On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 23:14:39 -0400, vincent p. norris
wrote:

That might be true. But back in 1918, guys with less time than
anyone in this news group, probably, got into Camels and flew away..
Some killed themselves, but most of them did not. Survival of the
fittest.

The history books describe the Camel as an airplane far more dangerous
to those learning to fly it than combat with the Germans.

It was extremely short coupled and the large prop bolted to the
spinning rotory engine resulted in a remarkable turning radius
opposite the direction of the prop/engine rotation. Some have
described the turning radius as being scarcely larger than the
wingspan. Unfortunately, few pilots could use this maneuverability
because loss of control was always close at hand.

The intersting contradiction is that most shootdowns, in WWI, occured
from stalking and firing from behind and below the target aircraft, or
swift pounces from above and behind. During the "furball" type of
swirling dogfights, few got shot down as everyone was maneuvering to
avoid collision and get on someone's tail or get someone off theirs.
The smart guys stayed off to one side and above and pounced on pilots
who strayed out of the mass of airplanes without paying attention to
their surroundings.

The Germans seemed to understand the proper lessons learned from WWI
and what constituted an effective fighter as the Messerschmitt Bf109
was not designed with dogfighting in mind. It was almost purely a
"bouncer", and aircraft that excelled in high speed dives upon an
unaware enemy. But the cockpit was so narrow that the pilots
literally could not apply as much force to the stick as they could
have had they a few more inches to within the cockpit to brace
themselves. (notes from British pilots who tested a captured 109
during the Battle of Britain)

In addition, the 109 had a higher wingloading than either the Spitfire
or the Hurricane, and it's stall speed that deturmines how tightly a
fighter turns.

In WWI as WWII, it was the careful stalk and high speed bounce that
accounted for most of the shootdowns, not the dogfight.

Corky Scott