Originally posted by Ack-Ack
Our fight this afternoon showed your statement to be incorrect. Even with your altitude and energy advantage I was able to out zoom your A-20 at will and kept the fight in the vertical where your plane had no chance whatsoever.
ack-ack
1st....
alt and E were just about even...within a few hundred feet and a couple mph.
2nd...
I was in a boston with 100% fuel...not an A-20.
3rd...
On the 2nd pass you wiffed completely...didnt put a single round in me and left yourself open. The Boston handles a bit more sluggishly then the A-20 and lacks the control surface authority. That was actually my 1st flight in the boston vs the A-20. No question that I needed to push the nose down there at the end in boston...A-20 had a much much better chance of capitalizing there...
To me that illustrates exactly what the realities are...you pushed the fight got good hits on the initial attack and then wiffed the 2nd and left an opening. I spun the boston a bit and scrubbed off to much E...
If you look at the film (i'll put it up as soon as I can) you can see the boston "lock up" on the initial merge then "snap" to a more vertical orientation. I had to bail on the merge at 400 (one of the real issues with the a-20/boston) but the lockup at that speed suprised me totally and left me wide open to you. On the 2nd pass you can see the wobble then spin...control authority seems very inferior to the A-20 overall.
If we go to the endgame the boston really seemed to hit the wall very quicky. I dont know if this is due to control input, weight or the less powerful engines/lack of wep. Once it topped out it was much more sluggish again then the A-20...
None of that is ment to take anything away from a good kill....just trying to articulate the both the differences and the fact that it was a potentially much closer fight then you thought.
I flew 3 hops in the boston and will post them here for any who are interested. My initial thoughts are as follows...
Leaving the gun package aside...
The Boston is actually much more limited then I would have thought in "usuable flight envelope"
It seems to suffer significant "lock up" at speeds approaching 400. This is significantly beyond the "negative" elevator authority that the A-20 has at high speed and extends to the airleons as well. This makes the 370-400 speed band much less usable.
It also seems to have controls that are less "harmonized" {hope i'm saying that right}...at 275-370 it simply wasnt as smooth overall and seemed to bleed more E and be more suseptable to unwanted stall of a wingtip then the A-20.
All that being said it still handled itself reasonably well in a mini furball but the combination of the 303's and the more limited usable flight envelope made it tougher to fight well.
The overall differences between the A-20 and Boston are much more significant then i'd have thought at both edges of the flight envelope. This makes the plane a much tougher bird to truely dogfight in a 1 vs 1 (as the clip with ack ack will show. The boston just cant capitalize readily on any opening that might arise. It's also more lacking as an E fighter and has a tough time capitalizing on positional advantage. It simply locks up to much at "lower" speeds....but is still a fun bird to fight overall....
Hopefully I'll have films up tonight...
