Summary of The Insane Engineering of the Spitfire

00:00:00 - 00:20:00

The Spitfire was a revolutionary fighter plane that helped the RAF win the Battle of Britain. It was nimble and could rapidly gain altitude, and its wings allowed it to pack a punch. To do this it needed powerful engines and new revolutionary aged hardened aluminum alloys. Some of the greatest engineers of World War 2 worked on this fighter and the designs they came up with changed the course of the war.

• 00:00:00 The Spitfire was a revolutionary fighter plane that helped the RAF win the Battle of Britain. It needed powerful engines and revolutionary aged hardened aluminum alloys to outrun and outturn any foe, and its wing was made possible by new powerful engines and new revolutionary aged hardened aluminum alloys. The Spitfire was a nimble interceptor that could rapidly gain altitude, and proceed to fiercely defend its airspace. To do this it needed to be powerful, manoeuvrable, and capable of packing a punch. Some of the greatest engineers of World War 2 worked on this fighter and the designs they came up with changed the course of the war.
• 00:05:00 The Spitfire's elliptical wing provides superior lift distribution and reduced induced drag, which was key to its success in the Battle of Britain. The elliptical wing is not perfect, and its trailing edge curves inwards more rapidly than the leading edge for structural reasons. The wing spar is located along the quarter chord, which is the aerodynamic center of the wing, and is made from simple nested square extrusions. The Spitfire's larger wing area affects wing loading and the turning radius.
• 00:10:00 The Spitfire's wings allowed it to fit 8 Browning machine guns inside the wing, with later variants including 2 larger 20 mm cannons and four of the smaller 7.7 mm Brownings all mounted inside the wing, outside the propellor arc. This reduced the engineer effort needed to integrate them. While the BF109's wings were much smaller, its high wing load meant it had a larger turning radius. German pilots learned to exploit the Spitfire's lack of power in a negative g maneuver by flooding the engine with too much fuel, forcing the engineers to design the supercharger to work at the optimum speed and compression.
• 00:15:00 The Spitfire had excellent power at its optimum altitude, but the BF109 had superior power at lower altitude due to an ingenious device that allowed the supercharger to vary its speed. British engineers were well aware of this issue prior to the Battle of Britain and development began on a two stage, two speed supercharger for the Merlin engine. This allowed the supercharger to operate at two different speeds via a gear change, but also introduced a second impeller which increased the compression for even better high altitude performance. This increased compression caused an increase in temperature of the air that would negatively affect engine efficiency, and so an intercooler also had to be introduced to cool the supercharged air before entering the piston. This intercooler removed 33% of the heat added by the supercharger. Removing more heat would have been beneficial but there is a balancing act here. To remove more heat, the plane needed a larger radiator to dump that heat to atmosphere and a larger radiator would result in more drag, which negated the power increase. The radiator design was in fact one of the chief ways the Spitfire managed to squeeze so much power out of its smaller Merlin engine.
• 00:20:00 The Spitfire was a fighter aircraft that played a significant role in the Battle of Britain, and its success was due in part to the systems and procedures on the ground. The Spitfire was able to get into the air day after day thanks to its radar, data processing, mapping, and pilot training, among other things. For those interested in learning more about these battles and the Spitfire in particular, check out the Nebula Original series, "The Battle of Britain."