Something that has been a long time in the making is a book about WW2 aircraft performance. And while this project was set aside temporarily to complete my recently published book on WW1 aircraft performance, this book draft had by then already come a long way. However, when I resumed working on it, it soon became clear to me that to do one single volume about all interesting WW2 fighter aircraft would be impossible due to the excessive page count this would inevitably result in. So I have therefore decided to do separate volumes comparing aircraft in pairs instead.

The first volume in this planned series of books will compare the Spitfire Mk I and Bf 109 E during the Battle of Britain time period, and a more detailed description of this book can be found under this tab. The contents will be along the same lines as my previous book covering WW1 aircraft, but will in addition have chapters where the effects of compressibility and other effects specific to this later generation aircraft are covered. However, this new book will of course still do the same comparisons of speed, climb, dive, dive and zoom, sustained and instantaneous turn performance as was done in the book about WW1 aircraft given these are also for WW2 aircraft the most important metrics to see how aircraft compare in terms of flight performance. In addition, this new book will not only cover the standard Spitfire Mk I and Bf 109 E, but will also with the aid of C++ simulations look into some “what if” scenarios such as how would a Spitfire with a smaller wing area comparable to that on a Bf 109 E have fared against the latter, and would this have been a good idea or not? More information about this book can be found on the subtab WW2 Aircraft under the Books tab here.

And while I don’t yet have and firm plans for the second volume, I’m currently leaning towards covering the P-51 Mustang and long-nosed Focke-Wulfs, i.e. the Fw-190 D and the Ta-152 versions during the late war period in this second instalment. But there are of course many other interesting aircraft to cover, and other volumes I have in mind will look into things like would it have been a good idea to increase the wing area of the late Me-109 G/K series? And did Guido Mutke really break the sound barrier already in WW2 in a Me-262 Schwalbe jet? Wikipedia claims so but according to my preliminary simulations results this is doubtful and will of course be covered in that volume.

Finally, while I for the time being only have books related to WW2 fighter aircraft performance planned, my C++ simulation model can also handle jets in the transonic and supersonic ranges, so maybe later on books in a similar vein covering the aircraft of the Korean War, the Middle Eastern, and the Vietnam conflicts will follow.