Bf 109 H WNr.110073

[pvanroy]

Originally Posted by harrison987

You cannot pressurize an Erla Haube.

The reason why is because of the tubular construction, and lack of seal at the BACK end of the canopy.

The construction was steel and mild steel. Mild steel was used all around the tubular construction (especially at the rear), and bent very easily (malleable with your hand). As such, there is no way to seal around the cockpit.

In addition, the only part of the 109 cockpit that was ready for pressurization was the cockpit tub (firewall to seat back).

The fuselage was not made pressurized behind the seat...and the Erla Haube extended all the way to the baggage compartment.

There would have had to be a complete re-deign of the entire cockpit to make that work...as well as a newly designed canopy and rear armour.

This is why the 3-piece canopy was only used on pressurized models...it sealed right at the seat back, where the head armor (newly-designed for the pressurized cockpit) enclosed the entire cockpit.

Soooooo...if it had an Erla Haube...it was not pressurized.

The only way it could have been pressurized, is if it had the 3-piece G3/G5 Canopy.

As a follow up to my previous message, in case you - or anyone else - is interested to see what a pressurized Erla Haube looks like: I took a quick snap of the photos on p. 173 of Schmoll (2017), and they can be downloaded here:

https://disk.yandex.com/i/q0JjZkR1z22YoQ

Apologies for the poor quality.