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.......
 

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