Tail draggers help when you have a very large diameter prop circle
i.e. stops the prop hitting the runway. Of course not a problem with
multi-engine or jet propulsion.

Mustang
Spitfire
Hurricane
Tempest
Typhoon

to name a few.

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 20:43:34 -0000, "killfile"
wrote:

Early landing gear was heavy, because materials technology dictated that it
had to be big, and thick to solid. In addition to this it was, of course,
another thing to fail. One of the other big, big factors was that the nose
gear needs to go into the nose - which on on piston engined fighters, was
usally full of ... engine. (Bar the P-39, which was rear-engined.)

One of the best illustrations of why the switch was made was the Me-262,
which originally had a tail-dragger configuration. On the initial test
flight, they found that the jet wash headed straight for the tailplanes and
pinned the aircraft to the ground - to get it airbourne, the pilot had to
take the horrendously dangerous manouver of tapping the brakes to bring up
the tail.

Matt