Messerschmitt Me 309 Development & Politics by Dan Sharp and Calum E. Douglas

tomo pauk said:
Dowding was probably in the right place to order two things:
- use the Spitfire III as day-fighter only
- revert to the 'normal' with tips as on other Spitfires

Unfortunately, Spitfire III never attained the production and service status.
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Its possible without the Supermarine factory being bombed that could have happened, but thats speculation. I think a lot of Mk III stuff was destroyed.
 
Calum Douglas said:
Its possible without the Supermarine factory being bombed that could have happened, but thats speculation. I think a lot of Mk III stuff was destroyed.
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The MkIII stuff was mostly in front of the firewall; fuselage, cockpit and wings were the same as on the MkI/II.
 
tomo pauk said:
The MkIII stuff was mostly in front of the firewall; fuselage, cockpit and wings were the same as on the MkI/II.
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??

The wings were radically different - clipped and the plan even included boundary layer bypass radiators which were in principle like the 109F.

It was a massive redesign, in terms of design hours, ONLY the Mk 1 and Mk 21 absorbed more hours that the Mk III redesign (which absorbed double the design hours that Supermarine expended on the entire IX project)

Below from the official Vickers Supermarine Spitfire company development file.

Due in part to Dowdings complaints there were versions mooted without the clipping, which possibly explains the confusion here.
There are photos of MkIII`s which "look" like Mk 1/2 but they were never intended to be that way during design.

Note in particular fully retractable tailwheel with doors.

(I`ll go away now, I`m ruining Dan`s 309 thread...)

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I should add that the delay has been caused in no small part by unexpected difficulties with a certain engine manufacturer's archive. We eventually had to find a way of skirting around this problem in order to get the manuscript completed. But it is now complete. And we have all the images we need in hand.
It's a case, now, of doing the captions and ensuring that the images get positioned appropriately when the pages are designed.
 
All editorial and design work on Messerschmitt Me 309 Development & Politics has now been completed and I have the full set of print-ready pdfs in hand. Just awaiting final details from the printer before sending it off to press.
 
gatoraptor said:
I presume, then, that Amazon's currently announced release date of 29 April is impossible.
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If I can send the book to the printer today, and they print it today, it might just barely be possible to have it available to post out by April 29. However, even if that isn't possible, we're not going to miss April 29 by more than a week or two.
 
On amazon.uk right now it says publishing date to be 12. April but is currently unavailable at rhe same time.
It cannot be found with normal search, just when I look at my orders I can see it
 
spicmart said:
On amazon.uk right now it says publishing date to be 12. April but is currently unavailable at rhe same time.
It cannot be found with normal search, just when I look at my orders I can see it
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Amazon are a law unto themselves. As a small publisher, you can't contact them directly - their information comes from a middleman, the distributor. The books have to go from Mortons' own warehouse to the distributor's warehouse, then to Amazon's warehouse.
There's no denying that the Me 309 book has been delayed, and for that I apologise, but 1,200 physical copies of it are about to exist in the world. It's simply a question, then, of how to get your hands on one.
 
FighterJock said:
So the book's arrival could slip into May possibly June Dan? I can wait.
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As mentioned in reply #55, you can rest assured that the book is finished and is at the printers being printed - it's becoming a real physical thing and will then wend its way through to the various outlets in due course. I'm very much looking forward to having a copy of it in my hands - I might even pose it for a photo next to Messerschmitt Me 262 Development & Politics and Messerschmitt Me 328 Development & Politics, which together tell three very different sides of what amounts to the same story.
 
newsdeskdan said:
If I can send the book to the printer today, and they print it today, it might just barely be possible to have it available to post out by April 29. However, even if that isn't possible, we're not going to miss April 29 by more than a week or two.
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(Begin David Attenborough voice.) "But Dan was to learn the hard way that books about airplanes can have the same accursed slippages in delivery as the airplanes themselves, and through no fault of the designer."
 
Not surprisingly, Amazon.com has changed the release date to 12 June. We will see.......
 
newsdeskdan said:
Hard copies of Messerschmitt Me 309 Development & Politics (and Messerschmitt Me 328 Development & Politics) are due to arrive in Mortons' warehouse this coming Thursday, I'm told.
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Great! I live in Brazil and ordered the book in August of 2023.
Now I hope Amazon Brasil can get my copy fast.
 
newsdeskdan said:
View attachment 703457

Messerschmitt Me 309 Development & Politics by Dan Sharp & Calum E. Douglas

Chosen in 1941 to replace the Bf 109 as the Luftwaffe’s standard front-line fighter, Messerschmitt’s innovative Me 309 embodied a wealth of hard-won experience from the Battle of Britain. Its sturdy tricycle undercarriage would make landings safer, its capacious wings could accommodate much heavier weaponry, its retractable radiator would make it aerodynamically clean, its pressure cabin would allow high-altitude operations and its ejection seat would help preserve the Luftwaffe’s most precious asset – its pilots.

All of this was made possible by a fuselage specifically tailored to accommodate Germany’s newest and most powerful fighter engines: Daimler-Benz’s DB 603 and Junkers’ Jumo 213. Production of up to 800 Me 309s a month had been planned by May 1942 – more than all other German fighter types combined. Yet the type’s advancement from prototype to full series production was reduced to a crawl, not by technical difficulties but by political in-fighting, deception and manipulation behind closed doors.

The Me 309 was set up to fail – doomed to join a lost generation of mid-war Luftwaffe combat aircraft alongside types such as Focke-Wulf’s Fw 190 C and Junkers’ Ju 288 – but why and by whom? Messerschmitt Me 309 Development & Politics, the first book ever written solely about this aircraft, sets out its full history – from its forerunners and commissioning to its eventual cancellation and sale to the Japanese military.

Using contemporary documents, authors Dan Sharp and Calum E. Douglas explain and explore the development and eventual failure of this fascinating ‘secret project’.

200 pages
£35

Pre-orders are now open here:

www.mortonsbooks.co.uk

MESSERSCHMITT ME 309 DEVELOPMENT & POLITICS | Mortons Books

Book : Messerschmitt Me 309 Development & Politics
www.mortonsbooks.co.uk www.mortonsbooks.co.uk
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Dan, you'll like this, and this isn't any kind of a comment it's just funny. So I originally ordered the 309 book back in June 2023. At that time Amazon sent me a message that they expected the release to be August 2023, then December 2023, then January 2024, then March 2024, then June 20th, 2024 -no later than 10:00 pm that night. So I kept a look out, no show. Then I got an update email around 830 pm, saying they don't know when it will be delivered they will keep me posted. Oh well.
 
First question:

The Me 309 had a "symmetrical aerofoil with rather small leading-edge radius (3/4 normal NACA radius)" according to Woldmar Voigt.
Could/Does that mean the wing had a laminar flow profile?
 
Mark24 said:
Dan, you'll like this, and this isn't any kind of a comment it's just funny. So I originally ordered the 309 book back in June 2023. At that time Amazon sent me a message that they expected the release to be August 2023, then December 2023, then January 2024, then March 2024, then June 20th, 2024 -no later than 10:00 pm that night. So I kept a look out, no show. Then I got an update email around 830 pm, saying they don't know when it will be delivered they will keep me posted. Oh well.
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Amazon is strange. I also ordered the book some months ago and had to deal with the delays, but they delivered my copy last week!
 
spicmart said:
First question:

The Me 309 had a "symmetrical aerofoil with rather small leading-edge radius (3/4 normal NACA radius)" according to Woldmar Voigt.
Could/Does that mean the wing had a laminar flow profile?
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The drawings of the wing list the airfoil.
 

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