Quote Angus: "Gaston, you could also fall into Crumpp's pit, praising more weight and hence heavier wingloading. For making this simple, you need lift for flying at all, and you need lots of it in a turn. Lift is an amalgam of thrust and area+angle etc. And weight is just weight. Drop the power, and there is no lift except what you get when you travel down. And you cannot do that forever."
-I do not praise weight or any other simplistic notion! You forget that as the power is diminished (not dropped completely!), the flaps are also deployed or/and the angle of attack is increased: Real pilots in the FW-190A routinely reduced power prior to combat, especially at lower altitudes, and they also did deploy the flaps. Even without flaps, lower power could help raise the nose to a higher angle of attack relative to the trajectory, while just slightly more speed or power could actually pull the nose down in a fairly sudden, non-linear fashion as it does on the clean Me-109G at 300 MPH (I'm pretty sure the same thing happens on the Me-109G with underwing gondolas at 250 MPH...).
-Crump is tirelessly argueing, based on maths and algebra alone, that the FW-190A is superior at speed retention and turn rate at high speeds. I would have seen nothing wrong with this argument, except that I got tired of reading over decades thousands of real-life accounts that NEVER stop clobbering this math-based notion on the head... Do I have to link the "Russian experience" for the millionth time?
http://www.ww2f.com/russia-war/21828-russian-combat-experiences-fw-190-a.html The fact is maths alone cannot give us the answer here, and the insistence on them just shows the bias of many education systems towards maths at the expense of both reading skills and rational thinking. I'll bet you would be hard-pressed to find an aerodynamic formula, for estimating maximum turn rate, that takes into account how far ahead of the leading edge of the wings the propeller is... If you don't even compute basic facts about the object, how can you even pretend to predict behaviour on a messy object that churns the air into a spiral?
In addition to this math bias, all the counter-arguments presented here has clearly a "jet" feel to it based on the post-war work of authors who were mostly focussed on current jet technology. I hate to break any shocking news here, but jets and prop fighters are quite different, and their weapons are usually not the same either...
Quote, Widewing: "He posts walls of text that invariably point to the comments of WWII pilots, but not actual flight test data."
-All the evidence I presented is based on actual side-by-side flight tests. Tough. (Source: "WWII Aircraft Performance" site, TAIC report #17 and #38, + the US Navy's project TED # PTR-1107 [FW-190A-5/U4 Navy test]):
If the A6M5 Zero turns 2000°:
-The F6F-5 turns 1550° (A6M5 gains 360° in 3.5 X 360°)
-The F4U-1D turns 1550° (same as F6F-5)
-The P-38L turns 1330° (A6M5 gains 360° in 2 X 360°)
-The P-51D turns 1100°-1190° (A6M5 gains 360° in LESS than 2 X 360°)
-The P-47D Bubbletop turns 997° (A6M5 gains 360° in 1.5 X 360°)
-The FW-190A-5 turns 1162° (F6F-5 gains 360° in 3 X 360°): Despite this being roughly equal to the P-51D, it is made using a fully disassembled and re-built captured machine, whose aileron performance in this US Navy test was then contested by British evaluators in an official wartime document: Aileron performance DID affect low-speed sustained turn performance on the FW-190A...
Official British test have the FW-190A-4 pegged as "equal" in sustained turn rate to the P-38G, and the FW-190A-4 could also out-turn the Spitfire Mk V in sustained horizontal turns, as seen in this combat account:
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/4716/jjohnsononfw190.jpg The P-38G was pitted against a Spitfire Mk XIV in mock combat, which failed to shake it from its tail in repeated attempts, so a turn rate of 1300°-1400° (vs 2000° on the A6M5) does not seem implausible for both the early-mid FW-190A's and the P-38G."
Quote, Widewing: " If you have no evidence, then you have no argument. It's that simple. If you should think that anyone will entertain your claim without evidence, think again."
-It is you who has no evidence except maths that are contradicted by repeated flight tests and millions of concurring pilots.... You DO have TWO separate Navy tests that peg the FW-190A-4 and A-5 as EQUAL(!) in turn rate to a P-51D, which I think is STILL not quite 100% good enough, as the British RAE test establishment, not me, agreed during wartime and send the US Navy a contestation to that effect, at least concerning the roll rate...
This is all quite simply the destruction of painfully obvious history at the hands of simplistic maths: With the relative emphasis put on either in most nation's education system, I guess the result was predictable...
I think I'll take the hint from Thorsim...
Gaston
