You realize this entire wall of verbage is essentially saying "You have no proof regarding relative turn performance of planes, all you have is the opinions of pilots which is hearsay" blah blah blah.
No, that is not all I said. I also made it abundantly clear that, not only were their beliefs based on hearsay, but in spite of ABUNDANT evidence to the contrary, they refused to accept that their beliefs were wrong. Sound familiar?
Fine, we'll roll with that argument. By the same logic have no PROOF that a A6M2 "Zero" fighter could out-turn a Hurricane, a Spitfire, a P-40, or even a heavily laden B-17. Fair?
Seriously dude, you are losing your mind. And you conveniently left out part of that ridiculous sentence; WHO has no proof?
If you are referring to me, you are correct. I have no proof to offer you because I don't have access to any of the turn performance reports of any of those aircraft and I do not intend on wasting my time looking for them. I wasn't making the claim that a Zero could out turn anything. I was relating a story about stubbornness and pilots being WRONG.
But if you want to change the subject just a little, the BEST EVIDENCE they had AT THAT TIME showed that the Zero could out turn said aircraft and those Spit pilots REFUSED to even give it proper consideration. And we know now, without a doubt, that Joe Foss was right, and the strength of the evidence at the time was likely almost as strong as it is now.
You are the one making unfounded claims, not me. If I chose to assert the Zero could out turn any of them, I would look for proof. What kind of proof would depend on how critical it was to provide it. If it was just to argue on a forum, I might use hearsay. If it was to convince a programmer that their FM was wrong, I guess I would look for the appropriate flight test data.
And then you post this:
This bears repeating for emphasis.
"It was well known from 3 years of combat in the Chinese theater that Japanese planes were extremely maneuverable. There was no excuse"
So suddenly you're taking the same sort of pilot anecdote you say is useless and unreliable and lambasting, in hindsight, a group of pilots for not taking it as gospel. So is pilot anecdote regarding relative maneuverability relevant or not? Choose one.
The accuracy of those claims was NEVER the key point. The point was that those pilots, even ENTIRE GENERATIONS of people can have biased or flawed BELIEFS even when available information is overwhelming.
Sorry, I believe the chart is simply ranking relative turn radius.
A great demonstration of the failure to see the difference between general information and specific information.
