I've been pondering some thoughts I've had in the past couple months since joining this game, and wondering two things:
1. at dead six - people seem to have a pretty seriously hard time killing aircraft even with concentrated ammo loads into their arse, planes without cannons that is. All reports and documents seem to warrant that this was the deadly position to get yourself into in a battle. Yet, in this game...and bunch of 'funky chicken' defense twists or even just a blatant disregard for the R/L dangers of flying straight and plain with an aircraft dead six at 400m is disregarded. Just wondering what other peoples thoughts were on this.
2. There seems to be an issue with bleeding energy by dumping the throttle in this game vs R/L also. There is a 200mph barrier that doesn't seem to go below, it sits on that needle and nothing short of a serious turn or series of rudder twists deny the plane of the energy it should not have with a throttle dump flying level close to sea level. Most of the planes I speak of include the Spit,109s, p51s, f6f and f4u variants.
So the other day I am flying in a spit and attempting to dump my throttle and flip my flaps. There seems to be an issue whereas you can not dump your flaps down until a rather low speed. Although possibly historically correct, refer to my previous statement about bleeding E as it seems to be a bit 'weird.
So I was flying in a p38l with 25% fuel and no rockets the other day, flying against a spit (variant unknown) and watched as a level spit was catching up with a level p38l without much problem. 1500m went to 1000m 1000 went to 800, until finally he was 400 away and I had to try to engage to save myself.
Afterwards, I type in some information and found this document. Comments?
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An excerpt from "Top-Guns" By Joe Foss and Matthew Brennan... this account of mock-combat shared by Colonel John Lowell, highest scoring P-38 ace/European Theatre:
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"Our Group recieved several P-38Ls just before the P-51s arrived. This latest "Lightning" had dive-flaps under the wings, improved power and a gun camera located away from the nose. On a day we were 'stood down" (no missions), General Eisenhower arranged for one of the top English aces, Wing Commander Donaldson, to come to Honington and show us slides of English Spitfires that had been equipped with external tanks like U.S. fighters. Those tanks allowed Spitfires to penetrate deep into Germany. Most of the U.S. pilots didn't know about the Spit's long-range, and some Spitfires had been fired upon before American pilots realized that their insignia was the Royal Air Force circle and not a German Swastika. ME-109s, P-51s and Spitfires were not easily distinguishable from one another until close enough to "make combat."
All 364th Fighter Group pilots attended Donaldson's slide picture presentation in our briefing room. When he had finished, he described the new Spitfire XV he had flown to our base. It had a five-bladed prop, a bigger engine, and improved firepower. Then he said, "If one of you bloody bastards has enough guts, I'll fly mock combat above your field and show you how easily this SpitXV can whip your best pilot's ass."
The entire group started clapping and hollared, "Big John! Big John!"
That was me, so I asked him, "what is your fuel load?"
He replied, "Half petrol."
"What is your ammo load?"
He said, "No ammo."
We agreed to cross over the field at 5,000 feet, then anything goes. I took-off in a new P-38L, after my crew chief had removed the ammo and put back the minimum counter-balance, dropped the external tanks, and sucked out half the internal fuel. I climbed very high, so that as I dived down to cross over the field at 5,000 feet I would be close to 600mph.
When Donaldson and I crossed, I zoomed straight-up while watching him try to get on my tail. When he did a wingover from loss of speed, I was several thousand feet above him, so I quickly got on his tail. Naturally, he turned into a full-power right Lufbery as I closed in. I frustrated that with my "Clover-Leaf", and if we'd had "hot guns", he would have been shot down. He came over the field with me on his tail and cut throttle, dropped flaps, and split S'ed from about 1000 feet. I followed him with the new flaps, banked only about 45 degrees, but still dropped below the treetops.
The men of the 364th were watching the fight and saw me go out of sight below the treetops. Several of them told me later that they thought I would crash. But they were wrong. All I had to do was move over behind his Spit XV again. He was apparently surprised. He had stated at our briefing that he would land after our fight to explain the superior capabilities of his Spit XV, but he ignored that promise and flew back to his base. I was most pleased with the reception I got upon landing."
