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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

It actually is mentioned in the article:

“When an enemy fighter dived from behind, fired and carried on diving past, one could not immediately dive in pursuit without the engine temporarily cutting and causing one to be left far behind. This could be avoided by rolling upside down, pulling back on the stick into a dive (positive g) then rolling level in the dive. […] Similarly, on sighting a target below, one suffered momentarily if one pushed the nose down to attack, a grave disadvantage.”

I am curious about the scenario you raised as to how an ME109 pilot would behave. Did they know about this flaw in the Spitfire?

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I'm speculating somewhat about how it would play out but I'm sure that the Luftwaffe would have worked out the problem pretty quickly and developed tactics accordingly.

I'm not a pilot but I have flown several aircraft. Being an RAF cadet at school, back in the day, you were allowed to do quite a lot of things that might make a civvy flight instructor's hair prematurely go white when doing your "flight experience." Obviously we'd start quite a long way up with ATC keeping the area clear. I was memorably told "you have control" when the bloody thing was upside down and I thought my eyeballs were trying to dive through my feet and I was hanging off the straps. "I have control" (barely a waver) and I finished the loop off to straight and level. I think the pedals did some corrections for me. The rudder ie left/right yaw is done by the pedals and aircraft with more than one seat are automatically dual control.

Anyway.

Imagine you are a WWII fighter pilot - this is as close to dualling as you can get. If you get back home after a sortie, then you are debriefed (did you do what you were supposed to) and you might make some comments. A Luftwaffe pilot on return might note that the enemy pilot seemed inclined to invert. That might have looked a bit showy and odd. Eventually, someone would have decided that Spitfires can't dive properly - who cares exactly why. Tactics follow.

Our chaps would have been doing the same. We knew that the Spitfire was generally better in tight horizontal turns than the ME109 and perhaps the Focke Wulf 190 (I can't remember.) So our tactics would have favoured getting into a turning scrap.

Having read a lot about the air campaign over Europe over the last couple of years, I would gamble this weakness was known at least informally among Luftwaffe pilots, if not stated explicitly in training materials. This is exactly the kind of information that was passed around both informally and formally in the Allied air forces. Bomber commands on both sides used this kind of information to develop high-level tactics (for example, the evolution of the Allied box formation, and the responsive evolution of German attacks of Allied bomber formations).

For one interesting example, take a look at how the Luftwaffe responded to the placement of machine guns on the B-17 and adapted to the number of crew members available to man the guns.

All sides in WW2 captured airplanes and had dedicated technical staff to evaluate them.

Here's an interview with a German ace who evaluated several Allied planes (he preferred the P-51):

https://www.historynet.com/aviation-history-interview-with-w...

Britain mostly was on the lookout for fighters and fighter/bombers with novel antennas, since they could be used to understand new radio navigation and radar electronics. (One of the most advanced landed near shore, but the Navy guarded it in salt water instead of handing it over for timely study.)

During the Korean War after a MiG-15 was "donated", the issue was how to verify it wasn't booby-trapped before entering it, since test pilots are valuable (Chuck Yeager was one of them.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Moolah

At the end of the Vietnam War, the north captured an entire fleet of US aircraft (87 F-5s, plus more types) that were used successfully against air battles with China.

Thank you for the interview link. It was rather surreal reading an interview from the non-allied side. Even more surreal, the amount of respect he had and has for his enemies. Very interesting.

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