Chuck Yeager on the Fw190D

[bigUC]

All american planes are inferior.  They have lower model numbers' and is therefore lower on the development scale than german aircraft.  

I'd like to add something serious too:  According to Brown, they had no MW50 at Farnbourough for their Ta-152.  I suspect that most LW aircraft flown after WWII was tested without  this vital ingredient.  Might as well fly spits and runstangs on kerosene.

[Sixpence]

There are tests, there are stats, then there are the facts. The fact is the aircraft that is best is the one that helps win the war on the ground the best. One on one dogfights at 20k doesn't win a war.

The russians realized this more than anyone and their aircraft reflected their thinking. The russians had the best planes, imo. Although spitfires and mossies play a close second.

[GRUNHERZ]

"One on one dogfights at 20k doesn't win a war."

Tell that to the bomber escorts, in fact imagine how much use a low alt La7 would be in intercepting 360mph 30K B29s blasting ural factories with nukes being escorted by 35k 487mph P51H and 470mph  P47N if the USA turned on the communist scum after finishing of the nazis and Japan in 1945.

[GScholz]

Germany lost the war at 20-30K feet. Her eastern-front armies would have had a good chance of winning if her indusries weren't turned into rubbel by the USAAF/RAF.

[MiloMorai]

Originally posted by GScholz
Germany lost the war at 20-30K feet. Her eastern-front armies would have had a good chance of winning if her indusries weren't turned into rubbel by the USAAF/RAF.

Fuel and transportation network destruction were bigger reasons. German production increased when Speer(?) was put in charge but that production could not get to where it was needed.

[Oldman731]

Originally posted by MiloMorai
Fuel and transportation network destruction were bigger reasons. German production increased when Speer(?) was put in charge but that production could not get to where it was needed.

True.  But we never could have paralyzed transportation, virtually eliminated the fuel, or even bombed the front-line troops, if we hadn't first won the dogfights at 20-30 thousand feet.

- oldman

[Guppy]

Originally posted by F4UDOA I have AFDU data on the P-47D5 and P-38F that shows very similar maneuverablity at 20K as well as many other reports that would be scoffed at on these boards.

It doesn't seem out of the question to me. Most P-38Fs didn't have the combat flap setting, and the two aircraft have fairly similar power and wing loading. (Move up to the P-38J, and the power loading numbers change a bit...)

To take a second viewpoint, the P-51B's tactical trial report included comparisons with the P-47D-10 and P-38J-5. The report concludes that the P-51B turns better than either of the others (no mention of whether flaps were used on the P-38J), but is much, much more emphatic about the P-51's superiority over the P-47.

Originally posted by F4UDOA The problem with that theory is that Air cooled engines used open cowl flaps to climb but not in level flight. This would make their acceleration better than the climb relaitvely because of reduced drag in level flight. The effect would be larger on some A/C than others.

This seems like a reasonable point to me, but with one important caveat: it applies only at low speeds. Erik Shilling (3rd Squadron AVG) flew both the P-40 and P-47, and stated that cowl flaps on both aircraft could be safely closed when climb speed was increased to 220-230 mph.

[F4UDOA]

Guppy,

Do you have the reports you mentioned?

If you do I would luv to trade with ya, please, please, please:D

BTW, are saying that the P-38F didn't have flowlers or didn't have a designated maneuver flap setting??

Anyway the comment about closing cowl flaps on the P-47 and P-40 would make sense since they would have reached a speed where air flow was suppicient for cooling at approx. 230MPH. But below that it would have been impossible. In fact the P-47 had a habit of overheating during climb and probably caused it to open the flaps even further and hurting climb even more.

If you point is that liquid cooled engines suffured as much because of this as air cooled I disagree. Just take a look at the size of the cowl flaps on aircooled engine a/c. On the F4U it increased buffeting severley if left open near stall.

I can't even tell you what the radiator flaps look like on most liquid cooled AC.

[F4UDOA]

Guppy,

I just reread your post. I think you were agreeing with me. Sorry about the rant.

BTW, and I agree about it applying more to low speeds.

However the climb charts that we all have for various A/C are all done at low speed only. We have no way of knowing what the high speed climb rates really were.

The high speed climbs we use in AH are really based off of the climb charts for low speed and then spread out over the speed range. Do you know what I mean??

So basically our high speed climb really isn't any more accurate because the corresponding climb data isn't avaible.

What I would like to see HTC do is just do a acceleration equation seperate from the climb charts.

I think this would give much more historically accurate results (or at least more inline with the AFDU data that I trust).

[Guppy]

Sorry, I don't have the actual tactical trial report; the excerpts were quoted in another document. I can pass you a PDF copy of that one if you like; it contains four paragraphs of interest, one each from the P-38G and P-47C tactical trials and two from the P-51B (plus a few other interesting quotes, such as a short commentary on the Allison Mustang vs. the 109 and 190).

As regards the combat flap setting, it was introduced only in the final P-38F variant, the P-38F-15.

Erik Shilling estimated that the P-40 would have needed about 150-200 hp more to fully compensate for the cowl flap drag. He thought the P-47 would need 300 extra hp to make up for its cowl flap drag. (I don't know how he arrived at those estimates.)

[joeblogs]

Originally posted by Sixpence
...The russians realized this more than anyone and their aircraft reflected their thinking. The russians had the best planes, imo. Although spitfires and mossies play a close second.

The Russians developed a fine ground attack plane and two fighter variants (Yak 9 and La 7) that were fine planes.  But except for the Il2, by the time they could be manufactured in numbers The U.S. and British had even better equipment.  

By the time these marks appeared in numbers on the front, the Germans had already lost the air war, thanks primarily to the sacrifice of thousands of Russian pilots flying inferior equipment and with inadequate training.

-Blogs

[F4UDOA]

Guppy,

If you could send that it would be great!!

markw4@comcast.net

Anything you need or are looking for let me know.

Do you want the P-38F afdu??

[Widewing]

This is one aspect of this game that is grossly under-modeled, Systems management.

In AH you manage fuel and ammo, that's it.

However, it was considerably more complicated to operate a WWII era aircraft, much less fight effectively in it.

Setting and adjusting cowl flaps, radiator and oil-cooler flaps, mixture settings and a myriad of other factors are ignored. I understand why, but that doesn't mean I fully agree.

You couldn't go roaring around forever at full throttle in your La-7 without overheating the engine. After about 5 minutes you'd see your cylinder head temps up near the red zone, with oil temp chasing close behind. Within 15 minutes you would be flying an overweight glider. This is greatly exacerbated by flying at low altitude where you don't have the benefit of low ambient air temp.

When the P-38J arrived in the ETO, it was discovered that it was nearly impossible to keep the engines at optimum operating temperature above 25,000 feet. Radiator, intercooler, and oil cooler doors were closed and STILL the engines ran too cool. Eventually, sheet aluminum was used to blank off a portion of the cores to retain heat in the engines. That is the effect of -50 degree C temperatures. Lockheed had engineered the various coolers and radiators for sub-tropical operations with most operations conducted at low to medium altitudes (10 to 20k), as most P-38s were being deployed to the SWPA and over-heating problems were encountered with earlier models in that hot, damp environment. Under temp engines fail just about as easy as over temp'd engines do.

My experience with radial aircraft engines (over 2,300 hours behind R-2800s and R-1820s) tells me that the game is vastly over-simplified. Maybe we'll have a more realistic management model in AH2. If you guys think it's tough to fly and survive now, imagine the difficulty if you had an real world cockpit workload to deal with.

My regards,

Widewing