The Lightning and the typhoon and why they stink past 500mph

[Citabria]

Compressibility

 

Work had been going on in the Hawker design office since 1940 on the development of a new thin wing section. It had already been established that the N.A.C.A.22-series wing section employed by the Typhoon was entirely satisfactory at speeds in the vicinity of 400 m.p.h. but encountered compressibility effects at higher speeds. In dives approaching 500 m.p.h. a very sudden and sharp increase in drag was experienced, accompanied by a change in the aerodynamic characteristics of the fighter, which affected the pitching moment and rendered the machine nose heavy. No actual design work on the new wing was begun until September 1941, and the wing section eventually adopted for development had its point of maximum thickness at 37.5% of the chord. The thickness/cord ratio was 14.5% at the root and 10% at the tip, giving a wing five inches thinner at the root than that of the Typhoon.

the P-38 in AH obviously compresses under 500mph yet the typhoon in AH has no such problem.

ok I'm off my historical accuracy soap box

but it does need to be adjusted

[Karnak]

Sounds like the Tiffie is geting any easy ride at this time.

Sisu
-Karnak

[funked]

"pilots notes" dive limit for the Typhoon was 500 IAS.

[Thor]

Tiff. compresses  and the rudder falls off under that, especially going thru  the current layers.

Far as quotes go i can get one from Santa Claus , how about some original data  like HT always asks to be submitted.    

My quote is :

The Typhoon was capable of 600ias with ZERO compression experienced and was  armed with 12 30mm cannon firing at 7000fps and had a tail gunner armed with 2 bk50 cannon. Engine HP total well over 3000.

[This message has been edited by Thor (edited 09-16-2000).]