109's kill ratio (all variants from B to K)

[dtango]

Hi Mold:

Yes that is correct.  The engine isn't on therefore we wouldn't see the Meredith Effect / ramjet thrust.

Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs

[gofaster]

Originally posted by GScholz
.... I'm still following this Me109. I just got my first confirmed kill of
my tour, and now I'm really hot. I believe that I am the hottest pilot in
the USAAF! And now I'm thinking to myself: am I going to shoot this Me109
down too?! He rolls and we turn, and turn; somehow, I cannot catch up with
him in the Lufberry circle, we just keep circling. About the third 360
degree turn he and I must have spotted two Mustangs flying below us, about
2,000 feet below, and he dives for the two P-51s. Now I'm about 150 yards
from him, and I get my gunsight on his tail, but I cannot shoot, because if
I shoot wide, or my bullets pass through him, I might shoot down one or both
P-51s, so I get a front seat, watching, fearful that this guy will shoot
down a P-51 we're approaching at about 390 mph. There's so much interference
on the R/T I cannot warn the two Mustangs, I fire one very long burst of
about seven or eight seconds purposely wide, so it misses the Mustangs, and
the Me109 pilot can see the tracers. None of the Mustang pilots see the
tracers either! I was half hoping expecting that they'd see my tracers and
turn out of the way of the diving Me109. But no such luck. I quit firing.
The Me109 still dives, and as he approaches the two P-51s he holds his fire,
and as the gap closes, two hundred yards, one hundred yards, fifty yards the
Hun does not fire a shot. No tracers, nothing! At less than ten yards, it
looks like he's go-ing to ram the lead P-51 and the Hun fires one single
shot from his 20mm cannon! And Bang! Engine parts, white smoke, glycol,
whatnot from the lead P-51 is everywhere, and that unfortunate Mustang
begins a gentle roll to the right. I try to watch the Mustang down, but
cannot, Now my full at-tention is on the Hun! Zoom. We fly through the two
Mustangs (he was taken POW). Now the advantage of the P-51 is really
apparent, as in a dive I am catching up to the Me109 faster than a runaway
freight train. I press the trigger for only a second then I let up on the
trigger, I believe at that time I was about 250 yards distant, but the Hun
was really pulling lots' of negative and positive g's and pulling up to the
horizon, he levels out and then does a vertical tail stand! and next thing I
know, he's using his built up velocity from the dive to make a vertical
ninety degree climb. This guy is really an experienced pilot. I'm in a
vertical climb, and my P-51 begins to roll clockwise violently, only by
pushing my left rudder almost through the floor can I stop my P-51 from
turning. We climb for altitude; in the straight climb that Me109 begins to
out distance me, though my built up diving speed makes us about equal in the
climb. We climb one thousand fifteen hundred feet, and at eighteen hundred
feet, the hun levels his aircraft out. A vertical climb of 1,800 feet! I've
never heard of a piston aircraft climbing more than 1,000 feet in a tail
stand. At this time we're both down to stall speed, and he levels out. My
airspeed indicator reads less than 90 mph! So we level out. I'm really close
now to the Me109, less than twenty five yards! Now if I can get my guns on
him.........

At this range, the gunsight is more of nuisance than a help. Next thing, he
dumps his flaps fast and I begin to overshoot him! That's not what I want to
do, because then he can bear his guns on me. The P-51 has good armor, but
not good enough to stop 20mm cannon hits. This Luftwaffe pilot must be one
heck of a marksman, I just witnessed him shooting down a P-51 with a single
20mm cannon shot! So I do the same thing, I dump my flaps, and as I start to
overshoot him, I pull my nose up, this really slows me down; S-T-A-L-L
warning comes on! and I can't see anything ahead of me nor in the rear view
mirror. Now I'm sweating everywhere. My eyes are burning because salty sweat
keeps blinding me: 'Where is He!?!' I shout to myself. I level out to
prevent from stalling. And there he is. Flying on my right side. We are
flying side to side, less than twenty feet separates our wingtips. He's
smiling and laughing at himself. I notice that he has a black heart painted
on his aircraft, just below the cockpit. The propeller nose and spinner are
also painted black. It's my guess that he's a very experienced ace from the
Russian front. His tail has a number painted on it: "200". I wonder: what
the "two hundred" means!? Now I began to examine his airplane for any bullet
hits, afterall, I estimate that I just fired 1,600 rounds at the hun. I
cannot see a single bullet hole in his aircraft! I could swear that I must
have gotten at least a dozen hits! I keep inspecting his aircraft for any
damage. One time, he even lifts his left wing about 15 degrees, to let me
see the undercar-riage, still no hits! That's impossible I tell myself.
Totally impossible. Then I turn my attention back to the "200" which is
painted on the tail rudder. German aces normally paint a marker for each
victory on their tail. It dawns on me that quick: TWO HUNDRED KILLS !! We
fly side by side for five minutes. Those five minutes take centuries to
pass. Less than twenty five feet away from me is a Luftwaffe ace, with over
two hundred kills. We had been in a slow gradual dive now, and my altitude
indicates 8,000 feet. I'm panicking now, even my socks are soaked in sweat.
The German pilot points at his tail, obviously meaning the "200" victories,
and then very slowly and dramatically makes a knife-cutting motion across
his throat, and points at me. He's telling me in sign language that I'm
going to be his 201 kill! Panic! I'm breathing so hard, it sounds like a
wind tunnel with my mask on. My heart rate must have doubled to 170 beats
per minute; I can feel my chest, thump-thump and so. This goes on for
centuries, and centuries. The two of us flying at stall speed, wingtip to
wingtip. I think more than once of simply ramming him. He keeps watching my
ailerons, maybe that's what he expects me to do. We had heard of desperate
pilots who, after running out of ammunition, would commit suicide by ramming
an enemy plane. Then I decide that I can Immelmann out of the situation, as
I began to climb, but because my flaps are down, my Mustang only climbs
about one hundred feet, pitches over violently to the right and stalls. The
next instant I'm dangerously spinning, heading ninety degrees vertically
down! And the IAS reads 300 mph! My P-51 just falls like a rock to the
earth! I hold the yoke in the lower left corner and sit on the left rudder,
flaps up, and apply FULL POWER! I pull out of the dive at about 500 feet,
level out, (I began to black out so with my left hand I pinched my veins in
my neck to stop from losing blood). I scan the sky for anything! There's not
a plane in the sky, I dive to about fifty feet elevation, heading towards
Italy. I fly at maximum power for about ten minutes, and then reduce my rpm
(to save gasoline), otherwise the P-51 has very limited range at full power.
I fly like this for maybe an hour, no planes in the vicinity; all the time I
scan the sky, check my rear view mirrors.

I never saw the Me109 with the black heart again. I mention the Me109 with
the black heart and "200" written on the tail. That's when the whole room, I
mean everybody, gets instantly quiet. Like you could hear a pin drop. Two
weeks later the base commander shows me a telex: "....according to
intelligence, the German pilot with a black heart is Eric Hartmann who has
downed 250 aircraft and there is a reward of fifty thousand dollars offered
by Stalin for shooting him down. I never heard of a cash reward for shooting
down an enemy ace ... "

-Lawrence Thompson

Eric Hartmann, called "the Blond Knight of Germany", survived the war with
352 victories


Don't you just love it when aces meet up with green pilots? Both our stories is about superior pilots, but not superior planes.

Excellent story.  Thanks for posting it up!  What was the name of the book.  I'd like to read it some time.

[gofaster]

Originally posted by Widewing
See pages 292-293 in Caldwell's "JG-26". It seems that the G-10 was far better liked than the K-4, at least within this organization. The book explains why, but it does seem that all of the K-4s they received were fitted with gondolas, which appear to have been universally disliked. Also, there is a description of the K-4's evil handling at high altitude.  

There is a question that's been vexing me for some time.  I'm trying to build scale models of the airplanes used in Aces High, but the only late-war kit of the 109 I can find is the K4.  What is the difference between a K4 and a G10?  I know the K4 had a wooden tail empennage, but is there any other difference in the airframes or armaments?

Incidentally, Hasegawa makes/made a 1/72 scale model kit of the 109E used in Aces High, identical right down to the decals.  I can't remember the unit, but it was one based on the Channel during BoB.  I may still have the instruction sheet at home.

[gofaster]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Bf109 looks meaner and has a cooler paintjob - does anything else matter?

Got that right!

The 109 is the epitomy of evil elegance!

[frank3]

Cool paintjob?

[mold]

Originally posted by gofaster
The 109 is the epitomy of evil elegance!

Yes, that is true.  Funny how just the German planes look this way--to me the 190 has a very evil menacing look as well.

[mold]

Originally posted by dtango
Yes that is correct.  The engine isn't on therefore we wouldn't see the Meredith Effect / ramjet thrust. [/B]

Got it.  Was the measured thrust from the rad/ramjet ever documented?  This is a really cool engineering idea, but I would imagine that the actual amount of net thrust from this would not be too huge.

[niklas]

Drag is a complicated matter, and with simple formulas you will definitly not be able to say this aircraft was better than this one.

Just look at the efficiency of the propeller, was it designed for speeds in the mid-range (better for climb) or for high speed? Where did it have it´s maximum efficiency peak?
What was the exhaust thrust of the engine? You have to know this, it´s not neglectable at high speed. Btw, do charts exist of american engines for exhaust thrust?

Then there´s the problem that CD is based on wingare for the aircraft. The spitfire had plenty of wingare with a rather thin profile, so the wing itself had a rather low CD. It was a nice trick to lower the drag coefficient of the whole aircraft,  which, based on the large wingarea, was naturally lower than for a fighter with small wingarea but same fueselage size like the 109.

So either you find wind tunnel tests from the different aircraft, but to avoid errors of wind tunnel measurements you better find tests from the SAME windtunnel for the aircraft. Usual wind tunnel tests do not take care of the raditor, so you would need tests where in ONE windtunnel each aircraft is tested with running engine but NO propeller (just to produce radiator heat) AND Mach numbers up to 0.5 or so. AND measurement of exhaust thrust.

btw there exist a german report about the mustang wing, and they admitted that it exceeded the german manufactoring quality. This should also give some people to think who assume that everything was based on propaganda in germany. Actually, in my opionion, no official published speed and climb rate claims are more conservative (how i like to say, i mean careful, on the lower side) than german ones. Huh, i still would like to see OFFICIAL allied performance claims. I just can see factory tests, tests of single machines etc.. In the other thread i just wrote that the official published speed for the P-51B was "just" 425mph (from a note from Interavia).
Come on guys, i know you have the official docs, show them!!!
For example this british note about the SpitXV :
"Fitted with a 1890 HP Merlin engine, it has a top speed in the neighborhood of 400mph"
Now when the official claim for a SpitXV was ~400mph, how fast can be a "normal" SpitXIV?

Oh, and who think that the mustang had a CD below 0.20 should read this:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/luftwaffe1/aircraft/usaaf/P51B_drag.pdf
Definitly not below 0.20 in service condition (and natur influences like dust)


niklas

[Widewing]

Originally posted by mold
Yes I believe we can, because these things should already be accounted for in the flat plate area.  For our purposes, total drag is ultimately the only thing that matters--not Cd and not flat plate area, except when we can use such things to calculate total drag.  FPA is just a ref number, and Cd is calculated from that.  No extra information here, really.

My understanding is that FPA is nothing more than the calculated coefficient of drag X wing area. For the P-51D, this is .0176 X 233.19 = 4.14 FPA. Since the Merideth effect requires heat, and there is no heat without the engine at operating temperature, it is not accounted for in an FPA calculation.

There is another factor to be considered as well. As airspeeds rise above 0.6 Mach, drag rise increases dramatically. Dean offers an excellent example of the advantages associated with the Mustang's laminar flow wing. He compares the the drag rise between a conventional wing (a P-39N with NACA 0015 root airfoil and NACA 23009 wing tip airfoil) and that of the P-51D. As the P-39's speed rises above 0.62, drag rise begins and the Co reaches .050 at approximately Mach 0.77. On the other hand, the P-51 doesn't see a significant drag rise until well beyond Mach 0.7 and finally attains a maximum Co of 0.044 at Mach 0.83. So, when the P-39 has a Co of 0.050 at Mach 0.77, the Mustang's Co is just 0.0205 at that same speed.

We know that the Bf 109 used a conventional airfoil (anyone know which NACA profile was used? I do know that Kurt Tank used the same NACA profile for the 190 as Vought did for the F4U). Therefore, we can assume that the onset of significant drag rise would have occurred at a lower speed than would be seen with the P-51D. Precisely at what speed this happens I don't know, but it seems to me that the Co of the two aircraft will converge as the speeds increase and in all likelihood, the 109's will rise much higher than the Mustang's at Mach 0.7 and above.

Perhaps this is one clue as to why the P-51 attains similar max level speeds on much less horsepower.

As to the initial level acceleration debate; this can be calculated if you know the total thrust available and total drag. Dean gives us a useful explanation in his book (page 117-118).

The calculation is: Total thrust minus total drag divided by mass (weight/32.2). This provides an acceleration rate in feet per second per second, and you can divide that by 32.2 to obtain a constant G value.

Hypothetical example: You have a fighter weighing 8,000 lbs. It has 2,000 pounds of thrust and 750 pounds of drag.

So, 2,000 - 750 = 1,250 net pounds of thrust.
8,000/32.2 = 248.45
1,250/248.45 = 5.03 feet per second per second initial acceleration, or 5.03/32.2 = .156 G

So, if we know the total trust and total drag of the Bf 109K-4 and P-51D, we could calculate acceleration and end the debate. However, the caveat is that this calculation is only valid for speeds below the speed where dramatic drag rise is encountered because the total drag is rapidly increasing.

It seems to me that the 109 will have considerably better initial acceleration than the P-51D at low to moderate speeds. However, it also seems that this advantage probably disappears as speeds rise above Mach 0.6 and greater.

Well, those are my thoughts anyway..  

My regards,

Widewing

[dtango]

Widewing - nice post.  To add to the acceleration discussion that's also only for a fixed value of drag or thrust as well.  a situation like that is what I would call instantaneous acceleration.  Obviously drag varies with velocity, but thrust also varies as well as a function of propeller efficiency so it really gets tricky.

mold - I don't have any reports regarding the measurement of impact of meredith effect.  However the article I linked to has some qualitative discussion on that.  Exhaust thrust does have more than just slight impact and all engines have some form of exhaust thrust, not just the P-51D.  I remember some charts on the FW190A-5 engine with close to 100 lbs of exhaust thrust (or something to that effect) so it's no small matter.  When it all boils down though the performance of an aircraft demonstrated by flight test data embeds all these factors.  Here's the Meredith Effect link for the P-51 that I posted earlier.  Read down past the explanation of Meredith effect - lots of nuggets down there.
Meredith Effect & the P-51

niklas - the report you are referring to describes the total CD of the P-51B. (Incidentally that's a pretty cool report especially when you read about how risky it was since they didn't have a prop on the plane and then crashed the aircraft on it's 3rd test pilot surviving however!) CD = CD0+CDi.  No one is making the claim that the P-51B/D had below a .02 overall CD.  CD0 for the P-51 being in the neighborhood of .018 - .017 is pretty well documented.  Regarding the P-51 max speeds etc. I'll leave that to your other thread and not mix that stuff in here .  That "debate" is pretty old hat though.

Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs

[Wilbus]

Ohhh long thread... What is it really about now? I haven't read much? Flame fest yet?

[Nashwan]

For example this british note about the SpitXV :
"Fitted with a 1890 HP Merlin engine, it has a top speed in the neighborhood of 400mph"
Now when the official claim for a SpitXV was ~400mph, how fast can be a "normal" SpitXIV?

There's no such thing as a Spit XV. There was a Seafire XV, however. Does the note refer to that?

It seems likely, because the HP output sounds about right for a Seafire XV, not a Spit XIV, and the Seafire XV had a max speed of approx 400 mph.

The Seafire XV was similar to the Spit XII, it had a single stage Griffon, with a critical alt well under 20,000ft, and a fiarly low max speed, although it was pretty fast at low level.

It doesn't really say anything about the speed of the Spit XIV.

As to the speed of a normal Spit XIV, the flight tests of a Spit XIV with the revised supercharger gearing fitted to production aircraft show just under 360 mph at sea level, 397 mph at 8,000ft.

The tests done to determine speeds for chasing V-1s, which included the Mustang data posted earlier in this thread, took a production Spit from a squadron. It had a speed of 354 mph at sea level, 384 at 8,000ft, but the paintwork was described as being badly chipped and scored, particularly around the leading edge. The leading edge was stripped and repainted, the rest of the aircraft given a quick rub down. The speed increased to 362 mph at sea level, 392 at 8,000ft. This is for the aircraft in full operational condition, all aerials, guns, mirrors, full span wings etc. The aircraft was running 19lbs boost instead of the regular 18lbs.

The Spitfire XIV on test ran at 18.5lbs instead of 18lbs, because of difficulties setting the boost control, so I assume such slight unintentional overboosting was common.

[Grendel]

Originally posted by Nomak
The Best of the Breed
by Col. "Kit" Carson
Airpower, July 1976
Vol. 6 No. 4........

Ah, that text.

Carson never flew a 109. That text is quite fantasy and not useful as any kind of source. He for example mixes up various 109 types as if they are the one he flew, makes lots of mistakes and misassumptions. Sorry, Carson's text isn't a useful reference.

[Grendel]

Originally posted by GScholz

Isegrim argues that the 109's slats would give the 109 an edge in combat against the P-51. This remains a disputed topic.
 

That is most correct.

The highest scoring living Finnish ace Kyösti Karhila bagged two P-51s.

He was expert on using his Me 109 G-6 with slats. He actually dogfighted with G-6 equipped with wing cannons. His usual tactic was pop out the slats and pull back on the throttle, that way he was able to turn inside enemy planes - and the other P-51, which then received full broadside from five cannons from point blank range.

Kyösti has also said, that the slats enhance low speed handling of the 109 extremerely well making it to turn better, which is most useful in close range / low speed battles.

Source:
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-KyostiKarhilaEnglish.html

[GScholz]

Ah yes the 109G6 is definitively more maneuverable than the P51, except at very high speed, however the G10 and K4 are heavier than the G6. I feel (from what I've read and AH) that the P-51 would have the edge in high speed maneuvering, the 109 would be better in a medium speed fight, and in a slow turn fight the 109 would have superior maneuverability unless the P-51 uses its flaps which would give it an edge. In every speed range the 109 hold the edge in vertical fighting though, especially in a slow fight, due to its superior power.