Ok, remember I'm just "shooting the s**t" here, not griping about the game. The game is fine and it's not my call anyhow
I lied when I said I wasn't going to talk about G tolerances anymore, 'cause this discussion seems general enough. Anyhow...
My inflight G tolerance is approximately 1-2 G's greater than my centrifuge tolerance. The centrifuge induces so much disorientation and stress on the victim that it's difficult to really get a true measure of G tolerance without multiple 'fuge rides to desensitize the victim. People can get accustomed to the centrifuge induced disorientation, but since I only have had 2 'fuge sessions, they both left me very tired and feeling ill even though the G loads were less than I experienced during actual flights.
During actual flight the pilot tends to have the added advantage of an already elevated pulse, elevated blood pressure, and often a healthy shot of adrenaline working for him. In the "heat of battle" doing low altitude threat reactions, it's common to pull in excess of 6 G's over and over for several minutes without immediately feeling fatigued or suffering from greyout. After the sortie is a different matter of course.
One of the most tiring types of sorties we did in the F-15E was a dedicated trip to the bombing range. A typical "pop" pattern calls for nearly continuous turns at around 5 G's because the attack geometry calls for 4 to 5 G turns. We could carry 18 practice bombs, and we would often split the attacks evenly between the pilots and WSO's. Half the bombs involved precision radar bombing and relatively low G manuvers (generally no more than 4 G's), and the rest were more aggressive visual bombing attacks done entirely by the pilot. The net result is up to an entire hour of fairly aggressive manuvering on the deck because you just HAVE to throw in some simulated threat reactions in there for practice, especially if the range has those cool little styrofoam smoke-trail rockets and sparkly fireworks to shoot at you
Again, it's a matter of getting used to them. Although the F-15E wasn't exactly a G monster at medium to high altitudes, my tolerance was high enough that after my upgrade training, I never really suffered significantly degraded performance due to G force induced fatigue even during dedicated BFM sorties.
WWII pilots didn't have the benefit of the training of course, and if I recall correctly, the only decent sized group of guys with G-suits were late war 'stang drivers.
The trick to sustaining high G's or multiple high G loads is to develop an appropriate level of effort that is just barely required to prevent greyout. An unnecessarily hard anti-G strain will tire the pilot out sooner. The more experience the pilot gets, the better he is able to only put the required amount of effort into the strain. That's the biggest improvement in anti-G equipment we've seen, endurance instead of just tolerance of increased G loads.
The WWII equivalent of course is excessive smoking, drinking, and the resulting high resting blood pressure. You guys didn't think fighter pilots partied like that just because it's fun eh? It's all about increasing combat effectiveness. Yea, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Added one more comment - 2 guys in an F-15E aborted a blown bombing pass and pulled about 13 G's in the dive recovery. Neither the pilot or WSO blacked out, but both pulled most of the muscles in their upper backs pretty bad. The plane was essentially undamaged except for some exhaust vent grills, and it flew a few days later after an extremely thorough inspection teardown. The aircraft is only rated to 9 G's and the bomb dispensers it was carrying were rated to about 7 G's, but the actual aircraft limits have (AFAIK) never really been tested. Just some trivia for you guys
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eagl <squealing Pigs> BYA
Oink Oink To War!!!
[This message has been edited by eagl (edited 03-28-2000).]
