Ease of flying went to the Spit. The consensus was it took a veteran pilot to master the 109, but that the Spit was more forgiving to a newbie. Did Doe ever fly a 109 and did Bob ever fly a Spitfire ? No.
Did the Spitfire had single lever control system? No.
Did the Spitfire had well harmonized controls? No.
Did the Spitfire had any better stall characteristics ? No.
Was the Spitfire easier to land and takeoff ? Yes.
So maybe they meant landing, don`t you think? You REALLY, REALLY have to find an actual 109 pilot who would say the 109 was hard to fly in air...
ie.
"The results may be summarized by saying that the stalling behaviour, flaps up and down, is excellent. Both rudder and ailerons are effective right down to the stall, which is very gentle, the wing only falling about 10 degrees and the nose falling with it. There is no tendency to spin. With flaps up the ailerons snatch while the slots are opening, and there is a buffeting on the ailerons as the stall is approached.. With flaps down there is no aileron snatch as the slots open, and no pre-stall aileron buffeting. There is no warning of the stall, flaps down. From the safety viewpoint this is the sole adverse stalling feature; it is largely off-set by the innocuous behaviour at the stall and by the very high degree of fore and aft stability on the approach glide. "
"The aircraft delights in being pulled into hard manuevering turns at these slower speeds. As the slats pop out you feel a slight "notching" on the stick and you can pull more until the whole airframe is buffeting quite hard. A little more and you will drop a wing, but you have to be crass to do it unintentionally."
"The '109 is one of the most controllable aircraft that I have flown at slow speed around finals, and provided you don't get too slow is one of the easiest to three point. It just feels right !"
I could go on, qouting whole pages...
Doe remarked on the cramped feeling and the poor visibilty. He was in Black 6 the 109G2 of the RAF Museum.
Ekkehard Bob was in a Spitfire Vb cockpit . His comment was on how roomy it was and how wonderful the visibilty was. He then said he'd really like to fly the airplane. Yep, the 'cramped' feeling was due to the tilted seat and the raised legs - both INTENTIONAL reasoning behind the design, and the British
copied the idea to make the Spitfire cramped as well. Oh, not really, it was much better for resisting Gs. As a result a Spitfire pilot could not pull the plane as hard as a 109 pilot, he would black out much sooner with the 'armchair' seat.
The 'wonderful' visibility of the Spitfire is a good joke really. One reason the Russians refused it was it`s awful rear visibilty. Why would they put a mirror on it, why would they replace the canopy if it was so 'wonderful', huh? Maybe english pilots could see through the fuselage and head armor behind them? I guess not.
And the final result was they were both good airplanes and that it would fall to the pilot to make the difference. A rather typical sentence in such movie, don`t you think ? Not that I don`t agree with it, but still..
An interesting sidebar was the discussion of turning circle. They believed that with average pilots the Spit would out turn the 109, but that if flown to the limit, the 109 could match the Spit.
That`s propably true, Hanna, Clostermann, Kaiser etc..
Tough to argue with two guys who'd been there, done that Yep, even more tough to argue with dozens of guys who'd been there, done that.
