Placing the Fairey Battle.

[Graham Boak]

Without knowing the Pressure Error Correction it is impossible to be certain, but it looks as though the Tempest had an critical mach of 0.9 or higher, which seems to be fairly equivalent to the Spitfire with a similarly slim wing. That's assuming no safety margin was applied - but if there was, then that's a remarkable figure.

There's no doubt the Typhoon would be unable to get anywhere near that with its thick wing: even Mustangs and Me 262s only get to 0.84 or thereabouts.

Incidentally, if you follow the links you'll find that the RAF considered the Typhoon and Tempest to have very similar turning circles, whereas the USAAF pilot considered the Typhoon significantly superior. An indication of the problems in using comments from a single pilot and/or a single flight.