Originally posted by HoHun
Hi Badboy,
I'd say that means that if the Spitfire is chasing the Bf 109 in a flat circle, it would soon get into position for a deflection shot,
Henning (HoHun)
That depends. If their turn circles were offset that would be the case, but that would also be true for any pair of aircraft based on the geometry of the fight alone and the attacker would achieve a guns solution every time around. However, if you assume a roughly concentric attack, the Spitfire's small turn radius advantage almost certainly won't be enough to allow him to pull lead for a shot. Particularly if the 109F driver has a good grasp of BFM, because he will be able to negate the spitfires small radius advantage by using out of plane maneuvers.
while with the Bf 109 chasing the Spitfire, the Bf 109 would have to throttle back (or rather climb, but then it's not a flat circle any longer :-) and sacrifice turn rate in order not to overshoot.
If I were the 109F driver fighting under the conditions shown in that diagram I wouldn't be concerned about an over shoot. The closure is small and the difference in radius is less than 20ft which is extremely small, and almost negligible in practice. Even with a slightly bigger turn radius deficit, the 109F would still be able to convert his turn rate advantage into a kill providing he understood what maneuvers to execute in order to get the lead required for a shot.
In both situations, if the 109F driver can force the fight nose to tail, he should win. However, one area where the Spitfire's smaller radius could be more problematic would be in nose to nose turns. That means any kind of scissors, flat, rolling or vertical. In that situation the Spitfire would fare better, but it would still be very close because, as I said before, that difference in radius is very small.
Hope that helps...
Badboy
