Hurricane - glide rate

[jschreiber]

Well, I made an error in my (basic) computations for the Hurricane. The value should be in the same vicinity as for the Spitfire (13). A very comprehensive article on the aerodynamics of these aircrafts (and others) can be found here :
https://www.aerosociety.com/media/80...-did-it-do.pdf
Regards
J Schreiber

[Graham Boak]

Agreed, Christer, but the Lift/Drag ratio is surely the dominant term here, so a higher drag can be compensated for by a better lift curve.

[Graham Boak]

The Mustang has less zero-lift drag, although most of its benefit was due to the flow through the radiator which would no longer help as much, but being heavier requires more lift, and hence more lift-induced drag. A simple taper wing is less efficient (if not a lot) than an elliptically-loaded wing like the Spitfire or Hurricane (with a straight centre section and tapered outer panels which comes close to the loading obtained from an elliptically-shaped wing). It is not obvious to me that the Mustang would have less overall drag, perhaps even the contrary. It will not be able to maintain a high speed without sticking its nose down and losing height, which rather defeats the point.

It seems to me that whichever aircraft you choose will attain its best glide rate from flying at its maximum L/D, which for a Bf109 is around 7. (I remember this from some Breguet Range Equation calculations demonstrating that some of the proposed range performance figures for the He100 were grossly optimistic nonsense.) I suspect (but cannot confirm) that this would be close to its optimum cruise/endurance speed. I don't know what the peak L/D is for these other types, nor how to get to the glide rate from this. Mea culpa.

[RSwank]

There is an interesting multipart article on learning to fly a Mustang here:

http://www.airbum.com/pireps/PirepMustangBurch.html

The author takes a "warbird" training course in Texas to learn how to fly WWII planes.

In part 7: http://www.airbum.com/pireps/PirepMustangBurch.7.html
the author mentions the glide ratio of the Mustang.

"I was at 6,000 feet and I thought I'd never get that thing down from altitude. At 175 mph it has a glide ratio of nearly 15:1; it will glide three miles for every thousand feet of altitude."

Another interesting comment:

"The Mustang was built to be flown by well-trained 200-hour pilots. I repeat, well trained, and if a pilot gets that same sort of training, the Mustang will be a piece of cake. On the other hand, if you approach the Mustang figuring you can whip it because you have thousands of hours in Bonanzas and the like, it'll chase you all over the airport. The P-51 has characteristics that nothing in civilian aviation can prepare you for."