Enough of being the Lone Ranger – now I’m a P51D(weeb)

[streakeagle]

P-51 may be the "Cadillac of the sky", but is that really a good thing to be? Weigh a ton, handle like a barge, and have good power to make up for the weight for average acceleration and excellent speed.

[beet1e]

Mandoble,

Thank you for your considered judgement. The P51 is faster than a Spit, and to my mind that gives it greater kinetic energy when flat out at sea level, just about to zoom. In WB, I could zoom up in a P51 from sea level to 10K!  I will have to do some of my own tests in AH. Certainly, the Spit ix in AH seems to have even more E-ret than the Spit ix in WB.

But the P51 is a dweeb plane; I once flew a squad mission in the WB MA and got 27 kills in the session and never even got pinged once.

[MANDOBLE]

beet1e, those zooms have three parts:
1 - Where inertia due initial speed is the most important factor, as well as drag coeficient.
2 - Where the speed has become slow enough to have HP/Weight ratio as the most important factor.
3 - Where your speed is slow enough that the your stall characteristics will keep your plane nose up (but almost stopped in the air) or spinning like a mad cow.

Your P51 will win the first part of the zoom, while the spit will win the second and third ones. P51 HP/Weight ratio is much lower than spit ratio, and P51 will keep a nose up attitude less time an d with less control than Spit at below stall speeds in a pure vertical zoom.

Talking about kinetic energy, remember that potential energy (or static) may be converted into kinetic and viceversa. Spit engine is much better potential energy container than P51 engine.

I would agree with u only in an engine-stopped engangement.

If u want to test all these things in DA, look for me in MA.

[Wilbus]

What Mandoble said...

[elstevie]

Be very Afraid :-)

[Widewing]

QUOTE]Originally posted by streakeagle



So there you have it from the bible. BNZ is the harder of the two. Anyone can yank a stick in a Spitfire and pray to the Hispano gods for a kill. Only a few can perch up high in a much inferior aircraft and kill just about anything. Of course a good pilot in a good plane is the best combination. But even the best energy fighter can be stalemated by and angles fighter. Of course a slower angles fighter can't leave until the faster energy fighter chooses to leave. So if you fly a fast tnb plane but you are also good at BNZ tactics, you should rule in 1 V 1 combat.
[/QUOTE]

Last evening, the Bishes attacking A10 received a practical demonstration of what a Spitfire can do in a low-level engagement. About a dozen or more Bish fighters found themselves trying to gangbang a lone Mk.IX low over the field. All of the acks had been silenced, the few Rook fighters in the area were killed, and the Spit was then utterly alone. Constantly turning circles one way, then the other, or flying a tight figure 8, the lone Spit shot down at least two Bishes, and damaged several more. After running out of ammo, the Spitfire continued to scatter attackers with fake gunnery runs. Finally, after the engagement went on for no less than 15 minutes, the last two Bish fighters were chased away and a waiting Goon dispatched by two Hellcats and a Seafire launched from a nearby CV. With that, the Spit landed no worse for the wear. The fact that the fight took place just before sunset may have been a factor, but who it helped, if anyone, is unknown. What I do know is that no one could touch that Spitfire. To try to turn with it was certain death. I believe that two other kills were credited to the Spitfire for Bishes who flew into the ground trying to get at him.

Unable to resupply the base before the next big attack, A10 later fell. However, the defensive fight did gain time for the task force to respond and as late as midnight, the Rooks still held their isolated northern port. Kudos to the task force commander for placing his force in between A10 and the port, effectively blocking an all-out dash for the port by the Bish.

These series of actions were some of the best managed engagements I've ever seen done by the Rooks. My salute to all involved.

My regards,

Widewing

[HFMudd]

Yeah, it was grim being Bishop last night.

[SOB]

Originally posted by beet1e
But the P51 is a dweeb plane; I once flew a squad mission in the WB MA and got 27 kills in the session and never even got pinged once.

Actually, by your definition, you're a dweeb.  Quit flying the P51 like a timid little girl and mix it up a little.  Use the plane to fly how you want to, as opposed to flying how the plane wants you to.  And yet again, it all comes down to who's behind the stick.


SOB

[beet1e]

MANDOBLE,

It's one thing to quote flight theory, but quite another matter for the programmers of AH to apply that theory so that the planes in AH obey the laws of Earthbound physics. For example, the planes in AH have different characteristics from those in WB. Some fly entirely differently. Only one sim, or neither, can be right. So quoting flight theory wont necessarily have any bearing on flight sims. Unfortunately, I have uninstalled WB, else it might have been interesting to do the tests there as well as in AH. All I can say is that as a RL pilot with some 900 hours standing on small civil types, the AH planes behave more as I would have expected than the WB ones. (WB never even modelled constant speed variable pitch props, and AH has it only partly correct)

SOB - Spending an evening getting 27 kills and never being pinged is flying like a timid little girl?  You mean I should be getting better results?  I was only flying the P51 at all because it was a squad event. I hated the dweebery. And the point came when I asked my CO if I could change to the F4U instead. Trouncing an already beaten enemy, who was down to one base, is not my style. And neither is being trounced in the same way. That's why I left WB.

And of course I'm a dweeb!  Read the title again

[SOB]

What does getting 27 kills in the P51 have to do with mixing it up?  If you're engaged in a furball in your silver beast you will have a lot of fun, and you will NOT get 27 kills.  If you hang over the furball, diving in and out of it, you will be safe, you may get a lot of kills, you may even be flying smart, but you will also be flying like a timid little girl.  Like I said, mix it up and be willing to expose some of the plane's weaknesses, and you'll find where the fun is.  It's the pilot, not the plane.


SOB

PS...for anyone who enjoys the BnZ, realistic, minimal risk game, more power to ya.  It's the smart way to fly for someone who wants to get kills and be able to fly back to base.  It just isn't necessarily for me.

[Steven]

Beet1e,

This is an AH discussion board, not a WB board.  You keep bringing up the WB game to define or categorize aircraft in Aces High.  This doesn't quite seem to make sense to me.  27 kills in 1 mission?  Yeah, sounds like the WB P-51 is/was a dweeb plane much more than the version we have here at Aces High.  I took a peek at your score for February and you are doing very well here so I think the combination of your skill level and a good plane will make you a very deadly adversary at the top end of the percentile.  

I think this whole thread started because you were tired of being "bounced" basically.  But that is historically accurate anyway.  Supposedly, most pilots shot down never saw what hit them.  Most often tactics spoke of having the greater altitude or superior position and to even dive out of the sun if possible.  And as the war progressed, planes got faster and faster and not more maneuverable generally.  So really, I'm sorry you aren't enjoying being bounced by heavy-E 109s (I hate it too but would never ask for it to stop), but you need to adapt and accept that it's going to happen and be sure to keep your SA in a dogfight and learn when and how to bug out of the fight or just die like a man.   Heh heh, I've learned how to die like a man from lots of experience!  I had a few 1v1s interrupted last night by a bouncer.  Eh, it's how it works.

[beet1e]

SOB – you pay your $14.95 just like me and everyone else, so you’re entitled to your point of view. However, I would not be one for furballing in a P51, or furballing at all. But neither am I one of those scorepotatos who rides on the coat tails of his hardworking team mates. My favourite scenario is/was jabo/ground attack. I don’t just want to rack up scores, but neither do I want to die the death of 1,000 cuts. Best WB ToD was 428 kills/175 deaths, always remembering that jabo is high risk, and being acked was an occupational hazard, even in WB where the acks were less deadly than those of AH.

Steven – I have not been in AH long enough to draw upon my experience there to say what I want to say. Admittedly, I have been drawing on my WB experience, as I had almost 4 years there. I was only trying to make the point that different sims have different flight models, and that citing Real World flight theory as MANDOBLE has done might have limited value when applied to a sim, which is only as good as the programmers that wrote it. That said, I think the AH programmers are fantastic! But they cannot be expected to get every single detail correct, and I don’t think even they would claim that they had. Thank you for your kind words about my score; actually, I can do much better than that, but being so new to AH I’m having to experiment a great deal. But I am no ace, possibly because I find it difficult to judge speeds/angles etc. by viewing small dots on a computer screen. Still, at least the dots in AH are of a reasonable size and we have the zoom feature. I don’t mind being bounced by a high E 109, but decided that the P51D might be a better lone wolf choice than some of the slower or less manoeuvrable planes for when I run into multiple cons.

[SOB]

Yup, ya lost me.  I thought we were talking about why the P51 was or wasn't a super easy plane to fly.  I couldn't care less how you spend your time, just pointing out that it all depends on how you fly it.


SOB

PS...There's nothing I love more than JABO.