The La-5FN and WEP at 8k

[Sorrow[S=A]]

Pyro confirmed today that the La-5FN's WEP was now limited to 8k. I cannot fathom this move HTC as it is totally incorrect as far as any of the sources I can find. While the La-5FN had only a low altitude supercharger a limit of 8k is just far too low to be realistic in what was their best interceptor. They built this plane to defend against the 109 and it did well, it's just not possible it could not perform well above 8k, wouldn't a more realistic way of doing this be a declining effectiveness above 12k?
As of me writing this the 129 is trying to find as much information as possible to show what the real performance was.

Gorf: you decided to make a few.. well.. stupid comments when I was asking pyro about this. I said I would take it to the UBB so here it is. You said "The russians thought of airpower as a flying artillery" this was totally incorrect. In 1941 the idea was there to attach airplanes to army units and command, this prevented cohesive use of them both in Finland and against Germany. However before Russia was done the winter war they allready knew better than to consider fighters as "artillery". Bombers were used extensivly to bomb targets of opportunity and fighters were used as covering forces and seperated to rove and intercept Finnish pilots.
  By 1943 and the La5-FN and the Yak series of fighters the IAP was locked into it's methods of having fighters be interceptors, solely concerned with encountering other fighters and protecting the bombers and low level anti-armor aircraft. While they were still not unified under a cohesive command of their own their equipment was tailormade for their use. As they were interceptors the planes were made to fight and destroy the 109 G2 and G6, they were designed to fight equally with the ME in the vertical as they could and out-turn and out-gun the 109. The russians did not design fighters to attack ground targets or for long range duties. Thus they had no drop tanks for their fighters or bomb racks (they were available but almost never used). I think the problem here is that most La-5 pilots were ordered to never fly above their "hard ceiling" of around 10k as this would leave their bombers unescorted and vulnerable. I am almost positive this had nothing to do with the planes capabilities. In fact by 1944 they were making fighter sweeps looking for German planes to fight.


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If your in range, so is the enemy.

[Pyro]

That wasn't something done arbitrarily.  Speed, climb, and horsepower charts from Russian texts clearly show this.  In his book Luftwaffe Test Pilot, Hans Werner Lerche further validates this.  In his report on the La-5FN, he specifically mentions  the low full throttle altitude keeping emergency power from being attained.  

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Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations

"The side with the fanciest uniforms loses."


[This message has been edited by Pyro (edited 01-24-2000).]

[Sorrow[S=A]]

Pyro, please tell me if this is close to the mark:
The La-5FN has only a low altitude supercharger, hence this means that the full MAP of 50 is only available until 8k then the supercharger is incapable of more than 45 manifold pressure? If this is the case will we be seeing the 45 reduced to 40 at 16k in the future tweaking to reflect further it's decreasing power at altitude?

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If your in range, so is the enemy.

[juzz]

All I can say is the other planes,(especially the stratobombers) had better get their full throttle altitude limit(s) implimented as well, and quickly.

Now the La-5FN is restricted to what(I guess) was it's main role historically; low-level fighter operations, in support of the fighter-bombers.

Where's the fighter-bombers?
Where's the vehicles?