Originally posted by Krusty
Well I don't care if it made it back. In real life planes made it back with massive chunks of stabilizers, wings, noses, and even entire tail planes missing.
I'd like one account of pilot A saying pilot B ripped his wingtips off in a low-G turn. I'd like one account of an allied pilot saying "I was gonna shoot, but his wings just ripped off and he went down all on his own" -- I have never heard of either instance ever happening with a 262 in real life.
That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but if it DID happen it would have been well-known.
Krusty,
Look at it this way.
A: In r/l WW2 pilots were not able to yank back on a toy joystick and enjoy unlimited amounts of G's. In most cases, they would black out long before they came close to pushing the airframe structural limitations. Top that off with the training to know the structural limitations of the aircraft they were flying, and it is extremely likely a pilot would not put his aircraft in a situation causing structural failure. I am not saying structural failure would be common, more likely it would be the anomally, as any manufacturer would have beefed up structure to compensate for a massive structural failure problem.
B: I have read pilot accounts (unfortunately can not remember which books) of enemy aircraft stalling and spinning with the result being the folding of a wing, or loss of the empennage. They are out there, you just need to look for them. Lastly, using the term "wing tips" is extremely misleading. Many WW2 aircraft can fly without wing tips, and most wing tips are quite small basic end caps. It would be better to say half a wing like it is visually represented in game.
C: Well, I am not going to argue that it may not have been well known. Although, I can think of several examples off the top of my head of structural failure problems with US Aircraft that are not widely known, and in some cases were deliberately covered up such as:
Early F6F-3's had many Horizontal stabilizer failures. The result was loss of aircraft and most times pilot. The Grumman fix was to issue a service bulletin for aircraft in field to add "basically" another leading edge to the horizontal stabilizer of .063 aluminum to make up for the lack of strength. The subsequent aircraft in the assembly line were produced with the mod in place.
Early Corsairs had several wing failures on Brewster built aircraft owing to improperly heat treated spar components. This was realised soon after production and rectified.
Early P-38's were very capable of ripping off their own tails due to buffeting that came off the wing root in the center gondola area. Pilot's were advised at first to back off on speed, while Johnson's team designed the "fillet" that eliminated this problem. Subsequent structure in the area was beefed up to deal with weak structure issues exposed by the buffeting.
Anyways, it is possible to rip off wings in combat, but unlikely due to a lot of factors I mentioned. Add to it, that this is a game, and we are unable to experience the true feel of 5 G's draining the blood out of your head and the subsequent gray out our bodies go through.
