A look back at the past 15+ years of FSO

[RedBeard]

I'm now going to turn to looking at the planes we fly.  To start with, we are looking how often planes are featured in a plane set for a frame.  I found the result a bit surprising.

Plane	Frame Count
Ju_88A-4	197
B-25C	163
Fw_190A-5	145
Bf_109G-6	142
Bf_110C-4b	124
Bf_109G-2	114
Bf_109F-4	114
Bf_109E-4	108
Ju_87D-3	103
…	…
Jagdpanther	2
Tiger_II	1
RV-8	1
LVTA4	1
LVTA2	1

It took me a bit to figure out why German planes seem to be featured so much more than any other planes.  The best I can come up with is that the Germans used a limited plane set that was flown in all their theaters of operation, while other nationality planes were more specific to a theater of operation.  British planes on the western front.  Early war American planes are hand me downs to Eastern Front, China-Burma-India, and North Africa.  US Naval and Japanese planes for PTO.  So a common plane set used in multiple theaters is going to show up as the most featured planes in FSO.

I still get a chuckle when I see HiTech's RV-8 pop up in our stats.  I've tried hunting for the plane number for it a few times, but haven't found it yet.

[RedBeard]

That was how often planes were available to use, now we look at how often they were flown.

Plane	Sortie Count
Bf_109G-6	5330
Bf_109E-4	5074
Bf_109F-4	4792
Ju_88A-4	3721
A6M2	3619
Fw_190A-5	3529
Bf_109G-2	3513
Hurricane_Mk_I	3264
Bf_110C-4b	3194
Ki-61-I-Tei	3074
…	…
RV-8	15
Jagdpanther	9
LVTA2	7
Jagdpanzer_IV/70	6
Jagdpanzer_38(t)	3

Now a sortie count can be influenced by a number of factors.  All FSO events have had various aircraft minimums and maximums, which are the primary influence of sortie counts.  To some extent, I think these tried to reflect aircraft availability at various points in the war, but I also suspect playability has been factored in. 

Early FSO sortie counts were also influenced by the need to replane for a disco or takeoff crash.  Later FSO events using multi-life would have been more influenced by aircraft survivability.

[RedBeard]

One way to look at survivability of planes is to look at the average flight hours per sortie.  Another way would be to look at planes that feature the most landed sorties.  Both have potential problems.  Planes might have long average flight hours per sortie because they were used on deep penetration events where you spent a long time getting somewhere and a long time getting back.  Planes might have more landings because they were featured in more events with extra points given for landing back at a particular base.

In this case we are looking at total flight hours flown for each type as well as total sorties and coming up with an average flight hours per sortie.

Plane	Hours	Sorties	Hours Per Sortie
P-51B	1265.35	1149	1.10
P-47M	130.99	123	1.06
Me_262A-1	190.54	184	1.04
Tempest	318.65	316	1.01
B-17G	1290.68	1295	1.00
F4U-1	472.19	474	1.00
F4F-4	2261.43	2309	0.98
P-47N	413.05	430	0.96
F4U-1C	115.64	121	0.96
B-26B	949.00	1002	0.95
…	…	…	…
PT_Boat	53.62	829	0.06
M16	14.28	255	0.06
LVTA4	1.78	32	0.06
Panzer_IV_F	10.71	215	0.05
Jeep	7.21	158	0.05