Over the past several days, I have used the F6F as my ride for training folks. I haven't flown it much since the update to the drag model and haven't tested it in a while.
Late Wednesday evening, I had a chance to duel a pretty good stick while flying the Hellcat. This fellow was in an N1K2-J.
Right from the get-go, something seemed different. I beat him on the merge by enough to hose him as he came over the top. From there on, the F6F was able to match the Niki turn for turn, including staying right on it in a full flap lufberry. Going vertical, the Niki tried to get above the Hellcat... No dice, the F6F was glued to his tail feathers.
Afterwards, I was still marveling at how the F6F had remained utterly stable as opposed to being a wobble monster not many months ago. Unfortunately, I wasn't running film.
Last evening I remembered to record my flights. Arriving in the TA around 11 PM eastern, I upped an F6F. about 10 miles west of field A1, Murdr and Iceman24 were dueling in P-38Js. I flew over and asked if I could join them, guns cold (I would not shoot or otherwise interfere). Lo and behold, the pudgeball Hellcat not only was able to stay with the P-38s, it did so without having to push it. Now, Murdr and Iceman are very, very able P-38 drivers, and it will take a pretty good fighter plane to follow their gyrations. Yet, the Hellcat did so, even in the vertical.
Later, we mixed it up again, this time Iceman was flying a 109F-4, which in case you've been living in a cave lately, is now one of the very best dogfighters in the game. Iceman24 hadn't flown the 109F-4 since the 2.07 update. Murdr was in a P-38J and LEDPIG was also in a PJ. once again, the Hellcat proved to be amazing. I won't describe the fight. Instead, you can watch this
FILM Now, not being accustomed to the F6F being this good, I took a look at Mosq's test data for the Hellcat. Mosq reports a full flaps turn radius of 464.5 feet @ 20 degrees per second. I have tested enough aircraft to know that Mosq's data was accurate back in May when he did his testing. However, that was when the software revision was 2.07, patch 2. We are now in 2.08, patch 3. So, today I decided to retest the F6F-5. The test results were mindboggling... This formerly so-so dogfighter is now a genuine monster.
The data below shows turn radius and turn rate in degrees per second. I tested all five flap positions and no-flaps as well. The F6F was configured with 25% fuel, zero burn. Data is displayed as radius/rate in degrees/sec
No flaps: 675.0 feet / 19.68 degrees/sec
Flaps 1/5: 650.1 feet / 19.26 degrees/sec
Flaps 2/5: 560.8 feet / 21.59 degrees/sec
Flaps 3/5: 519.3 feet / 21.47 degrees/sec
Flaps 4/5: 445.3 feet / 23.23 degrees/sec*
Flaps 5/5: 430.5 feet / 22.07 degrees/sec**
For comparison, let's look at some other uber turners/dogfighters (all full flaps, 25% fuel)
N1K2-J: 413.8 / 22.5
109F-4: 437.6 / 20.8
F4U-1D: 427.3 / 19.4
Ki-84: 445.4 / 22.4
Spit16: 450.3 / 19.9
Spit9: 432.9 / 20.5
Seafire: 443.5 / 18.5
As you can see, the F6F-5 can now wade into a brawl and hand out beatings like never before. Only the very best turners can turn significantly smaller circles, but only the Zeros and Hurricane Mk.I can do so while matching or exceeding the Hellcat's remarkable turn rate (especially awesome with one notch less than full flaps).
Those of you who duel often in dissimilar fighters will recognize that turn rate is at least as important as turn radius, and often more important.
I have yet to test the Hellcat for acceleration and climb, but I did notice that the P-38J was unable to climb away by any significant margin. In addition, I did observe that the F6F was able to maintain 3,900 fpm while in auto-climb (at 25% fuel) up through 5k. I will do a full test over the weekend, but from what I have seen so far, the Hellcat can now live up to its real world reputation and its name. So, thanks HTC, those of us who like flying big blue fighters are grateful.
My regards,
Widewing
