Natural metal Spitfires.

[Graham Boak]

Not quite true, Franek. Stripping the paint off will save quite a bit of weight, and the resulting metal finish (if properly done) will be slightly smoother than the paint, thus reducing skin-friction drag slightly. It won't make the aircraft fly noticeably faster, but will allow it to claw a little extra altitude. So it would be a reasonable thing to try if you needed to operate on or near the ceiling of the fighter - to intercept an Ar.234, perhaps.

Can this scheme can be linked to HF-engined airframes?

[Franek Grabowski]

Nope, Graham. Surface was puttied and primed before painting and thus offered a much better smoothness. Note that Mustangs always had puttied and painted wings! Weight penalty was minor, a few kilos or pounds, so I would say weight of a pilot was a much more important factor.
Oh, those are not my conclusions but of the RAF - see Paul Lucas' home based aircraft 1945-1950.
PS You certainly mean Ju 86?

[Graham Boak]

Sorry Franek, but I assure you, as someone once professionally involved in aircraft performance and drag estimation, that the weight and surface finish of paint on an airframe is a factor: less so on a fighter than a bomber because of its small size, true. Yes, the weight of the pilot would be more noticeable but lacking UAV Spitfires that would be an operational matter for the unit. A more skilled pilot could compensate for any excess avoirdupois. Another step would be taking out the outer mgs and reducing the number of cannon shells - I would be interested to find out if this was done. Lacking such features suggests that what we have is more likely an experiment in the benefits or otherwise of natural metal finishes.

I'm not sure how much puttying was normally done on production Spitfires, other than gap-filling - the primer being part of the part of the paint counts towards the weight. On Mustangs the leading edge was puttied and smoothed in an attempt to maintain laminar flow as far back as possible. Spitfires have a join on the leading edge which would tend to spoil this. In general, Mustangs were built to a higher standard than Spitfires - or indeed any similar type.
When the Spitfires in Alexandria were used to counter Ju 86s then these were puttied in an attempt to smooth irregularities in the surface. Here the paint seems to have been polished/rubbed smooth rather than the airframe stripped to bare metal. However, the Ju 86s were long gone before the time this thread is referring to. I think the Ar 234 is the most likely candidate requiring such measures, although perhaps the Ju 88T is a possibility. The other type involved was the Me 410, but catching these seem to have been within the capabilities of the standard Spitfire. Perhaps this is an opportunity for specialists in Luftwaffe reconnaissance to comment?

[Juha]

hello
little bit off the topic, but IIRC in British Pacific Fleet on at least some carriers they concluded that Seafire's .303 mgs were rather useless and removed them. After a while they got a message from Admiralty that the Lordship had noticed that there had not been any expenditure of .303 ammo on those carriers and reminded that per HM regulations those mgs were part of Seafire's armament and so should be reinstalled immediately. On the carriers men solved the problem by dumping some of the .303 ammo overboard so that the expenditure of .303 ammo was on the right proportion to 20mm ammo expenditure and so all were happy. Usually the front line troops were capable to adjust to the situation and did the things as they saw best even if the higher HQs were sometimes out of touch to battlefield realities. At least that was usually case in the Finnish Armed Forces which tended to be not so well disciplined.

Juha

[Graham Boak]

Where did you read that, Juha? Given that only two BPF carriers had Seafires it shouldn't be too difficult to track down. I don't recall seeing it in Crosley or Winton.

[Andy Mac]

If I remember correctly P51 pilots would wax the wings of bare metal aircraft and add a good few miles per hour to their top speed - a matter of life or death !

[atckyrre]

According to Yiannis Mansolas several Spitfire Vb/c were delivered in natural metal to the Greeks as they were about to return home in the Autumn of 1944. These Spits apparently came from Australian Squadrons and in several cases had been painted with sharkmouths already.
I have asked Yiannis if he can verify this information but haven't received a straight answer. Nevertheless there's no doubt some Greek spitfires flew in natural metal OR painted silver after arrival in Greece.

Here's a link where this is mentioned btw

http://imansolas.freeservers.com/Ace...Spitfires.html

Kyrre

[Juha]

Hello Graham

Sorry I don't have a lightest idea. I thought that easiest possibility would be David Brown's Carrier Fighters (1975) but a quick browse didn't produce a positive result. So Your guess is as good as mine. Could be any book on Spit/Seafire, someone's memoirs, or an article in some aviation magazine, for example in an old Aeroplane Monthly.

Sorry being unable to help

Juha

[stefaan]

Hi Guys.
Thanks for all the responces.
The SAAF operated 2 NM Spitfires HF MK IX's MH993 and MA792 as high altidude
intercepters to catch the Ju 86/88 over Alexandria in 1943.
I have a photo in our book SAAF at War p47.
It was loaned to different sqns as they asked for help with HF Recce a/c.
The photo shows them with 41 SAAF.
These were converted by removing radio and 1 set of 20mm to reduce weight in 1 of the pair.
The lighter a/c got the height and speed to hit the recce a/c,thereby decompressing it forcing it to reduce height.The 2nd standard a/c with radio
then was to shoot it down at a lower height.
They are not part of the problem as they have been reported previously.
The problem is 40 sqn that sent there a/c in batches of 3 to be painted once delivered in camouflage colours.
They were photo recce a/c .
I think Steve's order that he found is very relavent.
Where did you get it and from which Wing was it Steve?
Stefaan

[Graham Boak]

Photo-recce aircraft in bare metal? I thought that the subjects were fighters? Was 40 SAAF a PR unit - I thought that was 60 SAAF with Mosquitoes? Or is this a reference to FR aircraft - fighters with a fuselage camera for low-level work?

Franek: I suspect that the PR Mk. XIX had little height advantage over the later PR Mosquitoes, but that can be settled by consulting books I don't have to hand. Certainly Mosquitoes flew recce missions over Eastern Europe in the early days of the Cold War. However, it may well be true that the MiG 15 was the first aircraft capable of (regularly?) intercepting the PR.XIX, but that has little to do with the jet/piston argument in principle. It is much more to do with the capabilities of early Russian jet fighters, the Russian Air Defence system, and the ability to route around defence centres. In the same way as the 8th AF rendered the Me 163 threat impotent by simply not flying near their bases.