air pig,
Your: "
Unfortunately Spitfire did not have the legs of the Packard Merlin powered P51D Mustang so fighter sweeps into Germany would have been difficult......"
Perhaps it would be better (for the uninitiated) to point out that both aircraft had almost identical engines (Rolls Merlins 60 series in the Spit IX, of which the Packard Merlin was the US-built version which went into the P-51D); it [as the Mk.266] also powered the post-war Spit XVI, which was no more than a re-engined IX. (One-third of all the 150,000 Merlins built were by Packard) - [Wiki].
The P-51 "
had the legs of" the IX simply because it carried so much more fuel, the engine had nothing to do with it. The Spitfire was designed for the defence of Britain: it was never intended to go to Berlin. Consequently, fully loaded, the P-51 was almost 2,000 lbs heavier than the Spit IX. The Mk.V was no match for the FW 190, we had to wait for the M.IX to achieve parity.
"
All in all I believe that the Spitfire was the finest fighter of its generation, but there again I'm biased"....
Join the club ! Sadly, after doing my OTU on Mk.Is and IIs in '42, I was sent to India, where there were no Spits at the time, and never touched them again until returning to the RAF in '49, after which I flew Mks. XIV, XVI (mostly) and XXII until '51, which was pretty well the end.
Danny42C (a Liverpudlian from '21 to '41 !).