Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Good Book:"The Decisive Duel: Spitfire vs. 109"

I would have thought this story had been told so many times that it couldn't be retold differently. So much so I wouldn't have bought even this one except that it was $7 in paperback at Half-Price Books and I needed reading material.

I'm glad I did buy it; David Isby literally takes you down to the nuts and bolts and lays out in exhaustive detail the development of each fighter. For example how the German's lack of access to certain steel alloys limited their aircraft engines' crankshaft designs, details about octane, compression ratios and peak power outputs.

He also lays out in detail the incremental improvements in each fighter, what it entailed and how it was effected, even within a given "mark" or "model". For example the travelling crews from Handley Page literally working around the clock visiting RAF airfields to install constant-speed propellers on fighters on the eve of battle. Or the factory crews on both sides retrofitting armor upgrades to existing aircraft already in service.

Full of the little details that make a good history book so fascinating, like production details and hang-ups on specific components.

Hey, I'm 144 pages into it (out of 454 pages of text) and the Battle of Britain is just now starting This is understandable; in the context of the uncounted thousands of hours of engineering and science that went into 'em as described here, the concept of these two aircraft going out and actually mixing it up with each other seems almost an afterthought.

I give it two thumbs up.

Birdwatcher

Alfred Price has a few good books on the Spitfire, too, though perhaps not as detailed as what you're describing. I think I paid less than $2 for my Price book at a local used bookstore.


Good subject matter, but enough complexities to make your head spin .

No doubt those were the two best fighters of the war.

I always thought the Spitfire and ME-109 were evenly matched, it appears you book may say otherwise.

Doc

They were definitely the two best fighters at that stage of WWII. I don't know if I can believe they were the two best fighters of the entire war, though.

It would be interesting to see how the P51 would have faired, or even the F6F.

Dad told me at one point during the Battle of Britain, Rolls-Royce was down to one working forge that could produce the Merlin crankshaft. If the Germans had managed to hit it, it could have made things very difficult for the RAF. I'd be curious if there is any details in the book, to that effect.

A book that may furnish addition information or different perspective is the highly regarded Fighter, by Len Deighton, British military historian, cookery writer, graphic artist, and novelist. He is perhaps most famous for his spy novel The IPCRESS File, which was made into a film starring Michael Caine as Harry Palmer.

I practically beg people to buy what I think is far and away Deighton's best work.

http://www.amazon.com/Bomber-Len-Deighton/dp/1402790546

The product of hundreds of interviews by war survivors on both sides, Bomber is a fictionalised account of 24 hours in June of 1943 and of everyone involved and affected by a single RAF night raid. An extraordinary book, the single best WWII aviation/war book I have ever read.

Birdwatcher

I always thought the question of which was the better of the Two, when Herman Goering on a visit to the Front during the Battle of Britain, asked Adolph Galland ( in front of a bunch of other officers, and Galland was the Second Highest Scoring Ace on the Battlefront at the time) if there was anything that they needed to ensure their success over the RAF.....

To which Galland answered to a very pissed off Goering...." JaWohl...a Squadron of Spitfires!!"...

Can't get much more of a testimony than that...

I'm not recalling that but I'll go back through The book presents how at the time, the Hurricane was of course a monoplane adaptation of prior biplanes, fabric covered, and a relatively easy shift in already established production lines. Hence in a large part its ready adoption, even tho it was known to be inferior from the start to the Bf 109.

The book details the genius and quirks of the designer RJ Mitchell, who gave his all even while terminally ill of cancer to bring the Spitfire to fruition, and how even the planned next incarnation of Merlin, the Griffon engine, was underway early on (and which would appear in the later marks of Spit).

On the German side the role of the one-off World record speed holding Bf 209 is mentioned, a Willi Messerschmitt design presented to the World for propaganda purposes as a variant of the Bf 109 to which it bore a familial resemblance. This is how Isby describes that aircraft, quoting the guy who flew it...

On 26 April, 1939 Messerschmitt test pilot Fritz Wendel set a new world record of 469 mph with the specially designed Me 209, which did not so much fly as hurtle... Wendel was happy to have survived. "The 209 was a brute. Its flying characteristics still make me shudder... In retrospect, I am inclined to think that its fuel was a highly volatile mixture of sweat from my brow and goose pimples from the back of my neck"....

His experience with high-speed piston engine flight made Messerschmitt realize that the future of the fighter was the jet engine

As for production bottlenecks, despite a slow start, on the eve of the Battle of Britain, Spitfire production outpaced that of the Bf 109 by a considerable margin, even though it took many more man hours to build.

Isby describes the complete top-to-bottom cooperation of the chain of command in Britain, giving much credit to Lord Beaverbrook and Hugh Dowding for determinedly removing bureaucratic obstacles to production. Isby also gives Dowding credit for his prophetic vision of the importance of radar and the hand in glove cooperation of government and top scientists to bring that about.

Meanwhile, on the German side, Isby describes a sense of widespread complacency given the easy victories in Poland and France, and also the inefficiency characteristic of a dictatorship wherein favor with Hitler trumped actual performance, and the suspicions and rivalries that result from such promotions.

For example, Isby describes Willi Messerschmitt, whose relationship with Hitler from their first meeting ('33 ?) had been one of mutual admiration, thusly...

While the stars of the German aircraft industry, like Messerschmitt, had higher status and more access to national political figures.... Germany lacked the close integration of science, industry and air force that Britain achieved. The German military were jealous of the industry's autonomy and hostile to outsiders and their ideas. Germany's scientists and engineers were world class, but their projects required patronage from an increasingly dysfunctional leadership....

While Hitler continued to think him a genius... It became apparent to everyone except Messerschmitt himself that, regardless of his brilliance as a designer, he was unable to manage a large industrial organization.

Finally, more interesting details.....

The forte of the Bf109 in the Battle of Britain era of course was the high speed firing pass from above, and it is common knowledge that the idiot Herman Goring wanted to shackle the fighters to the bombers as opposed to Adolph Galland's correct assertion that the Bf109's were far more effective when allowed to aggressively free-range in advance of the bomber formations.

Isby lends some technical data to further support Galland, elswhere in the book he points out that, at that point in the war, the superchargers on the Merlin engine worked actually better up high than those on the Bf109....

Neither Goring... nor the Luftwaffe's leaders... realized that by determining that the Bf109's would have to... fight at the German bomber's cruising altitude of 15,000 feet, he was committing them to decisive combat at an altitude that was above the critical altitude of their own engines but, at the same time below the higher critical altitude of the British Merlin engine....

The Bf109.... structure was stressed so that it could make its tightest possible instantaneous turn, imposing a load of 8g. However if a Bf109 tried such a steep and violent turn at any speed less than 312 mph, it would stall (for the Spitfire and the Hurricane, the comparable figures were 284 and 290 mph respectively). A Bf109, trying to conserve fuel and stay with the bombers, would fly at about 225-233 mph....

If surprised by a Spitfire, Bf109s at cruise speed were at a disadvantage until they could accelerate.... - which took precious seconds - or, more swiftly by diving away. This would leave the bombers vulnerable to attackers....

'Over the coast we were usually attacked by Spitfires coming by above and from out of the sun - they were already waiting for us', wrote Leutnant Erich Bodendiech, a Bf109 pilot... 'We didn't know at the beginning that they were guided by radar.'


And finally another detail from the book; up until the shooting started in earnest, many people in charge on the British side thought that the Beaufighter or a heavily armed, twin-engined development thereof was going to be the next big thing when it came to shooting down bombers (much as Germany placed much misguided faith in their vaunted Bf110 "Zerstorer"), the Spit and Hurricane both being regarded as interim stopgap measures.

So much so that suggestions were made to stop or limit the production of Spitfires in deference to the Beaufighter Isby credits Dowding again in preventing such a production shift from taking place.

Birdwatcher

From the book....

...Adolf Galland. His first encounters over Dunkirk had left him with a great respect for the Spitfire, which he saw as a superb defensive fighter because of it excellent low-speed maneuverability. When.... Goering asked Galland what kind of fighter he would like, he famously asked for Spitfires - not because he preferred them over his beloved Bf109, but to drive home the idea that, by being tied to escorting bombers,the Germans were failing to use the Bf109's best qualities for cut-and-slash offensive tactics. The Bf109, with its higher wing load, needs to keep its speed up, the Spitfire, with lower wing loading, can slow down more.' Galland later explained

Relevant to point out I counted 50 Spitfires falling to Galland before he was taken out of combat in 1941, IIRC all of these victories achieved in Bf109s....

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/gallanda.html

And a comment on how everything is relative; IIRC when the first 25 Spitfires were sent East to take on the famously maneuverable Japanese Zero, almost all of the Spits were quickly shot down when playing to the Zero's strengths instead of employing the high speed diving cut-and-slash tactics used by the Bf109 against Spits in Europe, and later used by American fighter pilots against Zeros.

Birdwatcher

OK, without googling it up (yet ), the P51 Mustang did indeed have some performance weaknesses relative to its contemporary German opponents that a skilled Luftwaffe pilot could exploit, this becoming largely irrelevant as few skilled Luftwaffe pilots were left by 1944, and the Allies IIRC enjoyed about an eight-to-one numerical advantage in fighter strength over Europe by that point anyway.

I believe the F6F, having been designed in a large part to fight the Zero, sacrificed some speed for maneuverability, and towards the end of the war over Europe at least, speed as a fighter asset was becoming more and more critical.

Birdwatcher

Hellcats saw service in Europe with the Royal Navy and did engage in combat with the Luftwaffe, to include 109s and 190s....

they more than had a good showing for themselves... to include combat with the US Navy over Southern France during the invasion of there in August 1944...

but arguably the German's more talent fighter pilots were long gone at that point, or busy in the Defense of the Reich or fighting the Russians..

I've not heard that before, but it could have been true in the early stages of the war. There is quite a good write up on Merlin production here Note, it does not cover the production of Merlin derived engines such as the Meteor, (tank engine) or the navalised version either..

At the time of the Battle of Britain, the Germans were primarily targeting RAF fighter bases trying to knock out the RAF on the ground rather than industrial targets.

I read quite a good book on the subject recently and the author concluded in hindsight, despite the hype by both sides, it was a relative failure. During all the attacks, they only managed to actually close one airfield, and that was only for 72 hours.

It turned out that the main weakness of the RAF was a critical shortage of Fuel Bowsers, and to a lesser extent, heavy plant/machinery like bulldozers ect for making airfield repairs...

Well, different versions had different performance capabilities, but all else being equal, the Bf109 had a higher diving speed than a Spit such that the author recounts two instances of this happening, these instances not involving the additional ability of the fuel-injected Bf109 to simply nose-down into a dive, a maneuver which would kill the engine for a few seconds on either a Hurricane or a Spitfire. IIRC too the Bf109 had a higher rate of climb at lower altitudes and could execute a climbing spiral that neither RAF fighter could duplicate.

The author has it that MOST kills against fighters on both sides occurred when the victim did not see their opponent coming, hitting a fighter taking evasive action being a much more difficult proposition.

Furthermore MOST pilots on either side apparently did not fly their aircraft to the full capabilities of those aircraft, especially when it came to maximum g turns. So in that sense the two fighters were fairly evenly matched.

What distinguished the prodigies like Adolph Galland (105 ?? kills) and Al Deere (22 confirmed, 10 probable) was the ability to both fly their aircraft to its full potential while also accurately making deflections shots, anticipating where their opponent would be a moment further along. No small feat in an aircraft already shuddering on the edge of a stall while the pilots themselves were on the verge of blacking out from the g forces.

Whatever the technical capabilities of his aircraft, Adolf Galland for example reported that he never had a Spitfire turn inside him while Al Deere likewise reported some victories arising from his ability to corner inside the opposing 109.

In one incident that illustrates the similarity of the two fighters in 1940 Al Deere pursued a fleeing 109 clear across the English Channel only to be bounced in return by as many as five freshly rearmed and refueled 109s, including Adolf Galland and his wingman who was also an ace. Deere was able to out-turn each successive attack and make his way back across the Channel before finally being hit in mid-turn by Galland. Deere was narrowly able to bail out before his Spitfire crashed on British soil.

Birdwatcher

I've read the same thing elsewhere. "Bouncing" one's opponent out of the sun was crucial to getting an edge in victory. If you look at victory statistics that exclude "bounce" kills, there is a lot less to choose between aircraft or pilots...

Another critical lesson of air-to-air combat in both WWI and WWII was that rookie pilots were most often cannon-fodder... if a man could survive his first 3 aerial combat situations he was typically able to fly to double-digit victories. Most fighter pilots were shot down and/or killed in their first 3 dogfights, however.

This is the principle that was incorporated into American fighter pilot training in WWII and that eventually led to the vastly superior air-to-air combat victory ratio that American pilots enjoyed at the end of WWII, and on into Korea and Viet Nam.



Interesting! I just finished re-reading Deighton's Bomber (I first read it MANY years ago). In his discussion of the Ju88 night fighter pilots, he alludes to the fact that they either got aerial victories against bombers immediately, or they never did at all. Sort of ties into what I've written above, but it speaks more to the idea that your book speaks to here.

Apparently, being able to pilot a high-performance aircraft at its aerodymanic and engineering limits and simultaneously aim one's guns at a moving target and hit it isn't something just any Tom, Dick, or Harry can be good at. Who knew?

"up until the shooting started in earnest, many people in charge on the British side thought that the Beaufighter or a heavily armed, twin-engined development thereof was going to be the next big thing when it came to shooting down bombers (much as Germany placed much misguided faith in their vaunted Bf110 "Zerstorer"), the Spit and Hurricane both being regarded as interim stopgap measures."

I'm curious why those didn't work well against bombers. I know you need a light, fast plane to fight other light, fast planes, but I can see the British and German reasoning that a stable platform mounting multiple cannons in a central location firing a concentrated stream of explosive warheads should prove effective against large planes flying in straight lines.

Although I'm guessing that maybe they were too vulnerable to attack by light, fast planes themselves?

bingo, great against bombers, needed protection themselves against fighters

I've read every book about aerial combat in England & Europe during WWII that I could lay my hands on... including most of those books in the Dayton library.

From what I read, the Spitfires could out-turn the Bf109s and the P-51 could out-turn the Spitfires.

Speed-wise, the Bf109E and Bf109G were faster than their contemporary Spitfire "Marks", but the P-51 was faster than both the "Spits" and the Bf109s.

Generally, the Spitfire and the Bf109 were fairly evenly matched... depending on what maneuver was being made, but that change with the entry of the P-51D and the introduction of the FW190A when they made their appearance.

That made the P-51s faster in level flight speed and tighter turning than either the Spitfires or the Bf109s. The P-51D was the faster in level flight and could out-climb the Spitfires and Bf109s as well. Many a German pilot found his aircraft stalling out it a "hard" tactical climb against a P-51 which allowed the P-51 pilot to maintain his climb longer, then turn on the tail of the stalled-out and hapless German in the Bf109 who then usually got shot down as his aircraft fell away.

One "problem" the Spitfires had was when the first Mark I came out and it started out with what was a lack of "fire-power" since the "Spits" had "rifle-caliber" (British .303) machineguns while even the first Bf109Es (Emil's) had both machineguns and 20mm cannons... and one or two "hits" from the 20mm cannon shells usually wrote "Finis" to any other fighter aircraft including the Hurricanes and Spitfires.

The British Beaufighter Mark 1 was only used in the early part of the war as a "stop-gap" fighter. It was far too heavy (16,000 lbs) and too slow (335 MPH) compared to other contemporary fighters, but could still catch the even slower contemporary German bombers. It was replaced by the all wooden De Havilland Mosquito fighter/bomber which had both greater speed and heavier fire-power.

All of this said... my favorite World War II fighter aircraft of the major participants in WW2 were the British Spitfire Mark IX (Mark 9), the American P-51D and the German FW-190... all great fighter aircraft !


Strength & Honor...

Ron T.

In some respects, the BF109 was a better plane. Tighter turn, fuel injection instead of carburetors, cannon over machine guns. One huge thing in the Brit's favor though, was how they managed their men and machines. England had more fighters than pilots, and they rotated their pilots in and out of combat. The Huns kept their best in the fight, and got most of them killed off. The Germans did not use their best to train the new boys.

Here's some history:

It began with the technical developemnt of a 100 octane fuel by Shell Oil
with the encouragement of Jimmy Doolittle as Shell Oil's manager of aviation
fuels in the United States. Shell Oil found the use of tetraethyl lead and
hydrogen as fuel additives made it possible to suppress engine knock and
boost engine performance. However, this new fuel remained a scientific
curiosity, because there was no feasible means for a refinery to
economically produce bulk quantities of this fuel, until Humble Oil
developed a new alkylation process in 1938. Dr. William J. Sweeney as vice
president for fuels research at Standard Oil of New Jersey guided the
further development of a new superblended 100 octane fuel for his company.
This secret new high octane fuel subsequently became known by the British
Air Ministry as BAM-100. The British Air Ministry began ordering this new
100 octane superblend fuel in 1937, but it was to be some time to come
before the first bulk shipments arrived in Britain.

Britain began stockpiling 100 octane fuel with receipt in June 1939 of a
bulk shipment from the Esso refinery in Aruba. This initial shipment of 100
octane fuel was soon supplemented with further shipments from the same
refienry and from other refineries in Curacao and the United States. Upon
the beginning of the war and the establishment of the U.S. Neutrality Act,
shipments of the 100 octane fuel from American refineries to the stockpiles
in Britain were interrupted for a period of time. Limited stocks of the 100
octane fuel were obtained from South Africa and the Caribbean, while
President Roosevelt found a means to resume American shipments of the 100
octane fuel to Britain.

The changeover to the 100 octane fuel appeared to be sudden because the
Spitfires' Rolls Royce Merlin engines were not converted for the use of 100
octane fuel until March 1940, and the limited stockpile of fuel was
carefully rationed until more adequate supplies could be stockpiled for
future requirements. By May 1940, unarmed reconnaisance Spitfires began
flying combat missions using the 100 octane fuel. By 31 July 1940, there
were 384 Spitfires serving in 19 squadrons using the 100 octane fuel to
boost performance by an additional about 25-34 mph. The limited size of the
stockpile required strict rationing until supplies of this high performance
fuel could be greatly increased to meet all requirements in the period
following the Battle of Britain in 1940.

By 1943 a cold Alkylation process had been developed to produce enormous
outputs of the 100 octane AvGas. Some 90% of the Abadan refinery eventually
became devoted to supplying the RAF's enormous needs for AvGas. By 1944, the
Merlin X engine was using 150 octane AvGas for even greater performnce.