Naswan & Guppy,
The manual?
"When wing bombs are carried in addition to a fuselage bomb or drop tank, takeof must be made only from a smooth hard runway"
"When carried, the 90 (or 170) gallon drop tank must be jettisoned before any dive bombing is commenced"
"Except in emergency, the fuselage bomb or drop tank must be jettisoned before landing with wing bombs fitted" Well that`s definietely more prompt ...
Which should tell you several things
1. wing bombs and centre bomb/ drop tank was used.
... in a condition that was considered an "overload" (=not normal, routine, but highly stressfull for the airframe), and was only allowed if smmoth, hard runway is provided. Otherwise, NO.
2. landing with bomb or drop tank fitted was okay, providing wing bombs are not carried
3. landing with wing bombs fitted was okay, providing centreline bomb/drop tank was not carried OK, so in short, your theory fails. Why ? My position, as well as the guys at the Stockholm webiste was that the u/c was simple not strong enough to cope with the stresses put on by the extra weight of the two stage Merlin and the extra Hispano guns. You claimed that it was all possible, because, as you said, it could routinely, easily etc. take the stress of all the 1000 lbs exteral ordonance.. yet even you found out that the manaul simply states
it could not. It could not take the stress of an 1000 lbs ordonance, 1000lbs was pushing it to it`s very LIMITS. It couldn`t cope with it even on takeoff which means a lot lower stress factor than landing, unless a smooth, hard runway is provided. Pretty much tells you how much the u/c could take. Or the structure itself. And that`s the core of the question if you still hadn`t lose the string of it : could the Mk IX`s structure cope with the extra weight with ease ? Not really what bomb configs it could carry (which was your example, and put the discussion onto a sidetrack). Guppy did a pretty good work in convincing me it actually carried it in service, even though only under the abovementioned limitations and restrictions, which point towards srtuctural limitations occuring and not very significant loads. As for the oral story about the load that now inflated to 1500 lbs (Spitfire discussions usually have this ballon-like nature, the mythology always just gets richer), I guess it`s merely a mix up with a total of 1000 lbs load... Of course any nice pictures in 1000+2x250 load would be interesting, even though I cannot think how would there be ground clearance for an 1000 lbs bomb if there`s visibly so little room between the fin and the ground (a usual problem with fitting large bombs to non-tricycle l/g fighters)
"Don`t dive when significant extra weight is carried" - does this reads you as great abilty to cope with the extra load?
"Don`t takeoff with a flimsy 454 kg load unless a smooth runway is provided, and remind yourself, you are overloading your airplane". Seafires squadrons in 1943 managed to knock themselves out within a month or two, mostly due to undercarriage failures on landings. Does this reads to you as an u/c that can take the stress with ease on a regular basis?
Spits loosing wings in dives if the wing bombs are still attached (and many times not even that was required
) - does this reads you as the wing`s excellent ability to take extra stresses from extra load?
It does not to me.
In any case, the question is why did not the Mk IXs carried 4x20mms on
any meaningful scale, when both previous and later Marks did so. 'The RAF just didn`t want that.' Oh sure. The Spit could go Mach 2 just as easy, they just didn`t want that to happen.. Interesting though, they did work on that all the time, they did work on the equip Mark Vs with 4 Hispanos, which had the same wing as the Mk IXs... even when, to quote Guppy,
"RAF requirements were looking at potentially 6 cannon armament for fighters at the time, May 1942." So they were looking for no less than SIX cannons at the time the Mk IX appeared, but didn`t want four...? They wanted six cannons, but for some strange reason, they didn`t even think about applying a 4 cannon config on, let`s see, the
most common type of all Spitfires in the second half of war? They worked for 3 years - at the same time the Mk IX was introduced - to redesign the Spitfire`s wing (WHY was that needed...?), which led to the Mk 21 and later ones, with 4 cannon armament again? Why bother at all, why wait for 3 years for a 4 cannon fighter again, if it was sooooo easy to mount another pair into the C wing of the Mk IX...? And isn`t it tells you even a little bit, that on the Spit`s design, the whole weight of the aircraft in the end was carried by the WINGs themselves, not the fusalage. Do you really say that it`s a mere coincidence, that as the weight of Spitfires grew, the 4 cannon armament was abandoned in service use, despite earlier success with lighter Marks, and then,
by coincidence, it was suddenly re-introduced with the first "heavy" Spitfire that mounted a
redesigned wing structure...? OH, and please don`t tell that the 4 cannon armement was suddenly needed in 1945, but not before. The RAF was flying against the very same planes as it did in 1942, the FW 190, Me 109, Ju 88, He 111 etc. sturcture or armor protection didn`t change in a meaningful way that would require doubling the firepower.
In any case, I think it`s got pretty long, and all pro and contra arguements has been added. Thank u for it in any case.
As for the little guy who plays his usual one-man show in the background of every thread I post, it gives me enough pleasure to know that he spends most of his life about hating and trying to blackmail me, registering several nicknames for that high purpose, and replying to his own posts with 'them' to get at least some attention... Everyone gets a life he deserves, hehe.
