Which Fighter, Spitfire Vs Me109

I am interested in what people think in detail about the Supermarine Spitfire Mk I vs its main counterpart of the Battle of Britian the Me 109E, please try to only compare the planes within the Battle of Britain time frame.

I like the Me109 because of the High ceiling and the tactic of fast powerful dives into an enemy formation shooting as many as possible, then climbing back to a high ceiling and diving again, against the Spit. Mk I and even the Mk II it was a killer. However I love the fact that the Spitfire has manoverability to take on the 109 at any altitude despite the lack of horse power to chase the 109 skywards.`

I do understand that during the Battle of Britain most air battles happened in the area of 15,000 feet, where the bombers flew and that both the spitfire and the Me 109 pretty much had the same performance. Becasue the 109's didn't have the level flight speed or manoverability below 15,000 to keep up with the spitfire and the spitfire didn't have the horse power, to keep up with the 109E in not only level flight but also in a climb above 15,000.

 

Oh, tomcat, this poll is somewhat analogous to the other one, do we need the duplication?

(Damned newbies!)

 

Send PM dont wake The Red Rabbi anic:

 

yeah I know I have asked otto or someone else to remove the thread. The other one was supposed to be here, it was an accident with the bacwards button, pressed it to many times or something, and then I didn't realise I had done it here as well, and I cant remove it otherwise I would have.

 

The Me 108 was the wrong type of fighter for the Luftwaffe to even build. It was a thoroughbred interceptor not an offensive fighter which is really what they needed. Again, it was a myopic Technische Amt and leadership in the Luftwaffe that led to the adoption of an aircraft that put performance over mission accomplishment.

The Spitfire in 1939 on the other hand was just what Britain needed. That is the same thoroughbred interceptor. Britain's needs were different. They needed a fighter capable of defending the British Isles, not an offensive aircraft for use over distant enemy airspace. In the Spitfire they got it.

While the Me 109 proved to be a reasonably good interceptor (high climb rate, high speed, decent maneuverability, but a short range) it was not what Germany needed in 1939 nor in 1940 and, not even in 1942. The Spitfire proved a bit more adaptable but still suffered later in the war from being the same sort of interceptor.

America and Russia got the formula right building offensive fighters like the P-38, Yak 9DD, or P-51. These are the sort of aircraft that won the war. But, Britian had first to survive; and for that, the Spitfire was the ideal aircraft for the time.
German erred, not for the first or last time, by building the wrong aircraft for their war.

 

I absolutely love the Me-109, but having said that if i wanted to fight in an aircraft it would have to be the Spitfire, there is something that make you weak at the knees when you look at the Spitfire.

But my fave of all time is the Hurricane.

 

Yeah the hurricane is alright but what happens if your flight of hurricanes come up against a flight of Me109's?

 

I shall amaze everyone here by voting for the Bf109 - but only just.

T A Gardner is quite correct in saying that the Spitfire was the right aircraft at the right time for Britain - whereas the 109 couldn't ideally fulfill an offensive role at medium-range.

But the 109 had two things which were very useful in aerial combat during 1940 - fuel injection and the 2-cm cannon.

In almost all other terms, Spitfire and 109 were well-matched.

( Ask me which is my favourite, of course - and my answer would be reversed ! )

 

I read that the Me-109's had an advantage of flying in pairs as opposed to the RAF flying in three's but on the other hand it all boils down to the guy flying the plane.
If I were a fighter pilot, I would prefer a center mounted cannon in front of me so I could just point and shoot.

 

...except that in the Battle of Britain, none of the 109's had the engine-mounted cannon.....

 

Well there were the Me109 D-1's or Dora built in late 1938 was equipped with two Rheinnmetall-Borsig Mg17 7.9mm machine guns mounted on top of the engine synchronized to fire through the airscrew and one Oerlikon MG FF 20mm cannon mounted under the engine firing through the spinner. The 109 E-1 of Emil was equipped by the majority of the units during the battle of britainand had 4 Rheinnmetall-Borsig Mg17 7.9mm machine guns mounted on the wings and fuselage or, two MG 17 machine guns mounted on the fuelage and two MG FF cannons mounted on the wings while during the battle of britain there were still units comprised of the Dora model but not many.

 

"except that in the Battle of Britain, none of the 109's had the engine-mounted cannon"

May your cat use your new Tiger Tank as a sand box !

 

Principal sub-variants produced during 1940 was the Bf 109E-2, Bf 109E-3 (with two 7.92 mm MG 17s in the nose and two in the wings, plus an MG FF/M firing through the propeller shaft) and the Bf 109E-4 (with two nose MG 17s and two wing MG FF cannon)

'Great Aircraft of WW2'

 

The 109 E3 did not have an engine mounted cannon. That's one of William Green's inventions, I believe.

The 3 principal variants of the BoB were the E-1, with 4 machine guns, the E-3 with 2 cannon and 2 machine guns, and the E-4, also with 2 cannon and 2 machine guns.

The E-3 had the MG FF cannon, the E-4 the MG FF/M, which allowed the firing of thin walled "mine" shells.

Hooton has a table listing the proportions of 109 types lost during the BoB:

Type - Jul Aug Sep Oct
109E1 - 44 - 40 - 38 - 36
109E3 - 30 - 8 - 1 - 2
109E4 - 20 - 52 - 61 - 62

The figures are the percentage of all 109s lost that month. Jul doesn't add up to 100%, I believe that's because of 1 or 2 109D losses.

As you can see, the E3 was quickly phased out. That's because converting them to E-4 standard was easy.

 

Thank you, hop ! The 'engine-mounted cannon' is one of those enduring myths of the Battle, along with the number of 'He 100s' which were shot down....

 

The shame is almost unbearable.
First I take a quiz that tells me that I'm Rommel, and now I had to cast a vote against the Spitfire. It's the bleeding cannons and fuel injection that swings the vote. It get's worse if you look at the poor tactics the RAF used in the beginning of the campaign.

The Spitfire is however my favourite.

 

Well look at that, I am going to assume that the information is reliable
I guess I got swayed by the myth you are talking about, becasue I was sure they had it, oh well you learn something new everyday, I stand corrected.

 

Most of the RAF pilots who participated in the Battle firmly believed that the 109s all carried engine-mounted cannon and most press reports at the time referred to them ; this was understandable because every 109 'shoot-down' photo clearly showed the prominent hole in the centre of the propeller boss. But the cannon wasn't 'there'.....

The Germans had encountered many difficulties with the cannon in use, and a foolproof mounting didn't appear until the advent of the 109F series.

 

So according to your info here Hop, there were some 109E-3's in service during the battle of britain and D's both having the engine mounted cannon so maybe that is where the myth came from, people saw these ones with the cannon and thought alll 109's were like that.

 

I think we probably need Tony Williams' input here, but sources seem to indicate that although the 109D and E were designed to take the centreline-mounted cannon, it was suppressed due to to unreliability.

According to Fernandez-Sommerau ( 'Bf109 Recognition Manual' ) the MG-FF cannon suffered considerable problems when the mounting was attempted due to its size, low cyclic rate of fire, excessive recoil and lack of belt-feed (only a cumbersome drum-magazine could be used ).

Michael Payne in 'Bf109 - Into The Battle' is more explicit when he says : -

'Despite the continued popular belief, none of the Bf109s in combat in 1939-40 was known to have carried a motor cannon firing through a hole in the propeller' ( p.11 ).

The Bf109F-1 and F-3 were the first 109s to carry a centreline MG-FF(M) but this was almost immediately superseded by the superior MG151.