I like this one
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Something we all need to learn in AH
Funny you say that. Several years ago, I was corresponding with a gent who had flown the P-51 in the war. I was curious about aspects of the plane, particularly the war emergency power method that it used. I was playing Fighter Ace at the time and in FA, the WEP on most US planes would 'recharge'. If you turned it off for a period of time, you would basically get a new timer on it.
I asked the gentleman if that was how it actually worked on the P-51. He said there was no injection system like some planes had on the P-51. He said that basically you could do what was called 'breaking the wire'. He told me that the throttle had a small wire at the 100% setting but with enough pressure on the throttle you could break the wire and go past 100% to like 110% throttle. He then told me that they were told to do this only in the most dire situations because 1) it would overheat the engine in about 2 minutes time and 2) anytime someone did do it, that plane had to be taken out of service until the engine could be thoroughly inspected for damage.
I thought that was pretty ironic seeing how people use the hell out of WEP in these games. The only games I've seen where overuse of WEP will get you into trouble are IL-2 and Wings of Prey. Running WEP in those games causes overheat pretty quickly.
