Aircraft ruggedness not a factor

[eddiek]

Just a quick note:

Allied planes, most notably the P38, F4U, and P47, were pretty well known for their ability to take a lot of punishment, both from enemy fire and maneuvering, and still get the pilot home.  This seems to be missing, IMHO, in the sim.
Case in point:
Yesterday, I found myself once again outnumbered in a minor furrball, me and 3 cons.  Started co-alt, assumed co-E, in my Jug, against 2 Spits and a 190.
Kept IAS above 300 most of the time, NEVER below 270.  Saw the first Spit merge co-alt with me, with about 1K lateral separation off my starboard wing as we came at one another.  Okay.  He went in to what looked to be high yoyo or maybe Immelman, I entered shallow climb to keep speed up.  This guy came around after his climbing manuever, still co-alt with me (my IAS was still at 300)and then proceeded to close on me, after this maneuver......???
Choosing discretion over valor, I chose to extend.  What does a Jug do well, supposedly better than any other aircraft?
DIVE!
So I did.....started pulling away real fast from the 190 and the other Spit, saw the IAS and TAS reading >500, 550 TAS, the Spit still closed (seems like the Spit9 would have been compressed by now, or have exceeded speeds the plane could take) on my 6, then, thinking "This Jug is built tougher than the Spit, I'll go vertical and make him auger, or snap a wing".....wrong.  A good steady pull on the stick and up I went, only to look back and see the Spit coming up inside my loop and firing.  
Okay, so I was wrong.....won't happen again, but it seems that the P51, a definite high speed performer, loses it's wings at much lower speeds, yet the Spit9, nowhere near as fast, keeps right on flying at speeds far above where it should have been able to stay together.
Probably just a quirk in the programing that occurred at that particular moment, but I wanted to know if anyone else has seen things like that happening.


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<===<The ASSASSINS>===>
           assassins@aceshighcs.com            

[This message has been edited by eddiek (edited 08-11-2000).]

[This message has been edited by eddiek (edited 08-11-2000).]

[eddiek]

Before anyone gets on the "he's whining" bandwagon, let me say that I just posted this to see if anyone else has had something similiar happen to them.  I ain't whining, just curious is all.

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<===<The ASSASSINS>===>
          assassins@aceshighcs.com          

[This message has been edited by eddiek (edited 08-11-2000).]

[Karnak]

You seem to have some misconceptions about the Spitfire that hurt you in that fight.

A)  Spitfires suffered airelon stiffness, not compression.  This means that they had trouble rolling but their elevators still worked fine.

B)  Spitfires where not slow divers.  In fact the highest diving speed ever attained by a WWII aircraft was by a MkXIX recon Spitfire that reached .92 mach before recovering control of the aircraft.  The P-47 will out accelerate a Spitfire in a dive, but if the Spitfire has the speed advantage to start with that might not be enough depending on how much altitude you have available.

C)  Spitfires were not known to shed wings.  The P-47's wings were much stronger, but the fighter was also much heavier.  A Spitfire MkIX weighs half of what a P-47D-30 weighs and thus in a 5 g pull up its wings are supporting 40,000lbs instead of 80,000lbs.

Hope this helps explain what happened.

EDIT:  I began posting this before you asked for similar experiences.

Sisu
-Karnak

[This message has been edited by Karnak (edited 08-11-2000).]

[StSanta]

Hm, well, I've managed to snap the wings off mt 109G10 about three times.

And, due to compression and my style of flying, I pull *hard* at *high* speeds when I get a wee bit too close to the ground  

Have had A5's rip their wings, and some other planes too  .



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StSanta
JG54 "Grünherz"
"If you died a stones throw from your wingie; you did no wrong". - Hangtime

[miko2d]

 As a logical conclusion from Karnak's post, in that situation you should have used your superior roll rate to break or split-S and hope that he would try to follow you and auger in or lose you.

 P47 were known to frequently outmaneuver 109s - the low stick forces and much wider cockpit (leverage) allowed the pilot to get more out of his plane.

miko--

[Fluf]

I echo the comment that the spit wings could handle very high speeds. They were light on the elevator too. The MkVIII had the wingtips clipped to shorten the ailerons to give improved roll handling (at least that's what I read) at higher speeds - the major weakness of spits in RL and in AH. Not many MKVIIIs were built though. This feature was retained in the post-war late versions of the spitfire though.

Then there is the real-life incident in which a p47 pilot defeated a spit pilot in a mock dogfight by using his superior rolling ability. This was mentioned in "The Ace Factor", I believe.  

I pulled the wings off p51s so often that I stopped flying them.  I THINK that the problem in my case is that the plane is so quiet and smooth at high speed that I have no sense of how fast I'm going. Coupled with a jstick sensitivity that isn't beveled enough, and concentrating on a bounce, I jerk the stick slightly to adjust and twitch off the wings. It takes the slightest of movements to do this. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the frame strength isn't modeled properly - just my ability to instantaneously overload the wings.  A real pilot would be fighting a very stiff stick and not have the strength to rip the wings so easily. This is something I can fix myself by tuning my jstick sensitivity curves. That, or buy a feedback stick, which has no interest for me.

I've ripped 190A5s and p47s too.
Fluf

[wolf37]

hi all:

to start with i think everybody should reread eddiek's post, he is not asking what the planes could do in WWII for real, what he is asking is, has anybody else seen a spit do what he saw.

now for my answer edddiek, no, i have found that when flying the spit, either one they have in here. i can be flying level, no real speed, see a con below me, roll into a dive, and have no wings before starting the dive. i used to fly the spit all the time and pretty much nothing else. but since 1.03 came out it seems the wings break off if you walk passed them and cause a breeze, well ok, not quite that easy, but they seem to snap way to fast now. so when you say you where in a hard dive an d a soit stayed with you and then followed you in a climb, then yes i would say there was something wrong there. but dont ask me what for i have no idea.



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wolf37
C.O.
THUNDER BIRDS

[Rickenbacker]

Fluf:

I've never ripped the wings off a P-47, but I've done so a number of times in the P-51. i think you're right about the high speed characteristics, it's just so easy to fly fast in the Pony that you don't notice, pull 9 or so G's and break the wings off. After getting a new joystick, and keeping an eye on the G meter during pullout, I don't break wings anymore  .

Rickenbacker

[bloom25]

I do know this.  Tonight I dove on a 205 from 15k above it and managed to shoot it down without turning.  (I.E. He didn't see me.)  To get back up on the perch I began a zoom starting at 500+ mph.  Next thing I knew a spit (that was lower than me) not only managed to turn into me, but also caught me in a zoom and managed to down me.  I filmed it, but have yet to watch it.  It seems to me that there was NO WAY this spit had that much E.  Funny thing was about 4 other people on my team reported this same guy performing "impossible" manuvers....

I'll have to look at the film before I cry wolf.



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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[Weave]

Hehe, they (spits) do seem to have some amazing acceleration at times. Not when I'm driving them of course. Have trouble out running a gnat.
Was in a 400mph (109 G-10) dive on a nik last night, saw a spit 2.5d behind and lower than me so I ignored him. Big mistake! In about 20 second he blew my tail off. Hmmmm.

...Weave

[eddiek]

These posts are getting interesting now.
If you will note in my original post, I said that the Spit and I merged co-alt, and that he did either a hi yoyo or an Immelman, I continued forward to keep my speed, and entered a very shallow high speed climb to try and extend some, and the guy ended up after his maneuver still co-alt and now GAINING on me.....hhhhmmm.  Musta been that special model Spit with the experimental JATO packs..............
Hey, still ain't whining, just wanted to see if anyone else was seeing the same type stuff, and I guess a few are, but not most.
Like I said, probably just an anomaly in the programming, which creeps up from time to time.


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<===<The ASSASSINS>===>
           assassins@aceshighcs.com            

[This message has been edited by eddiek (edited 08-12-2000).]

[This message has been edited by eddiek (edited 08-12-2000).]

[StSanta]

bloom and others:

Yep, the fantasy e retention of the Spitfire is quite legendary. Today, I went HO with a spitfire who'd just finished a climb and was getting back at me, we merged, after I had dived for some speed, I faked the HO, he bit, went into a slow zoom. Spit *really* crank the levators and snap up into a 90 degree climb, my 6. D340. I am slowly extending, but not until he get my elevator and rudder.

I learned a lesson there  

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StSanta
JG54 "Grünherz"
"If you died a stones throw from your wingie; you did no wrong". - Hangtime

[Nashwan]

It's a well known fact that the Spitfire is overmodelled in every flight sim ever produced.
Strange, isn't it?

[Tac]

Tell me about it. I've had spits zoom up after my 400 mph (going UP after the dive on the spit) AFTER they do HARD turns to avoid my dive. That, imho, is pure bull, not even an f16 can do that.

If the British really had a plane like that, we would all be speaking with funny accents and hailing the Queen. Fricken little green men and their UFO's    

[Baddawg]

Why do  people always question the flight modeling and never themselves?
99.999...._% of the time I find that
it is a mistake in perception of energy states. Either my own or of my opponents.

No big mystery or conspiracy.
Look at the top pilots in this game and rarely will you see them mention these type of concerns because it is a part of the learning process.

Top pilots seem to be very "in tune" with their  energy state and their interpretation of  other the planes energy state is usually correct.

The other day I saw a  player complain that his G10 was outclimbed by a P-47.
Well I know it cant, you know the Jug cant,out climb a G10.
So how did this anomaly happen?
Simple the pilot of the G10 was in error of energy states .

As for wing loss sometimes it is misconfigured joysticks .
Good  pilots are good for a reason  they can fly on the  razors edge. Be it either in stall ,compression  or structural stress.




[This message has been edited by Baddawg (edited 08-12-2000).]