Duel with a FW190 by J. Johnson

[NaughtyN]

Kweassa sums up it pretty well. The air combat in WW2 had very few to do with the combat in AH2.

Also there are factors a simulation just can't model. Handling qualities in example. One of the FW190s greatest strength was is exellent and easy handling coupled with exellent control harmony.
This is something AH2 can't model. AH2 also can'T model the impact of high G forces on the pilot. In AH2 every pilot has the same strength and G tolerance at all times. Thats rarely the case in reality. And one must remember that WW2 combat pilots were not trained aerobatic professionals. So there will not have very many prolonged high G dogfights.

Another thing are aircraft restrictions not modelled in AH2. Take a spitfire handbook an check what is all prohibited, especially if full fuel load is taken and you get a completely different plane than in AH2.

If I remember rite the 190 had a nasty stall habbit and gave no warning it was about to stall which kept guys from flying it hard at slow speeds.

The FW190 gave stall warning, if the ailerons were well ajusted and regulary maintained. The FW190 handbook has very detailed instructions how to ajust and maintain the ailerons. For the FW190 captured during WW2 by the allied it is unlikely that the right instructions where at hand.

[pipz]

I thought it was a couple German pilots that mentioned the 190 didnt give a stall warning.I am going by memory.I have read well over 100 books and I cant recall exactly where I read it.I guess Ill leave it at that <G>

NaughtyN
Is that book you mentioned the actual maintenance manual for the plane?Just curious if it is a book I can purchase.It sounds like something I may be interested in.

 
Pipz

[bozon]

Judging from what is described by many anecdotes - not just those coming from the best of pilots - it seems many of the real life factors (which cannot be adequately simulated within the boundaries of a mere game) acted out as quite a bit of hinderance which might have kept the pilots from achieving the theoretical maximum performance of their aircraft.

It is a game of numbers and probability. If you slow down enough to enter a fight on the edge of stall with flaps out, there is a real chance that you'll kill yourself (see McGuire et al.). Now, the pilot must ask himself just one question: "do you feel lucky punk?".

If the chance of killing yourself is 1/2, very few people would even consider it. But what about 1/10? 1/50? 1/100? Eventually the odds would appeal to you enough to have a go at it. Now comes the difference between real life and a game. Here you will take a 1/5 or 1/10 risk easily, especially if it is lower than you typical death/kill ratio. You will even try bigger risks as it usually rewards you with more fun fights for the risk of what? a teleport to the tower? Epeen loosing erection? In real life you gamble with your real life. Taking 1/5 odds as a way to fight, will likely kill you before you make an ace. In real life it is impossible to calculate kills/death ratio, except postmortem.

Two planes could have same potential performance, but if one gives you 1/100 chance to kill yourself by stalling and the other 1/20, pilots of the first plane will be seen turn fighting it while the pilots of the other will refrain from doing so - except for a few suicidal or exceptionally good individuals that ignore/improve the odds.

[Kazaa]

Spitfire > 190 and 109, nuff said.

[TonyJoey]

Spitfire > 190 and 109, nuff said.

Amen.

[pipz]

Tony if your big on Spitfires you probably would also enjoy the book "Spitfire Offensive" by R.W.Sampson.


Pipz

[pipz]

Spitfire > 190 and 109, nuff said.

Christ.....
Spitfire XVI > EF2000 in our sim..........notice how I left it all nice and "Euro" for ya 

<BG>
Pipz

[Charge]

"The 190 is a very maneuverable aircraft, it's just not very good in a flat turn."

Well, that is not what the anecdote states.

"Spitfire > 190 and 109, nuff said." Sure. Kazaa, this is for you : http://www.luftwaffe.cz/spit.html 
 
I'm sure the combat performance of Spitfire pilots got a lot better by the introduction of IX when the 190s could no more enter and exit the fight at will.   


Let me analyze the situation described in that article a bit:

Due to greying out effect I think that the Spit was not at its optimal turning speed but the FW was on a speed region where it can still turn very well. It is argued that FW190 cannot turn well at any speed but obviously this is not the case.

It is also probable that due to cockpit geometry the FW pilot was not experiencing greying(or blacking) out as the Spit pilot did if he was just flying lag pursuit, trying to hang with the Spit. If he was trying to pull lead the German was probably graying out just the same.

By "gaining on" Johnson means that the FW was either just catching him in turn or in a position of possibly gaining lead for a shot after a couple more rounds. It is questionable if the FW could have sustained the turn so long, as I presume the G was held rather constant ie. the speed was getting slower and slower so the FW would have exited its best turning speed region whereas the Spit would have entered its own. Obviously Johnson was not too interested to find out what would happen.

Thats how I read it.

-C+

[Helm]

That's my opinion as well.

 Judging from what is described by many anecdotes - not just those coming from the best of pilots - it seems many of the real life factors (which cannot be adequately simulated within the boundaries of a mere game) acted out as quite a bit of hinderance which might have kept the pilots from achieving the theoretical maximum performance of their aircraft.

 Some autobiographies coming from the expert pilots describe pulling so close to the edge of stall that their aircraft shivered and shook, whilst at the same time, other anecdotes originating from the average pilots seem to describe a general disdain towards having to push their aircraft towards dangerous grounds, or having to enter such a situation which warrants it in the first place.
 
 Stories of some elite squadrons portray a cocky band of well trained aces who'd gladly chop throttle, slow their aircraft, and flicker the flap levers and switches to enter a knife fight, whilst other stories emphasize they trained their pilots to play it safe, and keep things simple during dogfights.

 Some anecdotes even seem to suggest that most pilots rarely even adjusted their throttle lever during combat - leave the throttle setting at max. combat power, and then both hands on the control column.

 The guncam footages also show some interesting moments. Taking into consideration that most of the footage is in 1/3rd speed, even when played at a normal real-life speed the evasive maneuvers of the target plane in the films are very simple to the simpilot's eyes. One can only imagine what's going through the pilot's mind in his last moments of the flight, but considering grave circumstances, the type of evasives shown rarely extend further than the simplest of left-right scissoring. It's actually quite difficult to see any kind of attempts at fancy evasives at all.

 Another point might be the difficulty of handling due to aerodynamic forces and physical/psychological factors.

 Some people have posted that it isn't all that difficult to move your head and body around during high G maneuvers, and a loose strap would be all you'd need to have a reasonable six view. However, there seems to be some disparity between looking around at high Gs during a leisure flight, and during combat maneuvering under high mental stress. For whatever reasons, apparently checking 6 wasn't an easy task, which in time came to the development of wingman coverage tactics during the course of the war.

 Also, some people say stronger people can exert forces well over 50lbs on the control column, but it's quite difficult to imagine every pilot in the squadron would be able to continuously pull, push, pull, push, pull, push with maximal force during high speed flight in a single combat. Sure, I might be able to lift up heavy weights, but I'm not sure if I could continuously exert enough force to pick it up, down, up, down, up, down as long as I want. Especially during the excitement of combat with my breath running scant, sweat tickling into my eyes, forehead itching and etc etc..

 According to guncam footages, the most common thing to expect seems to be you latching onto an enemy plane, your initial attack fails, the enemy plane turns left, you turn harder to gain a leadshot angle, the enemy tries a scissor to the right you change directions to follow him, nail a few shots, the target smokes, and the plane either goes down or the pilot bails.

 I'm not sure if any real pilot would really glady try do what we'd do in AH... in which we'd see an enemy while flying at 400mph, enter a steep combat turn, chop throttle, put down flaps, pull a 3~4G turn while tunnel vision sets in and allows only a tiny circle of visibility, the enemy plane scissors to right, you change directions accordingly and pull another 3~4G turn, and your vision would come back briefly and then tunnel again, and then enter a rolling scissors fight with the outside view of the world going round and round and round, your plane shaking and gasping at the edge of the stall as you try to barrely roll again and again, as slowly as possible, trying to go slower and barrely around at a larger radius than the enemy, at which point the combat altitude would drop down and your wingtips might be scratching the dirt.

 Heck, the preferred practice of dive bombing was to fly over the target at a slow speed, invert and split-S downwards to the target and drop, because this method was known to be more accurate, as well as it would relieve the pilot from the dreadful -Gs if he had to push forward the controls to just duck down and enter -G dive.

 ...

 If one takes all of what's mentioned above into consideration, the conclusion seem to support the theory that the aerial combat of WW2 planes rarely involved the 'extremes' of flight.

 I think the FW190s are depicted as reasonable turners in anecdotes, because neither the 190s nor their enemy Spitfires would really get into a serious turn contest during combat. If RAF testings confirm the Spits outturn 190s quite easily, but combat reports say otherwise, then I think the only explanation is that combat pilots don't fly like test pilots.

What an awesome post!



Helm ...out

[pipz]

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/spit.html 

Hey!!!............I like that link!     


Pipz

[Guppy35]

Spit IX FTW! 

His book, recommended to my by furball a bit back, is next on my list of autobiographies of World War 2 pilots, with Nine Lives by Al Deere next. 

The fight in question was fought by Johnson in a Spitfire Vb which the 190 outclassed completely outside of turning circle.

The tables turned again with the introduction of the Spit IX

[moot]

Which 190 model was that?

[Mace2004]

It's interesting that nobody has really focused the key comment regarding the fight; he lost sight.  There is very little actual information regarding the geometry of the fight or relative E states so it's very hard to say which aircraft was really superior, what is clear is that Johnson made a bad mistake.  How long did Johnson lose sight and what was his response?  When someone loses sight 99.9% of the time they will ease their pull so they can look around, especially if they lost sight because they started to black out.  Even if this only took a few seconds, a few seconds of the 190 pulling his best turn while the Spit pulled less can easily account for the angles the 190 made and, once in a position of advantage, any aircraft is tough to shake regardless of which is the better turning aircraft.

Also, you have to take anecdotal information with a very, very, large grain of salt.  The way a pilot perceives a fight is wrong far more than it is ever right.  There are many reasons why this is so based on both psychology and physiology.  The human brain, especially under severe stress, is just not an accurate recorder of facts but focuses on perceptions. You might, for instance, think that Johnson's interpretation of the 190's capabilities are really somewhat colored by the fact he's covering or minimizing his own mistake, either consciously or subconsciously.  I'm not saying this is a fact in this case as there's no way to really know, but it is a consideration when reading anecdotes.

This is why we now have things like the TACTS Range and rely strongly on HUD recorders to reconstruct fights.  It's also one of the reasons NFWS discusses fights as "the F14 did this, the F5 did that" rather than "wohooo, Maverick killed Joker".  It takes some of the personality and ego out of a fight (the movie not withstanding) leading to more accurate reconstruction (as well as more intelligent decisions during a fight).  TACTS accurately records the entire flight and can be used almost exactly the same way we use the film viewer.  Modern HUD tapes are also very different from the gun cameras of WWII and will record the entire fight, including all the aircraft info on the HUD, shots, and voice.

The very first thing to do after a flight and before the debrief is to pop in the HUD tape and reconstruct what really happened from your own perspective and then, during the debrief, compare tapes to help build the real picture as best as is possible.  The results can be very surprising even for experienced pilots and your credibility can be questioned should you have "forgotten" to turn on your HUD recorder and make some claim not supported by hard data.

On another subject, I find the various descriptions of the 190's stall warning interesting.  The comment that when the ailerons are properly rigged the 190 gives good stall warning is significant. It seems to indicate that the 190's stall may have a tendency to begin at the wingtip vice the wingroot unless the ailerons are exactly right.  This would not be a good thing as field conditions and airframe stresses would make proper rigging difficult to maintain and therefore, the average pilot would be forced to deal with poor stall warning and abrupt stall characteristics.

[moot]

I can't remember where I read it, but I recently saw mention that some 190s' performance was significantly degraded by improper aileron maintenance.  Might've been some Russian-captured Fw's, or.... I can't recall.

[Charge]

"On another subject, I find the various descriptions of the 190's stall warning interesting.  The comment that when the ailerons are properly rigged the 190 gives good stall warning is significant. It seems to indicate that the 190's stall may have a tendency to begin at the wingtip vice the wingroot unless the ailerons are exactly right.  This would not be a good thing as field conditions and airframe stresses would make proper rigging difficult to maintain and therefore, the average pilot would be forced to deal with poor stall warning and abrupt stall characteristics."

Both FW and Spit have the same amount of wash-out at wingtip. In Spit the angle change is divided evenly across the length of the wing, whereas in FW the angle changes on the last 20% of the wing length. I don't know which is better.

-C+