Really great that someone was given a go in a spitfire for his birthday by his wife.. l’m 65 and I looked up flights in a spitfire a few years ago, can’t remember the exact price, but it was several thousands

Still, my wife stayed on full time in her job as a lecturer for an extra two years before going part time. This helped payed for my Coupe refurbishment which was a five figure sum, it took the best part of three years.

Spitfire was an interceptor with terrible range. It got its speed from high power to weight ratio.

Mosquito used double the power to give speed and range. Two Mossies were could carry more ordnance to Germany than one B17. But they did it at speeds the German fighters struggled to match and with less than 1/2 the crew at risk. B17s without escort were picked off by fighters.

DeHavilland built The DH98 for speed. They took their earlier DH91 Albatross, which was fast but used considerably smaller engines and added a per of Merlins. Early ideas involved using one Napier Sabre (expected to make 2000 bhp) but they settled on twin Merlins as they are in service. The whole idea was to make a bomber so fast that it would not need defensive armaments and the drag/weight penalties of the same. The plywood construction with it's smooth surface wings and fuselage further contributed to the speed. Speed was the main aim. Long range was a useful side effect.

The US P38 Lightning was designed as a fast heavily armed high altitude interceptor fighter. One engine would not give the necessary speed. It's resultant long range was a happy accident. The US version had turbo charged Allison V12 engines capable of >400 mph at 17,000 ft. The version sold to UK had the turbos deleted and struggled to make 300mph. It few well on one engine and had long range but was far too slow. UK cancelled the contract.
The production P38 was so fast that it ran into compressibility problems at Mach 0.68. Dive brakes were added as retrofit kits but the problem persisted. The twin engines made it too fast for the aerodynamics as they were understood at the time.

The all flying tail necessary for supersonic aircraft was invented during WW2 by the Miles Aircraft Company. They used it on their M.52, specced to go 1000mpg over 1000 miles. With Eric Brown arranged to fly the first prototype, the project was infamously cancelled by Clement Attlee and the designs given to USA. But due to the outcry, 30% scale models were made and shown capable of Mach 1.38. These models were launched from a Mosquito. Here we go again on the speed issue.

DaveMcT said:

. Two Mossies were could carry more ordnance to Germany than one B17. But they did it at speeds the German fighters struggled to match

Click to expand...

Show me the weight and balance figures for both aircraft and I’ll believe you.

More bombs = more fuel = more weight = less speed = less range.
More speed = higher fuel use = higher level of fuel needed or = less range = less bomb carrying capacity.

Generally all aircraft have maximum figures for example max speed, max fuel capacity, max ordnance in the case of a bomber but this is not how aircraft work by maximum figures, you’d need to work out how far you are going to go, how long it’s going to take, the fuel burn of the aircraft for the given weight and work out how much fuel is needed and then work out how many bombs you could carry for the fuel and distance needed and then add in the fuel needed for the extra weight of the bombs, then maybe take out some bombs if the fuel makes it over weight,

You can’t just say that a fully loaded plane will still outrun slim fighters with all of the maximum range and all of its carrying capacity.

Also why does it seem like you’re just copying stuff from Google and why when we are talking about the spitfire does anyone care about your perceived differences between a B17 and one?

If I remember correctly the B17 was a massively inefficient way of delivering bombs.

Seem to remember the bomb capacity was less than 5000lbs. So it's not really a fair contest when the similar sized Lancaster would carry a single 4000lb blockbuster/cookie bomb plus multiple other bombs and anything up to 12000lbs with a single "tallboy" earthquake bomb on board.

The mosquito could carry one cookie, but was all wooden, had no defensive armament and by some accounts was a bit slow to outrun fighters when loaded up in such a manner.

The Americans believed in "precision bombing" we just went full carpet bombing hence the massive disparity. Although the tallboy was a precision weapon and effectively the bunker buster of the era.

You could buy a Merlin brand new in the box for £15 or overhauled for a tenner
people were buying them just for the wood.

Napier did a little known engine named Nomad, It was a flat 12 turbo and supercharged
2 stroke turbo compound diesel, it flew in prototype form in the
front of a Avro Lincoln and would happily drag the Lincoln about the sky with the other
4 Merlin's shut down. But anyone that witnessed it being started accompanied by bangs
crashes smoke flashes and flame would certainly question the sanity of anyone willing
to fly behind it.
https://oldmachinepress.com/2019/08/05/napier-nomad-compound-aircraft-engine/