hi guys,just wondering for those of you who may fly them often, if someone were flying a typhy at around the 410 -420 mph range,would it be poss for a spit5 to be able to stay within 800 to 1k of him no matter diving,climbing or turning? thank you
Yes absolutely, a Spitfire can saddle up on much faster aircraft including the Typhoon and Tempest and ride their six long enough to get a kill.
This is a well modelled feature of AH and is due to the fact that the Spitfire's performance in a dive was outstanding and superior to many much faster aircraft of that time.
For example, in 1942 trials were conducted at RAE Farnborough to measure the drag and trim changes at high Mach numbers on the P-47, P-51 and Spitfire. The results of the drag measurements between the Mustang and Spitfire are interesting and show that the Spitfire had lower drag from Mach 0.65 upwards. The Mustang had lower drag at all speeds below that, and the P-51's drag bucket and excellent long-range capability occurs at relatively low speed. I have curves taken from that report and the data represents values actually achieved in flight, it shows the Spitfire achieving speeds of Mach 0.9 when flown by Sqn Ldr Tobin, and the Mustang only barely beyond Mach 0.8. That agrees with the often quoted limiting Mach of 0.77 for the P-51. The Spitfire also achieved a speed of Mach 0.9 in the hands of Sqn Ldr Martindale which I have seen quoted as Mach 0.89 in some sources, possibly due to confusion caused by calibration issues with the specially fitted Mach meters. The question, of whether the Spitfire reached Mach 0.89 or Mach 0.9 is not important, the point is, that it was faster than any other aircraft of that time!
The reason for the Spitfire's outstandingly better high Mach number behaviour is due to the fact that it had a thickness to chord ratio of 13 percent, compared to the 16 percent of the Mustang for example. Another major factor here was that the Spitfire remained structurally sound at those speeds and there were only rare incidents involving minor failures. Most notably, the loss of a prop' in one test flown by Sqn Ldr Martindale that did not result in the loss of his aircraft because he managed to land it safely. Other WWII aircraft may have dived faster, but if they did, their pilots and instrumentation did not survive to tell us about it. In one post war flight test another fully instrumented Spitfire entered a dive from high altitude and produced a set of data indicating that a Mach 0.96 dive had occurred with no damage to the Spitfire, however that report is contentious due to the fact that the dive was accidental and there are outstanding questions regarding instrument calibration.
The point is that the Spitfire's strength in a high speed dive in Aces High is accurate. Having said that, as already pointed out by others, good flying technique and gunnery are still required to convert that to a kill.
Badboy
