Spitfire's flaps deployed at an angle of 85°, acting more like speed brakes than actual flaps. What was the thinking behind this design, as opposed to having more conventional flaps with more variable degrees of extension?
Posted by JimPalamo@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 126 comments
Potential_Wish4943@reddit
They had an interesting way to have a "takeoff flaps" setting despite the flaps only having a "Down" or "Up" position: They'd make a wooden wedge and put it in the flaps before raising them, so they'd be partially deployed. following takeoff they would lower the flaps, the wedge falls out and the flaps can now be fully raised.
3BM60SvinetIsTrash@reddit
Was that a common practice or just an emergency measure
ChillyConKearney@reddit
Hmmm… remember in Le Mans ‘66/Ford vs Ferrari (Matt Damon/Christian Bale) when he suggested wooden wedges like that to lower the GT40 for pre-race inspection, & they’d then drop out… Bale’s character Ken Miles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Miles) was a WW2 British Army tech, I wonder if this is where he got the idea…
W00DERS0N60@reddit
Run that by me. How do wedges keep the car lower? Are they in the suspension to keep like the A-arms retracted up? IF they're in the springs it'd force the height up.
GayRacoon69@reddit
They don't. The cars have a minimum ride height. Having a lower car helps with aerodynamics so there are rules about how low a car can be.
The cars are inspected before a race and if they're too low then they're disqualified.
The idea is you have wedges that raise the height during the inspection then the wedges get removed during the race causing the car to go lower.
The wedges make the car higher. Removing the wedges makes it lower
W00DERS0N60@reddit
Gotcha, thx. So they cheat?
GayRacoon69@reddit
Yeah basically. Loopholes have been a part of racing since the start
Punkpunker@reddit
Everyone else tried to game the rules, some succeeded and some didn't.
FarButterscotch4280@reddit
The trick was done in 67 on the Ford Mk 4.
The idea was to raise the suspension up with wooden blocks so the front of the car would pass ride height requirements. Then shortly after the race started, the driver would pull a wire and the blocks would pop out lowering the car. I never heard of them doing in in 1966, but its possible as the suspension was pretty much the same.
mkosmo@reddit
That or to compress springs.
Potential_Wish4943@reddit
at the time it was a common tactic to have tanks of water in your car to weigh the car pre-race and dump them out on the grid before you start
JimPalamo@reddit (OP)
That's a cool bit of Spitfire trivia I wasn't aware of. I thought flaps weren't used at all for takeoff. Not a particularly elegant solution, but a good example of British wartime ingenuity.
Corvid187@reddit
This was done for spitfires pressed into service operating off carriers.
It wasn't used in 'regular' operation
AntiGravityBacon@reddit
Probably one of those life hacks that makes things easier but isn't 100% necessary since you could probably just use some extra runway in most locations.
RevMagnum@reddit
TIL Cool!
I've read, watched, played so much about the mighty Spits, even thought much about why smth like that never existed till this. Thanks.
plyushevo@reddit
When I flew on it in il2 sim back in a day I turned them on and off during maneuvering so they were somewhere in the middle position to give me some speed and movement. Love these memories
Potential_Wish4943@reddit
I did too, but in hindsight i dont think the aero model was that fancy and just switched instantly from deployed to folded, except for the visual model. ( IL2 is from the 1990s, remember)
styxracer97@reddit
Slight correction. As far as I know, the only time those were used on land based Spitfires was when they were taking off of a carrier for a ferry mission. The Seafires used them regularly, also for carrier launches (obviously, lol)
Shadowrend01@reddit
The thinking was “we need to slow down quickly, and this does the job”
The Spitfire was designed and first flew in the early 30’s and aircraft design was still in its relative infancy at the time (powered flight was only achieved 32 years before the first Spitfire flight), and they were sort of just throwing out designs to suit a requirement and seeing what worked and what didn’t
JimPalamo@reddit (OP)
Insane that such a powerful and capable combat aircraft came about only thirty years after the first powered flight. R.J. Mitchell was certainly a genius, and that Rolls Royce engine is a masterpiece.
Shadowrend01@reddit
Orville Wright lived long enough to see his invention go from a rickety machine barely able to fly along a beach, to dropping nukes on Japan
thisisinput@reddit
I read a line somewhere that if the Wright brothers were brought into the future, they would look at an A380 on the tarmac and probably think it's an interesting hotel.
JimPalamo@reddit (OP)
The distance of the Wright Brothers first flight is less than the length of the fuselage of the A380.
T-701D-CC@reddit
The wright brothers first flight could have taken place inside of a C-5Ms cargo hold
K2TheM@reddit
If they had launched from the hump on the back of a 747 instead of the hill at Kitty Hawk; they would have landed before the vertical stabilizer.
JanTroe@reddit
They should’ve tried a 747SP to make it more daredevil.
GeorgiaPilot172@reddit
Wow that’s kind of useless, these flying machine things are probably nothing more than a gimmick
Rk_1138@reddit
Just like those damn horseless carriages!
CplTenMikeMike@reddit
Noisy, smelly useless buggers scaring the horses to death!! Hell, my chickens quit laying and the cows refuse to give milk! Hope this fad blows over soon!
Defiant-Goose-101@reddit
One of my favorite facts like this is that America plans to retire the B-52 in the 2050s. If it sees combat service in the 2050s, it’ll be like the Wright Flyer being used in combat in the Gulf War
nighthawke75@reddit
It's our Bear bomber. Long range, standoff weapons, helluva endurance, it's a scary weapon.
987C4YM4N@reddit
why are you bombing bears?
PHX1K@reddit
It’s either us or them. You siding with the bears, traitor?
987C4YM4N@reddit
What says that I'm not a bear who has infiltrated Reddit subs to gather information.....
HWKII@reddit
This is America, and I have the right to your bear arms. Give me a hug, dammit!
someoneelseatx@reddit
I'm calling McCarthy
JayGold@reddit
Godless killing machines
LetsGoHawks@reddit
If you saw the Chicago Bears play, you'd know it's a mercy kill.
tothemoonandback01@reddit
If it's Red, hide under bed.
Creepy_Boat_5433@reddit
Because they fly as part of the Bear Patrol duh
nighthawke75@reddit
In case you don't understand. BEAR is the NATO codename for the TU-95 turboprop aircraft. It's HUGE.
JimPalamo@reddit (OP)
Even if it were retired tomorrow, surely it would have to have had one of the longest service lives of any military aircraft?
hitechpilot@reddit
But it is? Wdym? /s
oh_helloghost@reddit
It always blows my mind that 30 years after the Wright Flyer, aviation technology was in a place where aircraft like the Boeing 247 were just coming into service… 10 seats, 200mph and less than 1000nm of range.
30 years after that, the SR-71 had its first flight.
DolphinPunkCyber@reddit
It blows my mind that Orville Wright died at 1948.
So the inventor of first powered airplane got to know not just about Boeing 247, but about first jet planes, about first flight braking sound barrier (1947).
ab0ngcd@reddit
And Lockheed had him at the controls of a Constellation for a promo flight.
DolphinPunkCyber@reddit
Thinking about it... Wright brothers were flying without a pilot license, in an uncertified plane built by unqualified workforce, using an illegal runway.
Sets a bad example, we should cancel them.
daPeachesAreCrunchy@reddit
Orville Wright was still alive when Neil Armstrong was born…
Boomhauer440@reddit
One of my favourite books is Flying Fury by Major James McCudden, VC.
The book is his assembled diaries beginning in 1913 as an RFC aircraft mechanic, through to becoming one of the most decorated aces in the war, until his death in 1918. Being written in real time, it does a great job of showcasing the rapid advances of aviation in 4 short years. He goes from planes little better than the Wright Flyer, being impressed that the newest ones might be able to outrun a moderate breeze, to flying his hotrodded 150mph SE5 up to 20,000ft. It is crazy how fast things changed.
cybermage@reddit
Read that as nano-meters instead of what I assume is nautical miles.
ziekktx@reddit
I went to Newton meters
RevMagnum@reddit
Not much of a leap 30y after SR-71 tho, avionics wise maybe yes but aeronautics wise, well I don't think so.
If we had the breakthrough of going to SR71 from the Wright Flyer in 60 years then maybe we'd have personal spacecraft by now
mikeg5417@reddit
Pretty bleak, unless we own those flying tic tacs.
RevMagnum@reddit
This makes me think of the wacky theory that human tech was boosted by some alien intervention in 40s or 50s :)
sir_thatguy@reddit
And that man on the moon thing wasn’t far behind.
robertson4379@reddit
The Wright Flyer wouldda gotten crushed in the Gulf War! (But I know what you mean, and that’s cool as hell.)
JimPalamo@reddit (OP)
Well that bit puts a slight dampener on the romance of aviation history.
WWYDWYOWAPL@reddit
That’s what has driven just about every single part of aviation history though.
NekrotismFalafel@reddit
This is how we decided to use the high ground. The high air?
W00DERS0N60@reddit
Gas balloons were used pretty much form their invention as tools of war. The US Army had them in the Civil War for surveying and reconnaissance.
Ras_Prince_Monolulu@reddit
chinese war kites have flown over the chat
blindfoldedbadgers@reddit
Nothing like a good war to spur some scientific progress.
HeavensToSpergatroyd@reddit
It's over, Hirohito! I have the high ground!
bloodyedfur4@reddit
aviation innovation rapidly switches between the fully automated luxerio comfy jet 900 and the orphanage bomber death machine 9000 (usually the same company) every few years
ERTHLNG@reddit
The Orphanage Bomber DM9000 is Boeing lastest model to compete with the very popular
Hospital Annihaltor GTX Pro Titanium Intercontinental Express Kill-Jet 5 from Airbus.
German_Drive@reddit
Human ingenuity will weaponize anything.
sir_thatguy@reddit
That better?
FlexVector@reddit
If your son was going to have to try to take the beach at Tokyo, those nukes were angels from heaven. War sucks, friend.
NedTaggart@reddit
Imma be marginally pedantic here. No nukes were dropped in Japan. Fat Man and Little Boy were fission only bombs...Atomic bombs.
Nukes are Fission-Fusion bombs...hydrogen bombs. Adjacent ideas, but different product.
God_Damnit_Nappa@reddit
What? No, that's not pedantry, that's just flat out wrong. Atomic bombs are nukes. That term is just normally used to describe fission weapons instead of fusion or fission fusion weapons.
abstractmodulemusic@reddit
And long enough to see his invention break the sound barrier
nighthawke75@reddit
It's rumor that Bell, Boeing, the USAAF, and Lockheed showed him what they were working on to bring America into the Jet Age.
Same thing as what Northrop did for Jack Northrop before they unveiled the B-2. "Now I know why God let me live for so long."
Silent-Hornet-8606@reddit
It's a pity RJ Mitchell never got to say the same thing. He died before even seeing the Spitfire become operational.
Old_Sparkey@reddit
He watched his invention go from barely hitting 30 mph to breaking the sound barrier.
ChartreuseBison@reddit
Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in level flight before Orville died
Baron_VonLongSchlong@reddit
There is a song about it as well.
https://youtu.be/_u4Md_aXVJE?si=d9_We60RQrK9QiBd
NedTaggart@reddit
Sadly, I thought you were going to link a different song about the Spitfire
Baron_VonLongSchlong@reddit
I forgot about that one!
reddash73@reddit
After the war, Rolls could not find a Merlin anywhere that had more than 150hrs on it. They just did not last, which is ok in the context of war.
If a Merlin in a fighter went to emergency power it was removed, these engines then went into bombers where the engines operating parameters helped them last longer mechanically.
People that overhaul merlin's today have a long list of mods to make them last longer, especially around cooling and oil pressure / flow to critical areas... and a very heavy maintenance schedule.
Vituperative_Camel@reddit
Beverley Shenstone deserves quite a lot of the credit as well. Thank you, Canada.
ZZmountaintop@reddit
Sad to say man’s tech innovation goes hyper speed when war is on.
Big-Professional-187@reddit
Bombers. They flew faster than the bombers they were designed to escort. This helped solve that issue.
Fun fact. If your ever intercepted by a fighter jet say an F15 while in a prop aircraft and they show their weapons. Just slow down below their stall speed.
T-rabis@reddit
I would recommend you do whatever the guy with the cool helmet and name underneath the canopy says to do. 😀
Big-Professional-187@reddit
Will do. The beech is usually in you anyway and the sooner you follow commands the more likely you'll fly again.
bowling128@reddit
Not to mention it was long before modeling and CAD so if you wanted to test something you had to build it.
ihedenius@reddit
First Spitfire flight was March 5, 1936.
atomicsnarl@reddit
The 1930's design era wasn't very clear on the aeronautics of flaps and split flaps beyond the basics. Compare to the F-86 with automatically deploying leading edge slats providing a huge boost to maneuver/lift issues.
graspedbythehusk@reddit
The Spit was very slippery and needed help slowing down.
borgbo@reddit
Zl
TGMcGonigle@reddit
This flap setting may have served to lower the pitch attitude on approach, offering better visibility over the nose during landing.
Another reason for having high-drag flaps on approach is to maintain higher engine RPMs in case of a go-around. This was pretty important in early jets that had such long spool-up times, but I've never heard that the Merlin was slow to accelerate.
727Super27@reddit
The problem with props spooling up quickly is the torque and p-factor, so a Merlin would give you all the instantaneous power you wanted, straight into the ground.
Controllable drag on approach is preferable to changing engine power, since that always destabilizes you. The L-1011 had a cool Direct Lift Control system that extended and retracted the spoilers on approach so that it could be flown without pitch adjustments. At flaps full, the yoke would directly control the spoiler panels, so pushing forward would extend the spoilers and increase rate of descent, and vice versa. Very cool little system.
mkosmo@reddit
The F-14 also had a DLC, but it was controlled with a switch on the stick.
elingeniero@reddit
Yes, and it's for the same reason: the F14A engine was very slow to respond, so you wanted to keep it at a high thrust setting on approach; the DLC provides all the fine glide slope control without risking a slow spool up from putting you in the drink.
SocraticIgnoramus@reddit
The L-1011 was so far ahead of its time in so many ways.
727Super27@reddit
Yeah like a 4-digit model number while everyone else is on 2 or 3. Truly cutting edge.
GrownHapaKid@reddit
While upside down.
ZincII@reddit
The problem was not spool up/down but torque. Ground loops are real.
JimPalamo@reddit (OP)
That's a good point. I've fucked around a bit with the Spitfire on MSFS, and the long nose makes forward visibility a real bastard
Specialist_Reality96@reddit
Good enough without a heavy more complex mechanism that is only used for a small fraction of the flight. Wing space was at a premium on the spitfire the elliptical wing is the shape it is to accommodate the machine guns.
aysheep@reddit
It is simple, light-weight and effective. The biggest myth about split flaps
The_Arpie@reddit
That was an excellent video thanks for the link
RevMagnum@reddit
That's really good learn, especially if you're no aeronautics engineer.
No_low9552@reddit
Probably act like spoilers in addition to acting like flaps, you slow down better.
Avaricio@reddit
Split flaps work up to and require a much higher deflection angle than normal flaps. They produce a lot more drag as a consequence but they still produce a lot of lift. Incremental flaps weren't considered necessary, for reasons that are now probably only known to the original designers and maybe buried in old Supermarine records. Probably related to being land based aircraft operating off military runways that are plenty long enough already.
RevMagnum@reddit
Probably practicality, simplicity, and efficiency since they needed to mass produce in short time.
12345NoNamesLeft@reddit
First built as a race plane, simplify and weight reduction were probably in mind.
wabbitsilly@reddit
Most aircraft flaps (Fowler, Plain, Slotted, etc..) only add extra lift to a certain point (normally around half+/-) and the rest is typically drag. Not always, and not on every airfoil, but predominantly.
Mariocolby62@reddit
Lot of the principles of how wings work and flaps work was in its infancy. So a lot of the things we conceder normal flaps would have been brand new at the time, as such for the time this is a rather conventional and normal way of having flaps
TangoRed1@reddit
Landing Flaps vs Combat Position vs Flight Position im assuming.
dontsheeple@reddit
On the P38 speed brakes similar to the Spitfire were installed because of the P38 nearing the sound barrier in a dive, maybe for the same reason.
Surly_Dwarf@reddit
Combat aircraft need additional help slowing down because they will descend at much steeper angles than you’d ever see in civil aviation, especially if shooting at something on the ground or diving during a dogfight. The T-6 (used in training) appears to have similar flap design from pictures I can find. Why add complexity by using conventional flaps plus speed brakes? Just another system to get damaged during combat.
xyz_ray@reddit
The flaps aren't there to increase lift, like most aircraft. They aren't used on takeoff^(*), for example. On landing you definitely don't want more lift, and a bit ipof drag is useful.
^* The naval Seafire still only had a two-position flap, and when the takeoff needed a bit of help, they would use wooden wedges to hold the flaps down slightly.
liteflyer@reddit
Actually you most definitely do want more lift on landing, because it lowers your stall speed, which means a slower and safer approach speed, and it allows you to lower the nose for much better visibility
irishluck949@reddit
Yeah you want to increase total lift, not necessarily L/D, which is where this usually gets confused
JimPalamo@reddit (OP)
Flaps were absolutely used to land the Spitfire. It was notoriously an absolute dog to try and land, so you'd want to have your airspeed (and stall speed) as low as possible. With flaps down, you could land at as little as 70mph.
captaincrj@reddit
Probably increased wing quite a bit too.
GeckoV@reddit
Split flaps works as well and better than plain flaps for increasing lift. They also create more drag. This is likely what the slipper Spitfire needs on approach.
120SR@reddit
A crude 90 degree flap still creates lift. Look up “gurney flap” it’s a crude 90 piece of bent aluminum. But it works and is flying on grand caravans today.
BigBadPanda@reddit
Every airplane, since the wright brothers, was designed to have flaps for one reason; to decrease landing distance. The few airplanes without flaps benefit from stronger wings, less complexity, less weight, less maintenance, and one less failure mode.
PckMan@reddit
With the power to weight ratio that thing had, it didn't really need flaps to take off, but it did need a way to somehow slow down for approach. It was not uncommon at the time for many fighters to only have landing flaps. Maneuverability was also very good and they were excellent dogfighters so combat flaps were not needed either. I don't remember off the top of my head if all Spitfires were like this but the early ones certainly were.
Overall_Pin_9347@reddit
Maybe to use in a straffing dive ?
TheVengeful148320@reddit
Can't be extended at anything above 160mph or they'll be ripped off the aircraft. Only for landing.
ResortMain780@reddit
Do note this is not the same as a traditional slotted flap at the same angle. With a split flap, the top surface remains in place. So the effective change in AoA is less dramatic than it looks. Yes its more draggy, thats often an advantage when descending or landing. It also simple and cheap to make.
fliegerrechlin@reddit
Thanks everyone for explaining all of this. Never new about "spitfire wedges". I always wondered about the extreme flap angle. When I see images of the Comet landing I wonder how the hell they can get any lift. Is it also possible the "cushion of air" idea was part of this?
PembyVillageIdiot@reddit
Worth also noting split flaps are extremely cheap and easy to make both from an engineering and manufacturing standpoint
DirtbagSocialist@reddit
The thinking was that they could just add flaps instead of flaps AND speed brakes.