Crumpp and Charge,
PLease dont misunderstand me. i am absolutely not on a mission either for or against any plane, and I'm certainly not a LW basher. I started with the Yak, then spent a pretty good chunk of time in the Dora in AH1. Tried to learn TnB in the old Spit IX/V. Best 'score" time came in the old G10 doing dedicated buff hunting. Tinkered with the 38 but wasnt ready skillwise, and now using a mishmash of 50cal planes to work on gunnery and SA. I'd bet I have more career kills in LW than any single other plane -- so I'm far from a basher.
I just love the variety of trying different things. I really like it when those things are historically representative ("representative" becaue you cant be "accurate" in front of a monitor).
I dont particularly like it when people are so focused on their agenda that it influences their search for "truth".
So, thanks for the clarification about the refractive effects of the armor glass. Thats an interesting point; was the glass convex to some degree to give a wide angle? Now that I think about it, if it wasnt convex, wouldnt that cause a LOSS of a correponding portion of the viusl field? (I'm not good at saying this, but if there was a refraction that gave a view without the framing WITHOUT concavity to widen the angle, then objects woudl take up the same angular size that would have been present without the glass. SO, every "extra" thing you caould see would have to be at the expense of something you couldnt see -- becasue the pilots overall angular visual field was unchanged and the size of objects was unchanged, still a 1:1 correspondence.) So, in effect, the lost visual field from the frames woudl STILL BE THERE with the only change being that you couldnt see the frame.
Or have I thought through this wrong?
The testing question is an interesting one. I didnt mean to argue that manufacturer's testing would be more reliable in a democracy; and certainly factors other than deciett can contribute to significant differences in test results (i.e. "clean" airframe, optimal tuniing, etc).
Instead, I was thinking about what pressures the military test arms had to contend with. There is no doubt that teh Reich's military had a higher risk of powerful -- and even lethal -- political pressures. Highest levels of command were unpredicatble and implacable, not susceptible to reason.
And, the military procurement system was not particularly rationalized. So, entirely apart form the self preservation aspects, with very tight resources and uneven (or irrational) distribution of those resources -- wouldnt it be pretty easy to see bureaucrats buffing results to avoid getting their programs cut? The combination of resource scarcity, overlapping and competing fiefdoms, and a "royal court" that could bestow favor or punishment at a whim just sounds like a recipe for fuedal behavior, doenst it? It just seems uncertain to me...maybe results woudl be straight up, maybe not.
The US just didnt have those pressures because the resources were abundant. They could afford to keep making P-39s when the planes were obviously substandard, because, well, they could. When the planning boiards were wrong, like with the US torpedos, the truth came out in spite of the career implications -- institutions liek the press and independent judicial style review branches werent cowed by political pressure. And you cant minimize the impact of national culture. The american sterotype is aggressive, results oriented, and willing to trample on tradition and some times institutions to get the job done. That's different than the european and germanic tradition, so might their have been less willingness to buck th einstitutions?
Just musing...not accusing.
Simaril
