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[HundertzehnGustav]

i havev to admit, the spit/seafire are to me the most balanced allied planes to fly, much like an F or an early G.
But the wing armament... screw that! The outer popcorn shooters are only to scare people, and the Cannon are  hard to use - very hard, especially in a dogfight. Low ROF, low ammocount (compared to Mg-17) and some serious recoil....

That is the reason it is so satisfying to use her... bringing home a zero or 190 kill with an intact engine is one hell of an achievement to me.
besides, she is one sexy thing to ride.
 

[Radoye]

4x20 was rarely used with C-wing spits, most carried the standard B-variant 4x303 + 2x20's. This is what those aces used, it gave the best balance of firepower, with 20's being there to punch through armor plates and tear up bombers and 303's better ammo capacity while still sufficient versus lighter targets like unarmored fighters or reconnaissance/liaison/utility planes.

The 4x20's were too heavy for the Spitfire, carrying them reduced the rate of roll and when fired all at once the recoil would throw the plane off aim. This weapons config was rarely used and then almost exclusively for ground attack work (Spitfires started carrying bombs and rockets towards the end of the war due to lack of air targets in some operational areas).

[HBPencil]

Understanding the series of Spitfire wings is actually quite easy once you've read this guide: http://spitfiresite.com/2010/04/concise-guide-to-spitfire-wing-types.html

So far as I know the 4x20mm option for the 'c' wing was only ever used on very few MkV Spits, all other 'c' winged Spits (many MkV, all VII, VIII, XII and most MkIX and XIV) having the standard armament of 2x20mm and 4x.303.

Cheers,

HB

P.S. I read somewhere that Vc Spits (with 4x20mm) delivered to Malta had their two outer cannon removed for reasons other than jamming or freezing. Partly it was down to conservation (so if the Spit was downed they would only lose two cannon and their ammo rather than four) but also to improve performance due to the reduced weight. They also found that two cannon was sufficient firepower in many cases.

[HundertzehnGustav]

 ???

WTF...

space:
cannon bays used by 4x20
MG bays empty.
MG ammo bays: empty.

mwaahahahhahahaha

[HundertzehnGustav]

...that means that in theory you could have 4x20 and 4x.303, no?
given that the .303 ammo was caried*between* the .303 machineguns, and did not disturb the 20mm cannon
edit.

which would make the spit possibly theoretically as heavily armed as a thud, in gun numbers, and if the heavies balance out the light mg.

but all that on a standard merlin 60 series engine... gonna fly like a  thud too! yuck.

[HBPencil]

...that means that in theory you could have 4x20 and 4x.303, no?

In theory, yes I believe so.

[Alban]

4x20 was rarely used with C-wing spits, most carried the standard B-variant 4x303 + 2x20's. This is what those aces used, it gave the best balance of firepower, with 20's being there to punch through armor plates and tear up bombers and 303's better ammo capacity while still sufficient versus lighter targets like unarmored fighters or reconnaissance/liaison/utility planes.

The 4x20's were too heavy for the Spitfire, carrying them reduced the rate of roll and when fired all at once the recoil would throw the plane off aim. This weapons config was rarely used and then almost exclusively for ground attack work (Spitfires started carrying bombs and rockets towards the end of the war due to lack of air targets in some operational areas).

Hi,  a right assesment generaly speaking, intrestingly the Australian governmant ordered some Spit VIII's with 4X20mm cannon which seem to have seen service. In service two were often deleted though. My preference is for the E wing, those .50's do nearly as much damage as a 20mm and are a lot lighter.
I think strangely only one Squaderon of Spit's used Rockets, strangely because bombs had a bad habit of cracking the Spit's wing if the pilot pulled out from the bombing run to hard. It was never at it's best as fighter Bomber, though it got pass marks, a more rugged fighter was better, tike the Typhoon, or the Hurricane.

Alban

[The_Jester]

     As previously stated, the spitfire's 20s suffered from jamming as a result of exposure to cold temperatures at high altitude. There were about 120 MkVcs built which were shipped off to Africa to function in the GA role. They were short on modern aircraft in Africa and needed all the aircraft they could get. Early attempts were made to resolve this by venting exhaust gases to the 20s, but the system didn't work very well. On later model spits the jamming issues were mostly resolved after the venting system was improved.

     Another note that was made in a previous post was that the two extra 20s reduced roll rate. The spitfire already suffered from reduced roll rate at high speeds due to issues with the torsional rigidity of the wing. This was an even larger problem in a dive as the bf109 could out roll and thus out turn an attacking spit. CW models do not suffer as much from this problem due to the shorter span, but they aren't nearly as maneuverable and suffer from higher wing loading. The primary reason for deleting the extra 20s was that the cost of a larger armament outweighed the benefits.