if it was for "the wrong reasons".
In later war years, long after the battle of Britain was over, the Spitfire continued to evolve with ever more powerful engines while the Hurricane stuck around, but mostly ceased development. Thus it was the Spitfire alone that continued defeating the enemy all the way to 1945, and is another reason why it is this plane that carries the accolade as the Battle Winner.
. The Hurricane was outdated and the RAF was so concerned in spring 1940 with its poor performance that they issued instructions to modify its engine to upgrade boost to 12 lb. A remedy perhaps up to 10,000' but that was well below the bomber stream. Because of its poor performance, the Hurri pilot often pushed the throttle though the gate (overboost), meaning that erks had to spend time inspecting the engine (if it survived the sortie). So much for quick turnaround time.
Hurricane performance was lacking in speed, climb, acceleration, roll rate and especially dive (less than 400 mph), which is why it had the worst kill ratio of the battle of britain. Had Goering not ordered his fighter pilots to stick with bombers (vs taking the initiative as hunters), the Hurricanes would have continued to be at a gross disadvantage. Replacement pilots were poorly trained as it was and the Hurricane didn't help them with its tendency to burn its pilots.
As for top cover, it was the Spitfires that climbed faster and took on the 109's first. Slower Hurricanes took longer to climb and to catch up to a bomber stream - late to the party. As Bader said, they (Spitfires) always had to wait for the bloody Hurricanes.
Outdated. Shame on Hawker.
@@bobsakamanos4469 You seem to know your stuff.
Much of what I wrote was information passed on by someone I considered to be an extremely knowledgeable expert in the field, and had no reason to doubt it.
He made it very clear that AFTER the Battle of Britain the Spitfire improved significantly while the Hurricane did not, such that the top cover role was usurped by 1941.
I'm wondering just WHEN (Douglas) Bader made his comment - because timing would mean a lot.
On the face of it, your information seems to contradict everything I thought I knew.
However, the Spitfire only just saw first active duty over Dunkirk. I'm unclear as to when the original 2 blade fixed pitch propeller got upgraded, but this (along with a more than doubling of engine horsepower over the years) transformed performance.
So they couldn't be that plentiful or evolved just a few months later during BoB. Or could they?
Also seems unfair to criticise Hawker for failing to develop, when most of the Spitfire development was Rolls Royce improving the engine power for the Spitfire.
The "Shame on Hawker" at the end thus feels a little harsh. The fact that the RAF had any fighters at all at the start of the war, was because Hawker personally funded the mass building of Hurricanes, when the RAF refused to buy anything.
With Chamberlain still hoping appeasement would work, the UK was not spending much on acquiring hardware.
But Hawker had Hurricanes built and ready to go at the outbreak of war.
Of course the Hurricane was outdated - it began life much earlier, and went into production earlier, without the benefit of the secret wind tunnel facility at Farnborough, because Hawker felt the UK should be ready with something.
And single wing fighters were very much a novelty at the time, that Germany was storming ahead with technologically. But with all that investment coming out of his own pocket, I would not expect it to be as advanced or developed as the Spitfire.
Can you imagine how an F1 car that you or I design on a scrap of paper might compare aerodynamically with the wind-tunnel honed, CFD calculated cars of today? Hurricane versus Spitfire wasn't quite that bad, but Spitfire certainly had a huge advantage right from the outset.
I am trying to view this without any rose-tinted Spitfire goggles, as much as I love and admire the plane myself. I just happen to appreciate the Hurricane for what it was, and don't expect it to ever match a Spitfire in any contest.
But then, I am also partial to the Mosquito and the ME262 as "gorgeous aeroplanes". But I digress.
I have some documentaries about this stuff recorded on DVR. I should go watch them again. Thanks for prompting me to "go and check".
@@bythelee thanks for your calm reply. Firstly, be cautious of "documentaries", which historically are guarded scripts to prevent corporate legal lashback, that usually includes interviews with vet pilots. Getting to the heart of issues requires examination of service documents, test pilot reports, losses analysed/verified from both RAF and LW records, just to name a few.
Now, ref Hawker, Camm was notoriously hard to get along with and had chased away a number of good engineers, including the famous Shenstone, who was later involved with Supermarine, RAE and the NAA Mustang. Camm could have produced a thinner wing and a proper Meredith cooling scheme in the four years since (1936) they realized their mistake. Instead he repeated the mistake on the bulky Typhoon "interceptor", which had numerous other defects.
A good design team needs a good project manager, which Camm was not.
My grandfather , who is 99years old, flew spitfires in the war. I cant wait to show him this video he will love it.
First time I heard a balanced treatment of the (semi) elliptical wing. When they chopped off the wingtips*, it struck me that they had to work pretty hard to find differences. You still have one guy, one ~150p hp engine, aspect ratio 6 and wing loading similar to contemporaries. Excellent and informative job here
The clipped wingtips reduced the turning performance a little bit, but the reduced drag gave a higher top speed.
Also, the roll rate improved, since the tip of the wing isn't being dragged obliquely through the air as the aircraft rolls.
These were tiny margins indeed, and done only when the trade-off was deemed important to better match local enemy aircraft.
But it kills the aesthetics, too!
Pilots flying the clipped wing Spits at lower levels appreciated the better speed and roll rate.
I'm not an aviator but the technical explanations and graphical illustrations here are outstanding.
Agreed . . .
The fact that in the WW1 era we as a human race learned to make a machine gun(or pair of machine guns) fire in between the blades of a propeller spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute, without hitting them, is an engineering marvel and masterpiece in it's self. absolutely amazing.
I wouldnt mind a video about the hurricane. I loved that plane in il2. It had such wacky fire power you could decimate another dudes plane in a split second.
I've been fascinated with spitfires ever since I was a young kid. There was one junked in the woods nearby my home. I used to walk by it every morning on my way to school. I have no idea how it got there. It was in pretty bad shape, missing the wings and parts of the fuselage, etc. Nonetheless, I could still sit inside the cockpit and imagine I was the pilot. It was so cool! They eventually hauled it out of the woods. I heard they were able to salvage some parts from it to restore other spitfires.
The groundreaking Spitfire is quite easy to understand and it has nothing to do with being patriotic or not, the Spitfire was well ahead of it's time and remained unmatched right through the war, as said by William Dunne USAAF pilot, no other aircraft was close to perfect as the Spitfire.
Amazing animations and great commentary. Please keep them coming!
One interesting fact of the Spitfire that was not mentioned is that in order to improve the plane's range, some of the later generation Spitfires used powerful electromagnets on the fuel lines to improve combustion efficiency. This, of course was years before the advent of powerful neodymium magnet which can perform the same function in a much smaller form factor.
Interesting. Do you have any links to sites that can give us more information on this?
sounds like a load of shit.
What did you say?
This is categorically not true
@@jessewilson7415 Clearly so, or Mister Calles would have been able to provide the links that I asked him for.
I was thinking of using his technology on my Camry - on a good day, I get 45 miles per gallon (Imperial measurements) - and, with the price we pay for our petrol, I'm always on the lookout for any improvement in economy.
I had the privilege of getting up close to a present day operational Spitfire a few years ago. The owner of my previous company restored it to full flight over a period of about 10 years. So we spent the day at the hangar where it was located and then just before the provided lunch the pilot flew it and did several rounds over the airfield and the hangar. Spectacular!
Where I live in Hamilton Ontario I can simply look up above my house in the summer months and watch the Lancaster fly over on its way to the Hamilton war plane heritage runway. What a noise those four Merlins make !
This is unbelievable, real engineering has done such an incredible job to explain such complex matter within a shortspan, I bow my head with deep respect, appreciation and admiration