Spitfire landing lights

[indiaciki]

I was wondering if the Spifire Vb had any.

[unreasonable]

My pilot's notes for the Spitfire V gives details for their switch and operation, but also that on later aircraft landing lamps were not fitted. (Navigation and ID lights were retained).

 

Does not quite answer your question..... but I guess that the answer would be no, although I have not seen a source that states at what particular time in the series they were axed.  

 

The Spitfire was originally supposed to be capable of night-fighter operations but the RAF soon found out that it was hopeless in this role as the exhaust glow blinded the pilot, so they stopped using it in this role.  So getting rid of extra expense and weight made sense.

[ZachariasX]

First to answer the question, YES, the Mk.Vb has landing lights.

 

As unreasonable pointed out, they were not retained however. It is true that they were not so widely used as night flying with looking into your own exhaust stacks is not something to look forward to (pun intended).

 

The main reason is that there was better use of the space required to house the retractable lights inside the wings.

 

It is important to understand that the wing type of the Spitfire is as important to characterize it as the Mk. number.

 

In short, there were 4 different wing types, labeled from A to D. You will find a good description of therm here. I take the liberty of linking to the drawings listed on that site for further comments.

 

Now about "losing the landing light", this question can be answered by just looking at the design of the wing. In early Mk. Spitfires, the A type wing was mostly used, the one housing 4 machine guns per wing.

 

You can see, even though not specifically labeled, there is a space provision for the landing light just behind the inner ammo box housings.

 

In the Spit Mk. Vb as we have it, the B type wing was used, where the inner two machien guns are replaced with a housing for the Hispano cannon and its 60 round ammo drum.

The housing for the landing light is indicated. There is still space for it in fron of the magazine bay. There, the landing light was installed in B wing Spitfire Mk.V. The switches to operate the landing lights were on the lower left side on the panel.

 

With the installment of different wing types, the housing for the landing light was omited. You can see thos on the C type wing as installed in the Mk.VIII.

The magazine bay was changed such that it could accomodate the 120 rounds of the belt fed Hispano MK.II cannon. Or two ammo boxes for dual cannon installation, such as done in some Mk.V. The type nobody wanted and consequently got shipped away to places like Malta, where (ironically enough) real air war was taking place not just voluntary self sacrifice at the hands of JG26. Beurling ferried such a tropical Mk.V type to Malta aboard the carrier Eagle on June 9th, 1942.The fuel tank was only fitted in MK.VIII, but not in Mk.V or Mk.IX. Thus, no space, no landing lights.

 

That people were not all that impressed with the "after dark qualities" of the Spitfire can be seen on the D type wing.

 

This one was made for the photo recon Spitfires, featurling a large tank in the front part of the wing, while all armament was removed. There, even though they had plenty space behind the main spar, no space provisions were made for the landing lights.

 

In summary, yes, the Mk.Vb had landing lights. Other Spitfires types had to have the (early) A or B wing type installed to have this feature.

 

[unreasonable]

@Zacharias - interesting detail.  Although I would say that the fact that the VB used the B wing with a space for a mounting for the landing lamp does not necessarily mean that the landing lamp was actually fitted. Or it might have been fitted in early production runs of the type (VB), but not later ones, or in those made in one factory but not another.  There were constant changes and alterations made.  
 
The switches should be just underneath the trim indicator. You can see them here http://spitfiresite.com/2010/07/anatomy-of-spitfire-cockpit.html/02es09_016
This is a Vb, but it is a reproduction. 
 
In the game the switches are not there at all.  Gavrick's DD 162 says  "The lend-lease aircraft sent to the USSR did not have bomb-carrying capabilities, some other equipment was also removed - gun camera, landing lights, IFF transponder, etc. Thanks to this, the aircraft became lighter roughly by 40 kilograms." Safe to assume he has some historical documentation of this.

 

So most likely answer is that in UK service Vbs had them, but in Soviet service did not.

 

 

[ZachariasX]

 

 

the B wing with a space for a mounting for the landing lamp does not necessarily mean that the landing lamp was actually fitted.

 

Indeed, my point was more about where you can expect those lights and where clearly not to expect them. If there were landing light for the Vb in our sim, we had to have 2 switches, one to extend the lamp and one to switch it on (unless they "fuel gauged" the control). I didn't see that implemented with the in-game Vb. I'm positive Gavrick has good documentation about what the Soviets did to those crates and I also expect him to be correct about it.