BlairWitch749
Banned
No doubt that the actual range would be less, but the base ranges are also without drop tanks. Once you add the tank(s) the numbers are reasonable, especially in a time persective. The 109 would have about 90 milutes endurance, the Seafire had just under two hours and the Wildcat was around 3 hours.
The Germans did design a 66 liter plywood centerline drop tank for the ME-109 that if completely used increased range by about 180 miles however their experience with this system was terrible and it had a huge number of accidents during its testing phase which discovered several notable problems
1. poor construction quality created air leaks that would make the engine cut out and force the pilot to revert to the main tank
2. when released in anything but slow and level flight it would hit the tail plane or arrester spool and damage the aircraft or make landing even more dangerous
3. the release mechanism didn't work very well and pilots were forced to try to land still holding the tank which was very dangerous
4. the release mechanism would sometimes go off whilst taking off spraying fuel all over the runways
5 it manuevered and climbed like a pig whilst holding the tank
so the Germans would have to have done intense testing to correct all these issues maybe start experimenting with them in the spanish civil war or something