How Did Fw 190A's Beat Up on Spitfires 1941-1943

[funked]

1.  Fw 190 had a large speed advantage at low level.  Speed was more important in real life where spotting the enemy was much harder than in our arena with giant neon billboards.

2.  Many RAF units had Mk. V (or even Mk. II?) Spitfires which had much less performance than the Mk. IX.

3.  Tactics - Teamwork, Local numerical superiority, Pressing a fight with altitude advantage, Avoiding a fight with altitude disadvantage.

4.  Acceleration in dives - More weight and less drag, think brick vs. feather.

5.  Control authority in dives - Spitfire had aileron problems.  Fw 190 had no problems at all in high Mach flight.

6.  Fuel Injection - Most Spitfires had engine power loss in negative-G maneuvers.  Port-injected BMW 801 did not have this problem.

7.  Sustained turn performance not as important in real combat.  In real combat, a stall could mean death.  From watching gun film and reading pilot accounts, I think most pilots did not fly as close to stall as we do.


[This message has been edited by funked (edited 05-02-2000).]

[Kieren]

Just a little thing confusing me here... and you are the engineer... wouldn't initial dive spped be more a function of power/weight (like acceleration in level flight) than actual weight of the a/c? I know gravity assists the heavier a/c more in the dive, but inertia has to be overcome, correct?

I know if both a/c are at high speed, level, and then pushover the heavier craft will win, but initially shouldn't a lighter a/c out accelerate the heavier?

[funked]

Kieren you are correct that power/weight ratio plays a factor.  But equation for dive acceleration looks like this:

Acceleration = (Weight+Thrust-Drag)/Mass

At really low speeds Drag is not a big issue.  So it's basically
Acceleration = (Weight+Thrust)/Mass
However the Thrust/Mass ratio for these planes is much less than 1g, so it's not that much a boost to have a good Thrust/Mass ratio.  Most of your acceleration is still coming from gravity.

And in a steep dive, Drag quickly becomes larger than Thrust.  Also at higher speeds Thrust is reduced due to prop efficiency.  In this regime the Weight is doing a lot more than Thrust to accelerate the plane, and the Thrust/Mass ratio is not an issue.  

In the example we are talking about, the Fw 190A did not have a power to weight advantage over all the Spitfires.  But it was close.  It did have a weight advantage, and about the same amount of drag.

So it might give up a little dive acceleration at low speeds, but it will make that right back up when the amount of Drag starts to exceed Thrust, which happened PDQ in a Fw 190 pointed straight down with the throttle wide open.    

There are test reports and a lot of anectdotes that say the Fw 190A would walk away from a 41-43 era Spit in a dive.

[This message has been edited by funked (edited 04-30-2000).]

[wells]

 

I've seen say the Fw 190A would walk away from the 41-43 era Spits in a dive.

That could be because of the negative G fuel flow problems?  The Spits couldn't be bothered to try following?  In order to dive, a Spit would have to roll 90 degrees at least first and we know it's roll kinda sucked at high speeds.

[This message has been edited by wells (edited 04-30-2000).]

[StSanta]

VERY interesting thread. Thanks for the info people  

--
StSanta
II/JG2
DTAS

[Pongo]

Of cours for most of the time that the spit V was in use the germans where using the 109f and early g.
Some of those advantages are valid, being over local airspace was of course the biggest one and not mentioned in your post for some reason.
They would have to be pretty overwhelming advantages to make up for the supperiority of the spit IX in this game. Superior climb, dive, firepower, manuverability, handeling in all but roll.
The germans must have been 2-3 times better pilots on average then the brits to account for 42. At the time the brits knocked it up to supperiority of the FW, but I guess we have the advantage of time to rewrite that.

[funked]

Superior dive and firepower?  We must be playing a different game Pongo.

[Pongo]

Well I only fly it with 2 20s and 2 13mm.
The spit Ix with 2 m2 20s and 2 m2 50 cal definatly has supperior fire power to that by a wide margin.
The dive is maybe questionable. the spit definatly seems to be able to handle in a dive much better. Even though its dive speed might be slower its ability to make use of its dive is better..but shaky statement maybe.

[Kieren]

funked-

Thanks! That cleared it up for me (to a point.... math... my head is spinning... I need to sit down!).

At least what I suspected has been verified; there was more to the equation than just gravity, mass, and power.  

[Jekyll]

 

There are test reports and a lot of anectdotes that say the Fw 190A would walk away from a 41-43 era Spit in a dive.

But weren't these tests 'commonly wrong' funked?    At least, that's what you have claimed in another thread on a similar topic  

[funked]

Jekyll, knock it off.

[SnakeEyes]

Combat reports also demonstrate that the 190 walked away from the Spit V in 1942, Jekyll.

------------------
SnakeEyes
o-o-o-
=4th Fighter Group=

[funked]

I'm perplexed that most of the people who complain about the Fw 190/Spitfire matchup in the game have nothing to add to this thread.

Maybe it's because as in real life, the Fw 190 in our game beats the snot out of the Spitfire, especially the Mk. V.

Tour 3:
The Fw 190A-8 has 156 kills and has been killed 112 times against the Spitfire Mk V.

The Fw 190A-8 has 467 kills and has been killed 385 times against the Spitfire Mk IX.


[This message has been edited by funked (edited 05-02-2000).]

[Hristo]

Fill arena with organized squads in Spit Vs and IXs, face them with similar squads in 190As. Give all pilots just one life to live.
Make survival first priority for every pilot.
No low deck furballs, no icons.

190s will win, just like they did in 1942.

P.S.
Not a bad scenario idea, huh ?  

[funked]

Hehehe Hristo WTG!

I flew for 5./JG 5 in WB.  We had a scenario where Fw 190A-4 faced Spitfire Mk. V. in a situation like you describe.

It wasn't pretty.  I think my unit had 22 kills and 2 losses.