In article ,
Morgans wrote:
I had always heard that the fuselage tank was the source of the instability,
with it being so far behind the CG, to give it a dangerously aft CG. Today,
in peacetime, I don't suppose they would ever dream of putting that much
weight that far back, but it was war.

Yep, lots of compromises in some of those wartime designs... Some of the
photo-recon versions of the Spitfire had a tail tank that compromised
stability even more drastically: the aircraft was outright aerodynamically
unstable with that tank full or nearly full. (Naturally, you emptied that
tank *first*... and didn't have much attention to spare for anything else
until it was empty.)
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