COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
plumper, and more worldly wise, but scratch the surface and
underneath was still the same old George. He had left the RAF and
seemed happy enough, based at Hatfield, demonstrating business jets
for de Havillands.
1 always enjoyed flying the Spitfire XIV although it had lost the
evocative charm of its Merlin engined forebears. The delightfully
simple, almost Tiger Moth like, feel and handling had been sacrificed
- and successfully - for better performance. The nose was enormous
and the cylinder banks of the massive two stage Griffon engine seemed
to be bursting out of their cowlings. The rest of the aircraft looked
deceptively unchanged, apart from the larger fin and rudder, but the
wing loading was much higher and an additional tank had been
squeezed in, behind the cockpit, to compensate for the increased fuel
consumption.
The Griffon sounded rough and raucous, even at cruising power,
as if it was running on nails. But its handling had been simplified by
a more advanced propeller mechanism. This optimised the RPM so that
you could use the throttle effectively as a single lever control.
2 Squadron had the latest FR M K XIVBs, fitted with full rear view
canopies and the new gyro gunsight. The latter was superb device. You
tracked an enemy aircraft by holding it inside a pattern of diamond
shaped spots which was projected onto the windscreen or optical flat.
A twist grip on the throttle adjusted the size of the pattern, shrinking
it round the target to generate a range input, and gyro precession did
the rest. In a quarter attack the whole pattern moved, as you pulled
'G', automatically setting up the correct lead for deflection shooting.
It was so easy and natural to use that most pilots felt completely at
home with it from the start. Lefty Packwood, one of the Broon
Fockerrs, was flying a Spit XIV when he shot down his Me 109 over
Gilze Rijen on New Year's day. As the first and only one of us to
destroy an enemy fighter in the air I envied him his GGS 1 .
As might be expected, in such a stretched version of the original
design, the Spit XIV had some rather odd characteristics. Plus 12lb/in 2
boost was the maximum permissible for take off, otherwise you were
in grave danger of wiping off the undercarriage. Even so it leant over
like a toy aeroplane and you had an impression of moving crabwise.
Once airborne maximum climb was at +18, with +25 combat
emergency - an indication of the power restriction for take off.
The torque and gyroscopic effects of the outsize engine, with its
five bladed propeller, were impressive. Pitching the aircraft nose up
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