No Spitfeur

Just as a big WI is the choice of the Me109 over the He112, how would the BOB have faired without the Spitfire eg if Mitchell had not gone for the elliptical wing etc, resulting in no performance improvement over the Hurricane & it not going into production?

According to this
http://www3.mistral.co.uk/k5083/main2.htm
the Hurricane won the BOB, could hold its own against a Me109 and had bags of development potential. But would it have been enough to take on the Fw190 in 1942?

[Ruy Horta]

M'kay Nonny, I'll bite...

With no Spitfires there would have been more industrial capacity to work on and produce some other promising type(s), like perhaps the Hawker Tornado, the granddaddy of subsequent Hawker fighters. Of course the basic need for a new fighter would have given great impetus to subsequent fighter development.

But even with the Spitfire, Hawker seemed to regained its prewar near-monopoly of fighter design: Typhoon, Tempest and finally (Sea-)Fury.

The RAF would have survived...IMHO.

The MB2 had one thing going for it: ease of manufacture. Is there any way that it and the other Martin Baker designs could have become the RAF's dominant fighter?

[Franek Grabowski]

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

With no Spitfires there would have been more industrial capacity to work on and produce some other promising type(s), like perhaps the Hawker Tornado, the granddaddy of subsequent Hawker fighters. Of course the basic need for a new fighter would have given great impetus to subsequent fighter development.

A major error. Tornado was not in production not because Spitfire took the industrial capacity but because it was a failure. Actually, Spitfire was considered a stop gap but as there was nothing available from Hawker, she went into a mass production.

[Ruy Horta]

The Tornado failed with its engine, but that's pretty much beside the point, since there was little need to develop either engine or aircraft, but without Spitfire the need for a Hurricane successor would have been much more pronounced.

It doesn't matter if the a/c in question would have been the Tornado or Typhoon, or some airframe and engine combo that did not see flight, all that does matter is that Hawker would most likely have filled the gap by 1941/42.



So within the theme of the question, there is no major error. Besides you twist my words, but whatever makes you tick, right?!

What do you think Nonny? How do you think British fighter development would have progressed without Spitfire?

[Franek Grabowski]

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

The Tornado failed with its engine, but that's pretty much beside the point, since there was little need to develop either engine or aircraft, but without Spitfire the need for a Hurricane successor would have been much more pronounced.

This little is just a small thing called time. Development of either aircraft or engine takes years. This time cannot be shortened.

It doesn't matter if the a/c in question would have been the Tornado or Typhoon, or some airframe and engine combo that did not see flight, all that does matter is that Hawker would most likely have filled the gap by 1941/42.

But the problem is that they tried to! Hawker worked hard to turn Tornado/Typhoon into something useable but failed. That means there were no chances for a good aircraft from Hawker.

[Ruy Horta]

Franek,

You are right, and it was pretty easy to write that too.

[Artist]

I would have not wanted to have gone into battle with any other fighter but a Spitfire in 1940. At the time it was the best all around fighter in the sky. Compared to the Hurricane it was twice as likely to survive contact with the enemy.The Hurricane was fine fighter but any pilots I have read about , that flew both, prefered the Spitfire. Men like Tuck, Brothers and Bader all liked the Spit over the Hurricane. The mark 9 was one of the best fighters of the war. As for the Typhoon and Tempest, they were fast, greatly armed and were amazing air to ground fighters but were not great at fighter against fighter.

[robert_schulte]

Originally Posted by Franek Grabowski

This little is just a small thing called time. Development of either aircraft or engine takes years. This time cannot be shortened.

This may be comparing apples with pears, and the plane may not have been a good one (although Eric Brown has a different opinion). However the Heinkel He 162 took just 90 days to be flown after the first idea.

[LWulf]

IMHO the Hurricane was a poor fighter aircraft. So if the Hurricane was the primary fighter during BfB and they won I am sure another fighter could have filled successfully the role of the Spitfire for the BfB. British aircraft designers certainly didn't lack creativity and skill. If not else, I can picture a P-40 with a merlin engine filling the job...
Perhaps losses to enemy fighters would've been higher but they would've still won in the end.

After all it's the pilot, not the machine.
Also, I don't think all those allied pilots would've been one single bit less determined to bring down enemy fighters and bombers if all they had were Hurricanes.

The biggest problem are the offensive operations over the channel. But this doesn't depend so much on the Fw-190 as on the performance of the fighter replacing the Spitfire, I think. Eliptic wings aren't a magic formula that makes a fighter fly better than all the others. So it's possible another fighter just as good would've been developed. All in my humble opinion of course.
[small edit]