Friedrich-4B

Not forgetting that by mid-1944 a high proportion of 2 TAF Spitfires were fitted with the Mk II Gyro gunsight: according to Price Late Marque (sic!) Spitfire Aces 1942-45 the gunsight doubled gunnery effectiveness, with pilots able to hit evading aircraft at ranges of 600 yards + and deflection angles of 50°.

The reason firing trials were usually held was to assess the effectiveness of the weapon and ammo; there's no reason to assume that the ammunition was not improved as a result of the trials. The excerpt of the report is neither dated, nor is there any indication as to what it recommended, nor does it say what improvements were made; thus, while mildly interesting in themselves, the trials results are not necessarily indicative of how the ammunition and weapons performed over Europe in 1944. For instance, there is no evidence of how the 1 in 15 failure rate of HE/IT rounds noted in the report translated into the 1 in 1,562 overall failure rate in 13,500,000 rounds of all types expended by 2 TAF.

While this is all very interesting and has, no doubt, been raised by Kurfurst because of his deep and abiding interest in all things British, it neither gives us concrete evidence of the relative failure rates of the 20 mm Hispano in service in Spitfires of 2 TAF in 1944, nor does it give any indication of what primary source documents were used. According to the firing trials mentioned later, there were 19 stoppages out of 5,012 rounds, or a failure rate of .0039%. According to Shores and Thomas 2nd Tactical Air Force Volume 4, 13,500,000 Hispano rounds were fired by 2 TAF with an average failure rate of 1 in 1,562, 50% of which were feed failures and nothing to do with the weapon (page 606): that equals 0.001562% failure rate, or 0.000781% attributed to the Hispano. The material on the American weapons is interesting, but a bit of a red herring because no American Hispanos were ever used in RAF service - Kurfurst forgot to quote Wallace on the matter: As Sith has mentioned, ED has a lot of information on the Spitfire's guns, so there is probably a clear understanding of their failure rates and combat effectiveness.

Two more bombed-up Spitfires, plus some interesting information in the captions (from Polish Wings 15: Supermarine Spitfire IX 1944-1946 ):

How complex does one want the piping to be? Every extra, complex piece of equipment that's installed increases weight and requires extra maintenance. Generally speaking the Hispanos and Brownings were reliable enough to be mounted in the wings, and didn't jam often enough to warrant extra equipment. If a ground crew was unreliable enough to forget to cock the weapons I would suggest they would be unreliable enough to forget how to set any unjamming/recocking equipment as well - no unit would tolerate klutzy ground crews for long! It would be very surprising if there weren't detailed manuals for the Spitfire's sub-systems, although they don't seem to be as readily available as those of the Bf 109 or Fw 190: I would guess that whereas the German manuals were often captured and stored for future reference because of their technical interest, many of the RAF's manuals were routinely destroyed post-war as the aircraft became obsolete. I have found a Spitfire VIII Technical manual...http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/yhst-92316622267239_2264_225158537

AFAIK the MG 151s in the wing gondolas on some Bf 109Fs, Gs and Ks could not be re-cocked, nor could Fw 190 wing guns so, no, the Hispanos in the Spitfire were not unique or unusual in that respect.

Either a Spitfire pilot or an evil, chopper wielding gang leader

Post D-Day 2 TAF Spitfire armament - .50 cal (mod 1029) and wing bomb racks (mod 1209). The .50s were not fitted to all 2 TAF Spitfires, but increasing numbers of L.F Mk IXs were either modified or built with this armament, although the designation wasn't changed to Mk IXE until early 1945. (From Thomas and Shores' 2 TAF Vol 4 http://www.amazon.com/2nd-Tactical-Air-Force-Vol/dp/1906537011 Polish Spitfire L.F Mk IX showing some details of mid-late pdn Mk IX:

Another possibility is the option of the 109K-4/R-4 with 20mm gondolas: From Don Caldwell's JG 26 War Diary Volume 2: 1943-45 (pages 378-379): This was late November 1944. According to the casualty lists most of these K-4s were from the 3303XX to 3304XX production batch.

No problem. In line with discussing the RRG K-4, several sources - including Schmoll, posted above - mention that the Mk 108 on the K-4 suffered from chronic jamming; is their any chance that this will be modeled, or at least made an option?

In addition to the production lists: Schmoll also made some interesting observations about the production difficulties being experienced by late 1944:

Any idea of how many were built? I take it you have properly documented info, so why not add it to the discussion? If you can, thanks - I look forward to seeing another piece of the puzzle being put in place. :thumbup:

New info from Peter Schmoll's Nest of Eagles http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nest-Eagles-Messerschmitt-Production-Flight-testing/dp/1906537127 K-4s built 1944 = 857 then Jan '45 = 338 Feb '45 = 233 Sub Tot= 1,428 Plus Mar '45 = 204 109s including G-14/AS W.Nrs = 787453 - 787524 built Cham 3/45 = 71 = 133 K-4s Apr '45 penciled note stating 50 additional 109s built, probably all K-4: Total = 1,428 plus 183 = 1,611 (pages 77 & 159) Known 109K-4 W.Nrs (page 175); cf the ones from Wolowski which are the same as in Prien & Rodeike: 330105 - 330491 330917 331325 - 331510 332247 - 332998 333876 - 333995 334060 - 334263 335170 - 335210 For now these numbers are as definitive as they're likely to get, meaning the research by ArtieBob was almost spot on. :thumbup: Schmoll's book is well worth having and was originally printed in German in 2002 as Messerschmitt-Giganten und der Fliegerhorst Regensburg-Obertraubling 1936-1945 followed in 2004 by Die Messerschmitt-Werke im Zweiten-Weltkrieg both published by MZ Buchverlag GmbH. Regensburg.

Hungry rats and aircraft are a bad combination.

Here's some inspiration:

My point was, and still is: the only place in which those particular production figures for the Bf 109K-4 can be found is on one eight year old thread on a members only website, otherwise they are unavailable on any normal internet search, which includes various websites dedicated to the 109. Not that I implied anywhere that listing the 12OHC figures would have either increased or diminished the credibility of 109 websites... Grumbling about using Wolowski, based on that argument, is a nonsense, because, looking at JaPo's Messerschmitt Bf 109K sources the only primary source materials used were 109K-4 and DB 605 handbooks, otherwise their work was also based entirely on secondary sources (ie; Hitchcock, Prien & Rodieke and John Beaman, etc) with little or no primary research: as ArtieBob said http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showpost.php?p=11709&postcount=11 "Kurfurst-I frankly don’t care what the Japo 109K book says, where did they get their information?...I have simply tabulated data from two primary sources."

There's this one: http://109lair.hobbyvista.com/index1024.htm or this: http://www.messerschmitt-bf109.de/ this: http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/articles/109myths/ another one: http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/bf109.html one more: http://kurfurst.org/ there's even a facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Messerschmitt-Bf-109/31014345089

Excellent, we have unpublished information from private research, on an eight year old thread in a private website to give us all the required information, which suggests that about 1,600, but not 1,700, K-4s were built: the documents used are "C-AMT Monatsmeldung and the Gen .Qu.(6 Abt.III C) Flugzeugverteilung" http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showpost.php?p=11709&postcount=11 , noting that none of them have been reproduced on any dedicated 109 websites, nor has the information as yet been repeated in books: those who do not know about this one thread will have no idea where the information might have come from. It is encouraging that John Beaman, who is a credible researcher and author, has confirmed the documents and that Jochen Prien would like to update the F-K illustrated study, although still tied up with the JFV work. It'll be interesting to see what primary source documents the author of Nest of Eagles has used - hopefully he will have consulted the same documents and came up with the same or similar numbers.

I've just ordered Peter Schmoll's Nest of Eagles http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nest-Eagles-Messerschmitt-Production-Flight-testing/dp/1906537127 which concentrates on Messerschmitt Regensburg's production and flight testing 1936-'45. Should be an interesting read. :book:

I agree that JaPo (Janda and Poruba) books are an excellent source, so its interesting to note that their Messerschmitt Bf 109K page 83 says "Real number of 109Ks produced in all variants...estimated at least 1200 machines" which is presumably where Wolowski's book got its information from. In addition JaPo states that 109 production ended in late March 1945: Why diss Wolowski when he repeats information from the same source Kurfurst recommends so highly? The only source of information which says 1,600-1,700 K-4s might have been built is Prien and Rodeike (1996) who state "...534 were delivered by November 1944 and it may be assumed another 1,200 machines had been built by the end of the war" (which implies late April to early May): In other words the figure of 1,600-1,700 is an assumption, not a proven fact. Compounding the confusion, Radinger & Otto in Messerschmitt Bf 109F-K: Development, Testing, Production (2000) show that 856 K-4s were built by the end of 1944, after which confirmed numbers are not available: Is there any substantive evidence that Radinger & Otto, or Wolowski and JaPo are wrong and Prien and Rodeike are right? How is it possible to state definitively that 1600 -1700 K-4s were built when none of the best available published sources agree?

No problem; Wolowski's book is an excellent source of information on all of the late model 109s (G-5 and G-6/AS, G-14, G-10 and K-4) - the profiles alone should provide lots of information for those who will want to develop new skins for their rides.

Adding from P-47D Pilot's Flight Operating Instructions P-47D-30 dive recovery flaps and instrument panel:

K-4s were built mainly by Messerschmitt's Regensburg plant, with a very small number by Erla (from Krzysztof W Wolowski Bf 109 Late versions; Camouflage & Markings [MMP Books, White Series No. 9110], page 8 ):

Merry Christmas to all from the Antipodes - Santa's been and gone and we're looking forward to the Christmas barbie....

All of JG 26's Bases Late May -October 1944 A lot of the airfields became local or regional airports post-war, but there are a few places where the airfields were built over or converted back to pasture.