P-51 vs La or Spits

[Steve]

The LA-7 is tough nut to crack in a P-51 but the Spit not so much. The best way i find to beat a Spit is to use the zoom climb ability of the mustang. IMO the Pony is one of the best in the zoom.
I will usually give the spit my six at the merge and climb slowly afterward. As the spit gains I will go into a nose low turn and gain airspeed up to around 425 or 450. If you can time it right and keep the spit at 800 or 1000 then your zoom climb will allow you to either get above him or go for the rope.  This tactic can allow the spit for a shot at the top but if you don't want to run i find it works well. The trick is to not pull to many G's when climbing and save as much of that speed as possible.

This move simply won't work if your spit driver is Co E at merge. The ONLY way, regardless of what climb rate you choose, to beat a spixteen this way is if the fight started out with the spit at a lower E state. The spixteen will out zoom a pony any day, assuming comparable E states.

CO-E and below 12k, a pony stick has to out fly an LA7 or spixteen. Fortunately, there are few capable LA7 pilots out there. Even more fortunately there are guys who fly LA7's and think they are competent and you can quickly hand them their butts.

For both these planes, it's rather easy to get them to overshoot. Spixteen pilots tend to want to stay on the throttle because they are focusing on not letting the pony get away.  LA7's, in spite of their radial engine, seem to decelerate poorly so getting them to go past you in a scissor is not all the difficult.

[Rich46yo]

Unfortunatly when you scissors an LA-7 you might end up to close to it for a snap shot and if the LA-7 manages his E well enough he can recognize it and stay on your inside and a bit behind. I ran into a very good P-51 stick today, "wont mention him cause its easy to check", and he started scissoring me and I was able to recognize it and setup for a snapshot. He did everything right but I recognized the move.

Ive been handed my lunch more then once by a P-38 stick who knows how to scissors. The P-38 is actually more dangerous when its scissoring because you can keep the nose up easier and stall fight it better. I'd much rather be in an LA-7 then a Spit-16 when faced with either a P-51 or P-38 being flown by sombody with superior skills. But Ive been carved up in both. Enough to never understimate either adversary.

[HighGTrn]

Haven't been a pony stick long but I really do like it.  I've found that as long as I'm at what I think is cornering velocity, I can hang with both planes.  Caveat to this is that if E states are equal, I usually do like all other pony pilot, stick my tail between my leg and RUN!.  If I have some E advantage (doesn't mean I have to be higher than them, just mean that I have an edge on E), I'll try and mix it up.

One thing I discovered though is that being at cornering velocity means that you should be at that speed when making your lead turn or any other turn.  If I have excessive speed, I'll make my turn in the vertical.  The more speed, the more dramatic I'll go to the vertical to get to that cornering velocity as fast as I can.  The other thing I've discovered to is to be at cornering velocity when I'm in range with him as much as possible.


This seems to work for me.

Oh yeah one more thing, in a pony against one of these planes, if I don't kill him in the first 2 or 3 passes, I get out of dodge cause a couple of things have happened:

1.  My gunnery sucks and I've lost my E advantage.
2.  I've tangled with a someone who knows what they are doing in those planes and have lost my E advantage.  BTW, not all people who fly spits and LAs are dweebs.



S1n1ster

[Steve]

I usually do like all other pony pilot, stick my tail between my leg and RUN!. 

S1n1ster

NO NO NO NO NO

[Bubbajj]

I dunno, i've seen some guys do some pretty magical things in 51s. Some guys can stall fight em and flop em around with spits. How does a LALA stall fight? I got into a stall fight with a pony the other day whilst in a 109F. It was on! That damn pony flopped and stalled and was a major PITA. We went six or seven turns before he got picked. I was surprised it did so well.

[Coward]

A D or B Pony with less than 25% fuel handles much, much better compared to heavier fuel loads. Climb rate improves to 4k/min and the stall doesn't come on as quickly and when it does it's usually not as hard to recover.

[dedalos]

One of my squad mates is getting a bit frustrated with Las and Spits that he gets kill by in his pony. I showed him a few things that he should work on but i was wondering if there are others.  Dose anybody know the best way in fighting a La or Spit in a pony?

Cheers

A P51 without and advantage cannot really fight those planes (and many many others).  In real life the P51 became famous for its speed and range.  If you want to fly it that bad your only options are hit and run or hope the other guy is not as good as you

[The Fugitive]

A P51 without and advantage cannot really fight those planes (and many many others).  In real life the P51 became famous for its speed and range.  If you want to fly it that bad your only options are hit and run or hope the other guy is not as good as you

..... but thats the fun thing about this game. 75% of the people you will run into most likely don't know how to fly which ever plane they are in and you can win easily....IF you know your pony! As for the other 25%.... it depends on when you catch them, but hey its only a game, and they get new ponys ready for you faster than you can trash them ! It comes down to you knowing YOUR plane better than the other guy. If you know how to handle your pony at 100 knots or less chances are you have most of the LA's covered....as long as you give them little to shoot at. Spits are a bit tougher, but they can be had the same way due to most are newb pilots that blow all their "E" on the HO shots. Avoid the HO's, spiral up and hand over their heads and then drop on them like a hammer !

[BnZs]

A P51 without and advantage cannot really fight those planes (and many many others).  In real life the P51 became famous for its speed and range.  If you want to fly it that bad your only options are hit and run or hope the other guy is not as good as you

While I agree this is more or less true in game, the P-51 did fine against 109s and 190s over Germany, AND Yaks and La's in Korea. It is difficult to see how this would have happened, if, as some allege, the USAAF had been so foolish as to send what amounted to a turkey with a big gas tank up against some of the most experienced and deadly pilots of WWII. Thus when making comments about what made the P-51 famous, one should consider the possibility that pilots fighting in actual P-51s did not suffer from all of the limitations that AH'ers in cartoon P-51 do. 

[dedalos]

While I agree this is more or less true in game, the P-51 did fine against 109s and 190s over Germany, AND Yaks and La's in Korea. It is difficult to see how this would have happened, if, as some allege, the USAAF had been so foolish as to send what amounted to a turkey with a big gas tank up against some of the most experienced and deadly pilots of WWII. Thus when making comments about what made the P-51 famous, one should consider the possibility that pilots fighting in actual P-51s did not suffer from all of the limitations that AH'ers in cartoon P-51 do. 

One of the limitations being knowledge of history, cold, fear, bordome, fatigue? lol.  What aces?  They were all dead by the time the 51s showed up.  Second, the 51s had numbers and alt.  Third, the Germans did not go up to dogfight 51s.  The objective was to stop the bombers before they got bounced by the 51s.  Sure they did well in real life but I think we are talking about AH here.  Not even close to real life.

[BaldEagl]

While I agree this is more or less true in game, the P-51 did fine against 109s and 190s over Germany, AND Yaks and La's in Korea.

I think it's hard to argue that the P-51 gained much of it's reputation for it's long legs and high altitude performance plus being a "beutiful" aircraft (no one ever said that about the F6F-5 despite it's much greater success).

A P-51/190 match up at alt isn't much of a match-up at all but that's not what the Germans were building for.  They were building heavily armored and heavily armed fighters to kill American B-17's and did an exemplary job of it.  Oddly, while they were doing so they ommited the high alt performance that the P-51 (and P-47) brought to the table.

[BnZs]

One of the limitations being knowledge of history, cold, fear, bordome, fatigue? lol.  What aces?  They were all dead by the time the 51s showed up. 

This is often said, and there is a lot of truth to it. A good argument can be made that the P-47 broke the back of the Luftwaffe over the Western front before the P-51s were deployed. I don't think anyone would argue that the Thunderbolt was outright better as an air superiority machine though, although it was good enough at the right time except for the issue of range.

 And of course the Experten were not ALL dead. Consider the fact that a certain number of Luftwaffe high-scorers from the Eastern front did not have such a nice experience when moving to the West. And of course, some German aces survived and went on to write memoirs of their experiences that have inspired more "lost cause" fandom than anything other than the Confederate States of America.... 

Second, the 51s had numbers and alt.

Except when they didn't. I'm sure you've already read the combat account quoted by Humble in a thread in General discussion.

  Third, the Germans did not go up to dogfight 51s.  The objective was to stop the bombers before they got bounced by the 51s.  Sure they did well in real life but I think we are talking about AH here.  Not even close to real life.

Once again, generally this is true, but there are enough instances from WWII when things did not go according to plan and dogfights broke out for us to know that the P-51 was no turkey in fights over Europe with either the 190 or the 109.

[BnZs]

Yes, the F6F was near-perfect for its time and place, but one must allow that a good part of its success was as much due to the mistakes the Japanese made in fighter design and tactics early in the war as was due to the Hellcat's specific design.

 One could argue that almost any of the front-line fighters from the other nations from mid-war onwards could have racked up large k/d ratios against the Zero using similar hit-and-run tactics.

I think it's hard to argue that the P-51 gained much of it's reputation for it's long legs and high altitude performance plus being a "beutiful" aircraft (no one ever said that about the F6F-5 despite it's much greater success).

A P-51/190 match up at alt isn't much of a match-up at all but that's not what the Germans were building for.  They were building heavily armored and heavily armed fighters to kill American B-17's and did an exemplary job of it.  Oddly, while they were doing so they ommited the high alt performance that the P-51 (and P-47) brought to the table.

[Cobra516]

If you're accelerating on the deck trying to recover some energy from that fight you just won and then happen to get a Spit or LA on your six that has closure - the only thing you can do is force an overshoot with a combination of rolling / pulling and a lot of rudder and dump flaps - anything to bleed the E, keep an eye on the bandit and wait for him to overshoot, then maybe it'll end up in a slow speed rolling scissors.  I always roll to the left to let the engine torque help roll me around as I'm on top inverted, and crank in a lot of left rudder.  If the Spit or LA is an average pilot, he'll hopefully be out infront of you. 

If that maneuver doesn't work, then you're most likely dead - it's usually a one shot deal.  I seem to have good luck with it though.  Best thing to do is not get low and slow on the deck, but sometimes the temptation to go low and mix it up is just too great.

[infowars]

I didn't read the whole thread but I wanted to comment on the 51d.  I have pretty much exclusively flown that plane since I began flying.  My goal was to beat 16s in it.  Well to my surprise I have been really successful against the average spit pilots in a turn fight (as long as I don't get ganged). If I could aim worth a darn I'd get way more kills against them.  Good spit pilots can obviously whack me,  but there aren't that many good ones.  My next goal is to be successful like Steve is in a 51.  My two cents and I am pretty much a newbie.