How did the fighters that fought during the Battle of Britain compare?
After the post where I compared the Bf 109E-4 vs the Spitfire Mk I with the methodology described below, one follower asked me to compare the Bf 109 F with the Spitfire Mk V (that fought each other in 1941). I will publish this result in the next infographic post, but I will focus on the Battle of Britain in this post, so this topic is complete.
Remember that these comparisons are for fighter combat in ‘daylight’. The analysis shows that the Bf109E4 and Spitfire MK I were similar. Below them, in order: Hurricane Mk I, Bf 110C2, and Defiant Mk I.
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If we want to have an objective answer, we need objective fighter comparisons which demand complex analysis:
1. We need to define specifically which fighter models we want to compare. In this case, August of 1940: Bf 109 E-4, Spitfire Mk I, Hurricane Mk I, Bf 110C-2, Defiant Mk I
2. We will only compare the performance in the ‘Combat Arena’, and we will exclude all the others: the ‘Factory Arena’, the ‘Base Arena’, the ‘Transit Arena’, and the ‘Development Arena’ (see post 'Bf 109E-4 vs Spitfire' for further details).
3. In the ‘Combat Arena’ we will select the attributes that were most important for fighter pilots (we will use famous test pilot Eric Brown’s attributes) and of those we will only use those where reliable data is available. You can find them in the cards shown in the picture.
4. We will assign a weight to each attribute.
5. We will use the benchmark comparison method where one specific model (in this case the Bf 109 F-2 that appeared in 1941) is given a mark of 10 for every attribute and the E-4 and Mk. I will be given a score better or worse than the F-2. To obtain a proper spread, a statistical algorithm was designed to compute the differences.