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Messerspit what-if question


Adam Poultney

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7 minutes ago, smackers said:

Another alternate history could be that the British re-engined the Spitfire for tests and found it was superior to the Merlin so reverse engineered and produced the DB engine in large numbers equipping many aircraft.

 

Didn't think of that one. Nice idea.

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On 12/24/2019 at 10:17 AM, gingerbob said:

I think the original engine change was done as a way to evaluate (or compare) the Spitfire's cooling system- sort of an "all things being equal" test.  I've got a copy of the German test report, but my German isn't good enough to read it.

 

 

AFAIR, the idea was to see if the Spitfire would benefit from the Daimler, i.e. if the Daimler was superior to the Merlin. An engineer noticed that the firewall was the same size as the Me110 firewall, so the conversion was feasible. In any case the Spitfire was almost mythical in German eyes and re-engine it was a way of finding out secrets.

 

Funny fact: The Messerspit was very popular among german pilots and flown a great deal.

 

/Finn

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The Dutch requested a licene to build Spitfires.  Say it was granted and they tooled for production and were about to about to start/had just started when the country was over-run.  The Germans now have a production line for Spitfires.

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  • 1 month later...
On 12/22/2019 at 5:19 AM, Adam Poultney said:

The French licence is a possibility then for a what-if. I like that. 

The other way of approaching this would be perhaps a small number being converted as they were captured.

I believe this would have been quite possible, recycling captured examples after the defeat in France and crash landed examples later. Perhaps a small series of 50 aircraft? I imagine Finland flying some against the Soviets, and other nations allied with Germany. 

 

Alain

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A few crash landed Spitfires are refurbished and re-engined and supplied to a special duties unit (maybe KG 200)

and used on clandestine recon missions, maybe with British markings ?
 

Wulfman  ( might do that myself !)

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Hi

    I cant remember which one, but in one of the ‘spitfire at war ‘ books is a photo/s of spitfires left on Kos ? in 1943 which the germans captured

 

  seem to recall it was quite a few spitfires

 

   think they were Mk V’s 

 

   cheers

      jerry 

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Remember the 109 needed far fewer hours to build than the Spitfire. Also, the DB engine was designed to run on 87 octane fuel rather than 100, And was larger capacity, at 36 litres, so would have run better than a merlin on lower octane. All things were not equal. 

 

It is still a great ’what if’ and in my view the messerspit looks less clunky than a Buchon, not that I don’t love them both

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8 hours ago, brewerjerry said:

Hi

    I cant remember which one, but in one of the ‘spitfire at war ‘ books is a photo/s of spitfires left on Kos ? in 1943 which the germans captured

 

  seem to recall it was quite a few spitfires

 

   think they were Mk V’s 

2 photos on page 67 of Spitfire At War 3.  From the captions the aircraft had belonged to 7 SAAF and 74 Sqs, which had deployed to Kos.  Some were damaged in air attacks and others prevented from taking off owing to runway cratering but "it is believed that at least 6 Spitfires were captured intact".  They look like Spitfire Vc Trops.  One, coded "K" but serial not visible, is pictured having its engine run.

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On ‎12‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 9:45 AM, FinnAndersen said:

AFAIR, the idea was to see if the Spitfire would benefit from the Daimler, i.e. if the Daimler was superior to the Merlin. An engineer noticed that the firewall was the same size as the Me110 firewall, so the conversion was feasible. In any case the Spitfire was almost mythical in German eyes and re-engine it was a way of finding out secrets.

 

Funny fact: The Messerspit was very popular among german pilots and flown a great deal.

 

/Finn

Obligatory reading for anybody who complains that model-scale conversions are difficult......

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On 2/10/2020 at 4:08 AM, Seahawk said:

2 photos on page 67 of Spitfire At War 3.  From the captions the aircraft had belonged to 7 SAAF and 74 Sqs, which had deployed to Kos.  Some were damaged in air attacks and others prevented from taking off owing to runway cratering but "it is believed that at least 6 Spitfires were captured intact".  They look like Spitfire Vc Trops.  One, coded "K" but serial not visible, is pictured having its engine run.

Hi

    often wonder what happened to them 

   shipped to germany ?

    or being Mk V not worth it ? 

 

     cheers

       jerry

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/9/2020 at 12:12 AM, agadbois said:

I believe this would have been quite possible, recycling captured examples after the defeat in France and crash landed examples later. Perhaps a small series of 50 aircraft? I imagine Finland flying some against the Soviets, and other nations allied with Germany. 

 

Alain

How many Spitfires were captured when France fell? I'm only aware of a single specimen. And if you're going to go to the great lengths required to reverse engineer an entire aircraft, you wouldn't then limit yourself to a production run of a few dozen!

 

And while the Germans did subsequently capture plenty of Spitfires, they never (to my knowledge) got their hands on 'modern' variants - as brewerjerry suggests in the post above, Spitfire Vs in autumn 1943 were well into obsolesence and therefore not much use to the Germans. By that time, the RAF was testing the Mk XIV, while the Germans were well advanced with the Fw 190D and had already flown the Me 262 on jet power and a tricycle undercarriage! 

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