As I read more, the more I see amazing realism in AH

[jamdive]

but it isnt.  airplanes in ah will fly at full speed.  when a portion of the wing is missing it created more drag on one side (the one with the longer wing) which will cause the plane to turn in the direction of the Longer wing, to compensate you must use rudders, which by itself will create more drag, slowing the airplane down. airplanes with 1/2 a wing have been known to fly for extended periods of time, but not at full speed.

semp

I was thinking that damage would slow the plane down. Not sure if its because of more rudder and aileron usage. I wonder if using the rudder would just cancel out the drag you would have from the missing wing. On the other hand, it makes sense though that missing wingtips would be less of an issue at high speeds. Does anyone know how much drag is created by the vortex from a boxed end wing tip?

[Chalenge]

I was thinking that damage would slow the plane down. Not sure if its because of more rudder and aileron usage. I wonder if using the rudder would just cancel out the drag you would have from the missing wing. On the other hand, it makes sense though that missing wingtips would be less of an issue at high speeds. Does anyone know how much drag is created by the vortex from a boxed end wing tip?

Less than the missing frontal area creates.

[Chalenge]

There are two factors at work:  (1) less drag from the portion of the wing that is gone and (2) more induced drag from the remainder of the wing that is generating more lift than it would need to otherwise, more drag from any less-aerodynamicly efficient shape to the end of the wing, more drag from the deflected aileron, and more drag from the deflected rudder.  Whether the combined effect results in a faster or slower airplane depends on whether (1) or (2) is the greater effect.  For clean clipping of wingtips at lower alts, where the extra lift of the wingtips is not needed, the plane will be faster.  For most planes, clipping a good portion of one wing would, I suspect, result in reduced speed with the combined reductions from (2) being greater than the benefit from (1).

From flying planes in AH with a portion of one wing missing, my recollection is that they have all been slower.  Perhaps I am misremembering, as I don't do it all that often, but that's what I recall.

Ordinarily an offset rudder (constant rudder that is) would create a great deal of "aerodynamic braking" action (and thus drag) but dont confuse that with vortex drag (your "induced drag").

Your premise that the wing creates more lift "because it needs to" is incorrect. What you are calling "induced drag" is actually vortex drag (which is often incorrectly referred to as "induced drag" - so its not your fault) which is the result of creating lift to begin with. The angle of attack (AOA) does not necessarily increase just because the wing is cut off and I would suggest it does not in fact. Just remember that for the case of an aircraft in equilibrium (not accelerating in any direction) that the lift vector equals the weight vector and the thrust vector equals the drag vector. These action-reaction pairs are well known. So in the case of less wing you can see that the loss of drag from the missing wingtip only effects speed and so the plane will accelerate until drag once again equals thrust. As far is lift is concerned the decrease in weight means that less lift needs to be generated and so less AOA is required. Less AOA equals more available thrust.

The formula I gave holds in all cases and as you can see the velocity is squared which means that the drag from frontal area increases greatly with velocity. All other factors being equal the plane will accelerate to a faster velocity. I have experienced this in AH where I shot the wing off of a P-51D while I was flying a P-51D and since I was almost out of fuel completely I was surprised that I could not accelerate with my opponent... but that is consistent with the law of physics.

While I was in Germany I saw new experimental sailplanes with a new (to me) wingtip design. The new tips were like five fingers projecting above and below the wing at various angles (like a vultures turbulator feathers). The desired effect is to reduce wingtip vortices and thus vortex drag which it is reported they do to some degree. Im not suggesting that jagged wing fragments reduce drag but instead that they do not significantly increase drag especially when compared with frontal area drag (the "A" of the drag formula).

[Brooke]

What you are calling "induced drag" is actually vortex drag (which is often incorrectly referred to as "induced drag" - so its not your fault)

Lots of books on aerodynamics use the term "induced drag".  It isn't incorrect to use that term when using the simpler, approximate models of drag of a wing as a function of lift, things like C_D = C_D_0 + C_L^2 / (e * pi * A) sort of approximation.

The angle of attack (AOA) does not necessarily increase just because the wing is cut off and I would suggest it does not in fact. [and other explanation]

It does if you want to remain flying straight and level.

Let's take a plane flying along straight and level -- call this the original situation.  In that case L = W, and (as an OK level of approximation sufficient for what we're talking about here) L = L_leftwing + L_rightwing, L_left approx. = L_right, and  L_left = 0.5 * W, and L_right = 0.5 * W.

Let's assume you are flying at a speed where there is lift being generated on the whole wing span.  What happens if you remove half the left wing?  The lift that that portion of the wing is also removed.  If you don't change any control inputs, the plane will roll left and start to descend because L_left is now less than 0.5 * W and L is less than W.

If you want the plane to remain in steady-state level flight (and not roll to the left and descend), you need to increase L_left to be 0.5 * W again, which means you must increase its angle of attack.  As WWII planes are fixed wing, increasing angle of attack of left wing also increases the angle of attack of the right wing.  The right wing would now have more lift than 0.5 * W, and the plane would again roll left, but start to ascend some.  To compensate for this, you apply some airleron to reduce lift of the right wing (i.e., right aileron).

Now, the plane is not rolling to the left or right or ascending or descending -- we have L_left = 0.5 * W and L_right = 0.5 * W again.  However, there are some important secondary effects.  The left wing is missing a portion.  The missing portion has no drag, so that part of the left wing's drag is reduced compared to the original situation.  However, we had to increase AoA to increase lift on the remaining portion of the wing, to get that wing's lift back up to 0.5 * W, which increases induced drag (or vortex drag or drag due to lift or whatever standard term you care to call it).  Perhaps overall, there is either no net change to the drag of the left wing, or maybe even a decreased drag from the left wing (like a clipped wing).  If there is a decrease in drag from the left wing, left rudder will need to be applied to compensate, or the plane will yaw right.  Also, we have right aileron applied -- generally that will result in some extra drag due to aileron being deflected.  So, some left rudder might need to be applied for that, too.  The end result is that there needs to be left rudder applied to keep the plane from yawing.

So, to keep in a steady-state level flight with half the left wing missing, compared to the orginal situation, you have a tiny bit more elevator applied, more right aileron applied, and more left rudder applied.  We have less drag from the portion of the missing wing.  We have a little more drag on the portion of the wing that is not missing (as lift there must be increased a little to make up for the lift lost on the missing part -- but this is probably quite minor).  But we have more drag from the control surfaces (especially the aileron and rudder) that are being held in a more-deflected state compared to the original situation.  Overall, I'd think that this is likely to give a net increase in drag.

If you clipped both wings, then you would likely have a net decrease in drag (as you don't have to keep control surfaces deflected to keep in steady, level flight), which is why clipped-wing planes are faster (until they reach situations where they need the extra lift from the portion of the wing that was clipped, like at high altitude).

This is all testable in AH, but I haven't done it.  I'm just recalling that my top level speed in planes where I've lost half a wing seems a lot lower than when I am undamaged, and I'm recalling that I have had to keep aileron applied, or I'll roll into the damaged wing, and some rudder to keep the ball centered, all as I'd expect.