Comparison of Spitfire/109 cocpit size

[Kurfürst]

Originally posted by MiloMorai
What good is it? Well it shows how much room at the shoulders the pilot had in the Spitfire compared to the 109. Anyone can see that clearly.

Actually your diagram is pretty useless.

Oh, I am afraid that it's only your willingness to manipulate is what is clearly seen. You employed a simply trick, using the fact that the Spitfire pilot was sitting higher in the aircraft, and the 109 pilot lower.

If we would pilot's into your diagrams, the 109 pilot's head would be at the height around the spitty pilot's shoulders. Of course, shoulder room is bigger than headroom in any plane.

[straffo]

Originally posted by Kurfürst
Oh, I am afraid that it's only your willingness to manipulate is what is clearly seen. You employed a simply trick, using the fact that the Spitfire pilot was sitting higher in the aircraft, and the 109 pilot lower.

If we would pilot's into your diagrams, the 109 pilot's head would be at the height around the spitty pilot's shoulders. Of course, shoulder room is bigger than headroom in any plane.

Speaking of manipulation ... why did you post a 2D drawing when it should be compared in 3D ?

We are missing 2 drawing at least to compare we need up view (you provided it) but we also need lateral view ,cross section.

[Karnak]

Ah, Kurfurst returns to good old "Spitfire is 100% crap and Bf109 is 100% good" form.

The bulged canopy allowed much better rearward vision than the Bf109's flat canopy.  Further, the Bf109's humougous framing obscured greater chunks of the pilots field of view, a problem made worse by the pilot's close proximity to the framing due to the Bf109's cramped cockpit.

I'll take the Luftwaffe aces's opinion over your overblown sense of Bf109 superiority.

[Waffle]

here's a 51 / 109 comparison from another cockpit thread.
I'll dig up a spitfire one and tag it here later -

[Kurfürst]

Originally posted by Karnak
Ah, Kurfurst returns to good old "Spitfire is 100% crap and Bf109 is 100% good" form.

Well the 109 underwent numerous development during the war, the Spitfire still the same old worn 1935 airframe with a decade old design - in 1945.
It isn't really surprising that without any improvement to it, it was soon surprassed by the P-51, Bf 109, Fw 190 etc.

And it's only you who automatically assumes the 109 must have been worser in everything 100% the time. According to your, it was worser in all respects. I never EVER heard you to admit that it would be actually good at anything. Curiously, it still managed to down a record number of aircraft, including your allagedly superior Spitfires.

The bulged canopy allowed much better rearward vision than the Bf109's flat canopy.   [/B]

Sure, Karnak, sure. That's why they fitted a rear view mirror to it... because they see to the rear so well... through the headrest.

Further, the Bf109's humougous framing obscured greater chunks of the pilots field of view, a problem made worse by the pilot's close proximity to the framing due to the Bf109's cramped cockpit. [/B]

Oh, I see, you entered the realm of fantasy now, where everything is dictated by Karnak's imagination.

Tell us Karnak how Spitfire pilots had so good vision through their headrest, lol.


Now let's see the section view in a correct manner, without MiloMorai's manipulation with sitting height; the drawings are corrected to proper cocpit floor position.

 

Again, no serious difference can be observed if one doesn't use tricks all the time like Milomoron.

[Furball]

WOW!

im suprised any pilots could see out of the bubble canopies at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Charge]

"Looking around you and having better situational awareness."

I don't think room has anything to do with it. If you compare the rear views of 109 and Spit I think you will note that they were about equal. The 109s went to glass headrest armour as the metal one restricted the rear-up view too much, and eventually the Spit got the bubble canopy. By then the Spit did have better 6-view, of course.

The cockpit bars do not restrict the view considerably as you can move your head and look behind them.

Belts restrict your movement? Not if you keep the hip belt tight and shoulder belts loose as the "Z-axle" acceleration or deceleration are not much of a problem in a/c.

-C+

[Karnak]

Kurfurst,

The mirrors were an early attempt later surpassed by the bulged canopies.  Mnay pilots had the mirrors removed.


You really, REALLY need to read up on Spitfire development if you actually think a 1945 Spitfire had the same airframe as a 1938 (not 1935) Spitfire.  

I don't think you're stupid, just very biased. You see, whenever we give the Bf109 credit where it is due to accept that with no qualms, but whenever we point out a shortcoming you have a Pavlovian defense of the dang thing.


If we were to believe what you post about the Bf109 we would have to believe it had the range of a P-51D using an engine that produced significantly more power and yet consumed fuel at a quarter the rate.  It had near perfect visibility and light control forces, to which it responded rapidly, at all speeds.  You might concede that the Mitsubishi A6M actually could out turn it at lower speeds though, so I have to give you credit for that.

[Kurfürst]

Originally posted by Karnak
The mirrors were an early attempt later surpassed by the bulged canopies.  Mnay pilots had the mirrors removed.

I can see them even on just about any model of Spitfire, which indicates they were not very pleased with the rearview.

Originally posted by Karnak
You really, REALLY need to read up on Spitfire development if you actually think a 1945 Spitfire had the same airframe as a 1938 (not 1935) Spitfire.

Of course it wasn't, the original Spitfire was a rather clean aircraft, possibly the cleanest of it's time. By 1945 it was heavily littered with all sorts of bulges emerging : bulges for the undercarriage, bulges, stubs protounding for the cannons, large bulges for the Griffon, an extra an much bigger radiator... an ad hoc jobs, obviously.

If we were to believe what you post about the Bf109 we would have to believe it had the range of a P-51D using an engine that produced significantly more power and yet consumed fuel at a quarter the rate.  It had near perfect visibility and light control forces, to which it responded rapidly, at all speeds.  You might concede that the Mitsubishi A6M actually could out turn it at lower speeds though, so I have to give you credit for that. [/B]

Just would like to point out that actually I was showing how similiar the cocpit dimensions of the Spitfire and 109 were, while you were claiming that the 109 was lightyears worser. So look into your mirror.


In the meantime, i found some nice sideways drawings for the 109E and the contemporary Spit II.  Well, as I expected, there's not much of a surprise, the cocpits are almost a perfect match in size.



I used the gunsights as reference, and matched them to get similiar pilot head heights. Points of interests :

- the 109 pilot sits much higher in the plane, which means Milo's overlay was invalid. Some variation of course is there because of the chute and individual seat positions



- the sideway headroom, and the room for shoulders is very much the same

-the inclined seat of the 109, and the noticably higher rudder pedal position is also very interesting point - very much like a Formula -1 pilot!

-with the blown hood, the Spitfire pilot has somewhat more room upwards, but otherwise the cocpit dimensions are almost perfectly the same.

-the rear panel on the Spitfire which supposed to give some view to the rear is considerably smaller than on the 109 (on which it's actually a rearwards extension of the full canopy height)

-surprise (well not really, looking on spit cocpit photos), the legroom provided in the Spitfire is very small, the pilot has to sit with high knees high - now that explains the funny stick!

- forward view of the spitfire is poor, the windscreen blocks a lot and the engine cowling is much wider on the top, also more level whereas the 109's has a downward angle toward to prop, helping deflection shooting

- sideways window area is about the same. The 109 uses flat plexi panels, the Spit a bulged canopy that may cause some distortion and make picking up contacts at a distance difficult.

[Karnak]

The higher rudder pedals on the Bf109 were definately superior.  I recall that Tuck had his Spitfire modified to have raised rudder pedals after test flying the Bf109 as he liked them so much.

[humble]

I've have yet to an "unbiased" luftwaffe opinion here:)......

Fundementally the 109 (all flavors) had two major drawbacks specific to cockpit ergonomics. The 1st has been covered and that is the pilots restricted view due to the combination of large framing and close proximity. The second and more profound is the combination of seating orientation stick postion and cockpit width. The 109 pilot had significantly less leverage due to the combination of factors above....since there were no hydrolically boosted controls this made flying the 109 much much tougher than the spitfire (or almost any other WW2 fighter for that matter).

[MiloMorai]

Nice manipulation of my drawing Barbi and you accuse me of manipulation. You scaled the aux drawing to fit over the 109's outline when you should have moved the Spit outline that was overlaid on the 109's outline. So .

Where did you get the profiles from? Since you manipulated my drawing it would be nice to check to see if you did not manipulate the profiles.

So was the 109 littered with all kinds of bulges and protrusions.

[Waffle]

109 / Spit and 51 -

"Scaled - Spit is about 9.14 meters to fit with the other planes.

109 pilot seat in red - with purple outline as 109 cockpit floor / front rear / wall / panel.  Placed those outlines over where the pilots seats are on the 51 / spitfire. So from where the pilot was sitting - you can get an estimate of the differences... not using a line of sightsuch as a gunsight for reference, or a head posistion, because those can move.... I'm using the arse, cause that should be strapped in.

BTW - if you look at the 109 overlays on the 51 and Spitfire - you'll see that the gunsights of the 51 / spit do line up pretty close to where the gunsight is as posistioned in the 109.

[agent 009]

Side view would be good in 109. pilots head being close to the sides is good, as he only has to turn his head to see. In a Mustang he might have to lean over a bit to see. Don't know on Spit, looks like similiar sit, just turn your head.

Now the view forward & down is better in 109 than Spit cause wings are less wide on 109.

Rear view with bubble as mentioned above is better for rear view. For whatever reason this didn't seem to be much of a prob for the experten in 109. rear view that is.

[Tony Williams]

I am baffled why there should be such an argument over drawings when, as we have heard, a German and a British pilot sat in both planes, one after the other, and agreed that the Spitfire's cockpit was much roomier (I've seen that programme as well - in fact I think I've still got it on tape somewhere). Those comments are worth a thousand diagrams and measurements.

I'm not sure if it was in that programme or another that a British WW2 pilot sat in the 109 and commented that unless you were very small, the cockpit was so cramped that it was actually difficult to exert enough leverage on the stick.

I don't claim to be an expert on aircraft development, but even I know that the Spitfire went through a huge series of changes in its lifetime, including a new wing which was stronger and better-suited to cannon armament, a new fuselage with a bubble canopy, and so on. At the end of the war, the latest Spitfires were still excellent flying machines as well as competitive fighters, a tribute to the basic quality of the design.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum