"Phantom flaps"

[Rino]

     Not sure what the big deal about "Phantom flaps" is.   

[bozon]

-1

If the flap is shot off, with current damage models this means absolutely no adverse effect on your plane. In fact, if anything it will likely make you go faster. I much prefer it that the excessive use of flaps in AH carries a risk - do your floppy thing and get the flap stuck = big trouble. Don't want the flaps to get stuck extended = don't extend them.

Having said that, the graphical representation should reflect a stuck flap. I can't understand how this has not been implemented yet.

[Scca]

-1

If the flap is shot off, with current damage models this means absolutely no adverse effect on your plane. In fact, if anything it will likely make you go faster. I much prefer it that the excessive use of flaps in AH carries a risk - do your floppy thing and get the flap stuck = big trouble. Don't want the flaps to get stuck extended = don't extend them.

Having said that, the graphical representation should reflect a stuck flap. I can't understand how this has not been implemented yet.

"Excessive"?

Last I checked this is a game with realistic flight models, not a simulation.  We can run WEP till it dies, and it comes back, we don't have to worry about mixture, and lets not forget combat trim. We also don't really die when we mess up, so we get to do things in our birds that weren't really done because they had 1 life...ever...

If (and the big IF) the flight models are accurate, then had the risk not been so great, real WWII pilots may have used lots of flaps if they could have managed their operation in a dogfight. 

I say if the flap is gone, it's gone and shouldn't be fixed in it's last position.  It's gone!!!

[Paladin3]

All damage should have degrees and variations. Some should fall off and some should become stuck.

[bozon]

"Excessive"?

no, "Excessive"!

If (and the big IF) the flight models are accurate, then had the risk not been so great, real WWII pilots may have used lots of flaps if they could have managed their operation in a dogfight. 

I say if the flap is gone, it's gone and shouldn't be fixed in it's last position.  It's gone!!!

The risk was great enough that some P-51 squadron forbade the use of flaps. Those that did, used only the 10 degree setting. The RAF did not consider flaps as a combat flight control and non of its planes used combat setting for flaps. Some 109/190 pilots report of the use of flaps, but also getting them extended very little. In all those anecdotes pilots report of the use of flaps as a wild card that they pulled rather than the standard operation of the plane.

If a real flap gets hit while extended it is not surgically removed - it will remain a warped piece of of metal attached to the plane and create a lot of drag and very little extra lift. The current damage behavior is OK within the frame work of the AH damage modeling (which is definitely lacking!). The problem is that the graphics show a missing flap instead of a mangled one stuck in its last position.

[Paladin3]

So once again why can everything out turn the P51 when the pilots said they rarely had that problem?

[bozon]

So once again why can everything out turn the P51 when the pilots said they rarely had that problem?

The 190 pilots swear that they could out turn the 51 and 47. The 47 pilot swear that they could out turn a 190. A Lancaster can out turn a 190 given the right conditions. We've all been there, we've all done that in AH even without flaps and some of us get called cheaters for this in PM.

Flaps makes much less of a difference to turning than what most people believe. Dogfights are almost never determined by sustained turns. The flaps become more significant at very slow speeds and moderately significant in instantaneous turns below the corner speed. Most planes can make use of their flaps in the latter two cases to varying degrees of effectiveness. The flaps of the P51 that come out at 400 mph makes next to zero difference at that speed - it is simply convenience that the first notch can be deployed in advance.

P51s did not have special flaps design, just run of the mill slotted flaps. They are not like the Fowlers of the KI84 and P-38. The suspicious behaviour of AH flaps is that for some planes when flaps are deployed to very high angles, they still tend to produce little drag - but again, that matters only at very slow speed.