Range of British fighters

[MiloMorai]

RAF used the following allocations for its SE fighters:

 

5 minutes at Take-off power
2 minutes at climb
5 minutes at combat power (full power)
15 minutes at high speed cruise
Remainder at economical cruise
20% reserve

 

The RAF's standard radius of action was about 40% of still air cruising range on internal fuel. With tanks this changes by a few percent, as aircraft are expected to spend more time at efficient cruise speeds.

 

So, a Mk IX with a 450 mile still air cruising radius would have a combat radius of approximately 180 miles. With a 30 gal tank about 240 miles, with a 45 gal tank about 275 miles.

[unreasonable]

Both my Spitfire IX and Tempest manuals give the climb limit as one hour - 2 minutes is not going to get you very far..... typo?

[MiloMorai]

It is not climb limit but the fuel allocated for climbing.

[unreasonable]

I see: I would expect to throttle back from take off power as soon as you are safely in the air and legs up.  But that would not make too much difference: even if you were one minute at take off and 6 at climb you should still be able to get somewhere above 20,000ft and the fuel used would be about the same.

 

Interesting - where did you get this data?

 

 

[MiloMorai]

No idea. Came  across it my text doc files.