gecko
Charter Member
It's the cockpit view from this beauty that Steve has recently added to the Mk.V project. It is a very late Spitfire LF.Mk.VB of the clipped, cropped, and clapped variety and includes a few modifications introduced in its service career. It is powered by the low-altitude Merlin 45M, and uses the late six-stub ejector exhaust typically found on Seafire Mk.IIIs and late Spitfire Mk.VCs. There's the Rotol constant speed propeller with its jablo blades which, as you can see in the above shot, will shear off instead of bend when you belly it in. It also has the internally mounted armored windshield and small round mirror which was standard on the Mk.VC but also installed on late production Mk.VBs. Stresses incurred over the course of a long frontline career have necessitated the installation of wing stiffening fences on the upper surface of the wing, and somewhere along the way it got a new horizontal stabilizer and elevator with enlarged elevator mass balances that started appearing on the last production batch of the Mk.VC. The cockpit reflects typical late Mk.V features like the Mk.II* Reflector Gunsight and a fuel pressure warning light in place of a gauge. The mixture control is fully automatic in this version, meaning it automatically switches between AUTO-WEAK and AUTO-NORMAL settings based on boost pressure and the mixture control in the quadrant was disabled or removed. She's quite a different animal than the early production Mk.Vs we started the project with. The engine is boosted to +18lbs in this version instead of a max of +12lbs, but it won't maintain it past 5,900ft in level flight and will hold +12lbs to only about 11,000ft vs 18,000ft on a standard Merlin 45. The clipped wings improve the roll rate, but the resulting higher wing loading causes airspeed to decay faster in a turn and it can't turn as tight. It will tend to stall out of a high-g turn sooner than the standard wing variant will. Adjust your tactics accordingly!
A Spitfire LF.Mk.VB in D-Day markings is a seriously photogenic aircraft.
