Ta152

[TwentyFo]

I used the Ta152 exclusively for about an hour today. I was furballing between 2 high altitude bases, which meant that the fight was above 12K a lot of the time. I had plenty of opportunities for kills, but my gunnery skills failed me. Ended up landing 4 kills after about a half hour sortie (would've had 6, but those other 2 planes managed to land their damaged planes).

I found that the landing gear is pretty fragile. However, I found a way to combat hard landings by trimming the elevator tab all the way up. Also, doing a 3 point landing improves landing gear stress.

[Xasthur]

why does everyone keep saying the 152 is slow?

FLOTSOM

Because it is slow.... compared to the Dora.

It's slower in level flight and in a climb on both military power and WEP.

The 152 does not come into its elemet until 25k minimum, where it starts to over take the Dora with speed and climb.

[Hajo]

A fine aircraft.  Only 67 of them saw service during the war however.

[Xasthur]

Use flaps, keep your decent as close to 0 FPS as you can before final touch down and lock the tailwheel as soon as it touches the ground.

The 152 has only rolled me on landing two or three times since it was updated and I was damaged or not paying attention when that happened.

[moot]

Flotsom,

The point was, the 152 is no beast of acceleration in level flight. Personaly, if I want to be fast at a certain altitude, I climb afk 5-10kft above that altitude, and then dive to it.  It's a lot like the 51D in this respect.  The charts say it's a top tier plane, but in practice it's really nowhere near spectacular if you catch it when it just got done knife fighting. At that point it's dead in the water, especialy without wep or altitude to dive thru. It only leaps away with level speed like the chart seem to imply when you're past 300mph or so, the speed at which most "middle tier" planes top out.

Sum all the good and bad of both it and the spit9, and the spit9 comes out with an overall advantage. Where the 152 has advantages, they're pretty minor.  The spit9 is no slouch at retaining E.  It takes a lot of experience and leaves very little room for mistakes to really exploit the 152's full potential without falling back on extreme bnz. IOW there's only a few circumstances where the 152's performance (as opposed to the pilot's abilities) will really dwarf most planes, such as the spit9. That's what I meant with the spit9 anecdote. It's not such a high altitude monster as people might think from hearsay, unless it's kept very very fast.  At those altitudes, that means some really very stretched out trajectories and a pretty slow rhythm of intersections between two planes in a 1:1. For that to quickly pay off with outright kills, as opposed to just stalemates or bandits simply running away tail-tucked, you need more numbers.. 2:2 or 3:3 at least.

All things considered, most of the time the 152 icon in an AH furball says "easy kill".  

[mipoikel]

Ok, this thread became interesting.

So, is it modeled wrong?
Do we have any performance charts for real one and how is that compared to our plane?

Found at least this:

Powerplant: One Junkers Jumo 213E-1 12-cylinder liquid cooled engine rated at 1,750 hp (1305 kW) at takeoff and 2,050 hp (1529 kW) with MW 50 (water/methanol) boost and 1,320 hp (985 kW) at 32,800 feet.

Performance: Maximum speed 332 mph (534 km/h) at sea level and 350 mph (563 km/h) with MW-50 (water/methanol) boost. 472 mph (759 km/h) at 41,010 ft (12500 m) with both MW-50 (water/methanol) and GM-1 (nitrous oxide) boost. Service ceiling was 48,550 ft (14800 m) with GM 1 boost. Initial climb rate was 3445 ft per minute with MW-50 boost.

Range: 746 miles (1200 km) on internal fuel stores of 364 Imperial Gallons (1618 litres).

Weight: Empty equipped 8,643 lbs (3920 kg) with a normal take-off weight of 10,472 lbs (4750 kg). Maximum take-off weight was 11,502 lbs (5219 kg).

Source http://www.pilotfriend.com/photo_albums/timeline/ww2/Focke-Wulf%20Ta%20152.htm

[33Vortex]

I have not seen any performance charts of this plane. However the later H-3 was stripped of it's nitrous oxide boost to reduce weight (the Ta's in service never saw the high-altitude combat it was designed for). Allied performance figures from just after the war isn't very reliable imo as all testing was biased. For example the D-13 which was tested in mock-combat was flown by a former Luftwaffe pilot who was not informed of it being a D-13 so he thought it was, and he flew it like, a regular D-9. It was just the nature of things just after the war.

As we've seen it's taken decades for historians and researchers to produce non-biased and thoroughly researched material. Myths like the decisive tank battle at Kursk as well as the decisiveness of allied air power in Normandie has been busted, simply by looking at german archives. The allied claims of armored vehicles destroyed in Normandie was twice the number of tanks that the germans actually fielded, complete rubbish. It is true though that the allied air power seriously restricted and almost paralyzed german daylight troop movement.
The soviet tank army that clashed at Prochorovka was fully aware of the german panzer units presence, the image of a chaotic, decisive battle which the soviets won was very much created to smooth over the high losses in a post-war propaganda stunt to glorify the Soviet Union. A story the west swallowed completely up until today almost. The battle was chaotic alright but the soviet army commanders knew exactly what they were doing. The most decisive parts of the Kursk battle was how it ended with the landings in Sicily and the following soviet counter-offensive. Immediate post-war history is very biased and it wasn't until the late '90s it became more relaxed and truthfully honest when researchers and historians started to look at german archives in a scientific approach more than a politacally-correct one.

Just an observation from tons of reading on the subject. I know some of you probably have done much more reading than me about WW2. I guess what I'm saying is that information from just after the war ended is not always reliable, especially soviet archives remain notoriously unreliable, while german archives have in the past more often than not been completely ignored.

It is a interesting subject, the performance specifics of late-war german aircraft. Most of these planes will remain a mystery however, as there simply is not enough detailed information available. Is the Ta152H a exception?

[33Vortex]

double post 

[Boozeman]

I have this chart:



This fits our 152 rather nicely. However, according to the document, these results were obtained with a boost 1,92 ata instead of 1,8 that the E6B gives us here. However, for some strange reason, the Ta consumes much more fuel than the Dora when in WEP, for, what I understand, the same HP. Or does the 152 acutally boost higher and its just not shown correctly on the gauges/E6B?

[33Vortex]

Nice! 

Good question. Interesting to see the impact of the GM1 boost above 11,500 m, the Ta152 really shine up there.

[moot]

I think we did this already, with a lot of Naudet's help, and came to the conclusion that the 152 matched the charts pretty much flawlessly.  I'm not making any argument about any figures in particular, just putting everyone on the same page.. Gonna go see if I find those old threads.  I'd contribute with the charts in my books, but they're not with me.

One of those threads:   http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,64443.0.html
Another:   http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,62620.0.html

[leitwolf]

I'm still yet to be convinced that the TA-152 is not a piece of crap.
WHY would the germans invent a late war aircraft that is SLOWER, LESS POWER, than the previous model 190. CLIMBS LIKE A P-40 or loaded up F4U1A... in 1945? It makes no sense to me at all.

SURELY hitech has screwed up the modelling of this plane.

Why would the germans in 1945 make a plane that can only climb at 2500 FPM slowly? Surely a sitting duck if its meant to fight at 35 000 feet, when the enemy is routinely patrolling above you.

Went for a sortie with Arch the other night, might show a quick clip of one merge encounter :-)

The 152 is one of my favorite planes, and I fell for a similar misconception.
As far as I remember, when they set out to build the Ta it was intended as a high alt recon plane.

To work as a recon plane it had to reach very high altitudes, higher than the previous stuff of the Luftwaffe. And it did. In order for the pilot to function at 40k+ feet the cockpit was pressurized.. adding weight, something regular 190s didn't have. The plane didn't have less power than other 190s, in fact it had the latest version of the Jumo 213 in it, the same engine a 190D has but unlike early Doras the Ta had two additional engine boost systems: Methanol/Water and NO injection. It would climb with 3500 FPM (and does so in AH).

What this meant was the Ta wasn't very good at low altitude, it didn't have to. At the intended operational altitude, the Ta152 is very fast and that's pretty much the point of it.

Using it as a fighter was never really intended

[AKHog]

Landing it really isn't that bad, you just can't be afraid to use a lot of rudder. I can't remember a time I ever broke the gear off, you guys must just suck at landing! 

And here is another thing I don't get, unless you are re-arming, why would you ever land with your gear down? If you set it down soft with the gear up its much more manageable, no more ground loops, and you can be in the tower in 1/3 the time. I always land gear up unless I'm re-arming or in a 262.

[Anaxogoras]

Landing it really isn't that bad, you just can't be afraid to use a lot of rudder. I can't remember a time I ever broke the gear off, you guys must just suck at landing! 

And here is another thing I don't get, unless you are re-arming, why would you ever land with your gear down? If you set it down soft with the gear up its much more manageable, no more ground loops, and you can be in the tower in 1/3 the time. I always land gear up unless I'm re-arming or in a 262.

Because we like to simulate flight?

[JB11]

Landing it really isn't that bad, you just can't be afraid to use a lot of rudder. I can't remember a time I ever broke the gear off, you guys must just suck at landing! 

And here is another thing I don't get, unless you are re-arming, why would you ever land with your gear down? If you set it down soft with the gear up its much more manageable, no more ground loops, and you can be in the tower in 1/3 the time. I always land gear up unless I'm re-arming or in a 262.

It just shows the difference between ones who challenge themselves and the others who are............well complacent.  

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