FW190-A8

[Muzzy]

A real fight ok I'll give a bit of lee way, a realstic scernario if you will, you've been furballing over a base all friendlys have died but you are at an alt and speed were the remaining cons cannot follow you and give up the chase as you head home. On the way home in your A8 you see a dot co alt, the plane comes into icon and is a Spit 9 piloted by a competent player. How do you think the fight will go down? Given that your greatest strength is your guns and your chances of victory lay in shooting him head on? As diverse as the MA is there will always be a time when you have to actually fight with no help from chance a real fight.

Who says I have to stick around and fight the spitty anyways?  I can outrun him on the deck and take a couple of hispano hits if I have to in order to get home.  An A8 may not be able to out-fight a spit 9 but that doesn't mean I can't get away from one if I need to.  So if he comes after me I zoom past him at the merge and just keep on going.  If he tries to HO me he might get me, but I will *definitely* get him.

[Oldman731]

My orginal statement which kicked it off.

"For the MA the A8 can't compete in a real fight except to HO, I've seen guys attempting to dogfight in them but once they lost the ability to turn nose on and HO (which happens very quickly) the A8 is screwed, but it never was a dogfighter to begin with."

With the notable exception of IrishOne, I don't think anyone disagrees with this.  The A8 is a competent picker and a good HO'er, but taking it into combat in a situation where it can't pick, HO or run it doesn't last long.

The reason I keep chewing on the A8 weed is because JG26 (the real ones) did very well in low-level plane-to-plane fighting with the A8, under enough different circumstances that they couldn't just be all pick-HO-run engagements.  You couldn't duplicate this in AW, and - so far as I can tell - you can't duplicate it in AH2, either.

- oldman

[Shifty]

With the notable exception of IrishOne, I don't think anyone disagrees with this.  The A8 is a competent picker and a good HO'er, but taking it into combat in a situation where it can't pick, HO or run it doesn't last long.

The reason I keep chewing on the A8 weed is because JG26 (the real ones) did very well in low-level plane-to-plane fighting with the A8, under enough different circumstances that they couldn't just be all pick-HO-run engagements.  You couldn't duplicate this in AW, and - so far as I can tell - you can't duplicate it in AH2, either.

- oldman

It's hard to recreate WWII in AH. For one thing people didn't fight in WWII the way they do in AH. You didn't have a sky full of P-51s Spit Mk whatever P-38s P-47s La5s FW-190D's and 262s all trying to smoke your donut at the same time. Most engagements boiled down to two types of aircraft opposing each other not five or more types. You flew a real aircraft that wasn't always perfect and couldn't always reach top speed. Since you were in a real aircraft your butt was on the line and you knew it. If both sides were lucky both sides saw each other and engaged. Many times one flight got the drop on another and the fights were usually short and brutal. Many times a flight in a bad position would be lucky enough to not be seen or manage to evade engagement and live to fight another day. No big red icons and  real weather and terrain factors to deal with. I know you read it 100 times from me but the majority of guys that got killed never saw their attacker. Plus if you got killed or captured you were done. You didn't up a better plane and rush over and kill the guy who just shot you down before he could rtb. War is hell this is a game.

[MjTalon]

Actually a Light gun package, low fuel and low weight A-8 is a very competent dog-fighter. Sure, you don't have many options but it's doable. You have to fully understand the plane's limits, ACM and your opponents airframe as well. The good thing about the A-8 is it's firepower. Even with the lightest gun package it's still plenty of destructive ammo down range and a solid burst on any single or twin engine fighter will get knocked down in a swift fashion.

[pervert]

With the notable exception of IrishOne, I don't think anyone disagrees with this.  

Irish flys the A5

Actually a Light gun package, low fuel and low weight A-8 is a very competent dog-fighter. Sure, you don't have many options but it's doable. You have to fully understand the plane's limits, ACM and your opponents airframe as well.

Film please!   if you can do this in an A8 go to MA set the film rolling and bring back some examples. Hate to rain on the anecdote parade but no one in this thread or any thread were they state the A8 is a good dogfighter has ever supplied proof, its misleading for other players to read such statements.

[MjTalon]

Will do.

[pervert]

pervert what your asking for is virtually impossible a scenario to create.

even in the DA you cant get both planes and pilots in absolute 0 advantage environment at the moment of the merge. one will always be that little bit faster or that little bit better angled or the alt of the merge will be more fortuitous for one than the other etc etc.

you will never be able to remove random moments of chance, and in reality i think the first sign of a great pilot is his ability to recognize and then exploit that moment of randomness to create his own advantage.

here is an example of my theory. now i am not saying i am great, or even good, what i am saying is that the random creation of circumstances that will benefit one player over the other cannot be discounted.

i have just returned to base, my K4 was damaged on the left wing and tail, both the aileron and the flap on my left wing were destroyed and my rudder was inoperable. (the damage is the random in this story).

as i am low and slow heading into the run way a 262 appears at the other end of it booming towards me. he is forward and slightly to my left side. my first thought was "SH*T i am dead"! the 262 rudders and fires! i watch his 30mm bundles of love pass just over and slightly to the left of my canopy. as i watch the trajectory of his tracers a strange thought hits me,

on impulse i tap the button and drop my flaps, i let go of my stick so as to not jerk the nose of my plane and with my precision trigger located on my throttle i tap off a quick burst of rounds. because my left flap was damaged the dropping of my flaps accomplished lifting my nose slightly and twisting it to the left, my rounds smashed into his left motor and wing as we passed each other i watched the explosion and then smoke billowing out of his left jet.

an instant later i get the message "You have shot down "so and so"". i manage to circle the field and then land.

now 999 times out of 1000 i would have died in that engagement, had i attempted any other evasive type of maneuver being that low and that slow and with that much damage, i would likely have augured in. but random circumstance and an impulse that told me to try allowed me to take the advantage away from the 262 and to monopolize on it.

so back to my point, 0 random circumstance IS an absolute part of the game and its the ability of the better pilots to not only create it but to exploit it.

I have watched IrishOne fly the A5, engage multiple cons and come out victorious by his skill at recognizing and exploiting the random circumstances that the fluidity of this game creates.

Exploitation of randomness is the ultimate ACM. it is the one skill that will serve you better in the end than any built in modeling of any aircraft.

POOP~!!!!!!!! you posted when i did!!

no matter my post still holds true even in the example you gave. a good pilot will create his own random acts of chance by baiting and maneuvering the other pilot into a place that will allow for exploitation of an angle or speed or one of the many other circumstances that will allow one to prevail against another.

You've went a bit overboard here, I'm talking about a reasonably even situation, the situation I described to Irish was hypothetical ie if you could fight yourself and one had a extremely poor dogfighting plane and the other an excellent one who would win? There are always mistakes in a fight it could be someone accidentally overshooting at the last second in the better plane and you blasting him but how many times out of 100 would that happen? The majority of the time with reasonably equal opponents and starting positions the better plane will win over the A8.

Again read back through the earlier post I made about being the benefactor of good fortune, I do not consider having a random piece of luck or a one off mistake as a reason to state that a plane that is outclassed in almost every area by every other plane is a good dogfighter.

[Ruah]

With the notable exception of IrishOne, I don't think anyone disagrees with this.  The A8 is a competent picker and a good HO'er, but taking it into combat in a situation where it can't pick, HO or run it doesn't last long.

The reason I keep chewing on the A8 weed is because JG26 (the real ones) did very well in low-level plane-to-plane fighting with the A8, under enough different circumstances that they couldn't just be all pick-HO-run engagements.  You couldn't duplicate this in AW, and - so far as I can tell - you can't duplicate it in AH2, either.

- oldman

Actually, in a staffel or a group of planes, the 190 becomes very very powerful, its when you fly alone or in very lose association like in AH that th 190, and esepcially the A8 begins to fall short.  However, if I were flying with a group of friends, i would definatly suggest flying the 190.

[MjTalon]

A Schwarm of 190's working together as a fluid unit, great visual and verbal communication can be very hazardous to a sector of fighters. 190's are outstanding wingman/schwarm/flight/etc birds.

[Muzzy]

I'm not really sure I'd want to fly the A8 with the light gun package, not when you could use the A5 or D9.

[BaldEagl]

I think I still have a film of Urchin swatting Spits out of the sky like flies in an A5 at furball lake.  Not sure if he'd mind if I posted it or not.  I'll take a look this weekend.  IIRC he was one on three or more.  It was masterfull flying.

[Oldman731]

I think I still have a film of Urchin swatting Spits out of the sky like flies in an A5 at furball lake.  Not sure if he'd mind if I posted it or not.  I'll take a look this weekend.  IIRC he was one on three or more.  It was masterfull flying.

Heh.  Of course Urchin could do that.  Urchin could probably do that with a P-40B.  The point is that ordinary people like me can't do that.

- oldman

[B4Buster]

Perrine, the 110 is a much better turner than the 190 series. 
Oldman, you're much better in the A8 than you give yourself credit for.

[pervert]

I think I still have a film of Urchin swatting Spits out of the sky like flies in an A5 at furball lake.  Not sure if he'd mind if I posted it or not.  I'll take a look this weekend.  IIRC he was one on three or more.  It was masterfull flying.

That was the one of him merging cutting throttle and turning right to get a snapshot as the spit driver was merging far to fast and not cutting throttle. I'm sure Irishone could supply a lot of A5 vids I've seen him fly it better than how it was in those videos, if I recall correctly even urchin admited to feeling pretty limited in what he could with the plane in the post. But once again this drifting off topic from the original aircraft, its an A8 we are talking about here.

[SmokinLoon]

190 blows!

it can't even turn with bf110G

... and turning, young padawan, is only a single attribute.  If you use that alone to measure a plane's worth, you've missed out on a whole realm of air combat.