Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Gaston on August 03, 2022, 06:30:01 AM
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I got into this argument on another site, and thought there was enough new material in this one post, particularly on Japanese aircrafts, to be worth re-posting here:
I have been researching the comparative maneuverability of WWII fighter aircrafts for 27 years now, and this lead to a few "discoveries" that are so counter-intuitive, they are genuinely shocking. I think the selection offered in the post below is particularly eye-opening. Here goes:
32 victory ace Kyosti Karhila:
"I learned to fly with the "Cannon-Mersu" (MT-461). I found that when fighter pilots got in a battle, they usually applied full power and then began to turn. In the same situation I used to decrease power, and with lower speed was able to turn equally well."
" When the enemy decreased power, I used to throttle back even more. In a high speed the turning radius is wider, using less speed I was able to out-turn him having a shorter turning radius. Then you got the deflection. 250km/h seemed to be the optimal speed. (160 mph)"
- Kyösti Karhila
Let that just sink in: 160 mph was "optimal" in 1944...
Or this interesting example (P-51B vs Me-109G-6 in May 1944):
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/mustang/combat-reports/339-hanseman-24may44.jpg
"The second Me-109 was maneuvering to get on my tail, and a dogfight developed at 500 ft. (after climbing from 150 ft. following a slow gaining attack on a landing Me-109...) At first he began to turn inside me. Then he stopped cutting me off as I cut throttle, dropped 20 degrees of flaps and increased prop pitch. Everytime I got to the edge of the [German] airdrome they opened fire with light AA guns. [Meaning was forced to turn multiple consecutive 360s continuously, even when going towards the enemy ground fire] Gradually I worked the Me-109G away from the field, and commenced to turn inside of him as I reduced throttle settings."
A typical example from 1945:
1945 FW-190A-8 ace commenting on a painting of his aircraft wings level: "Our wings were never level in combat. We turned continuously to one side. Outnumbered as we were by then (1945), it was the only way to survive."
I would wager that this "continuous turning" was also not far from 160 mph... So maintaining speeds not far above 160 mph "was the only way to survive." Because curving constantly easily ruins a hit and run attack, in a way that acts like a "protection" from the attackers not sharing the circle.
But you won't hear such practical advice from historians.
A few other examples:
-Squadron Leader Alan Deere, (Osprey Spit MkV aces 1941-45, Ch. 3, p. 2): "Never had I seen the Hun stay and fight it out as these Focke-Wulf pilots were doing... In Me-109s the Hun tactic had always followed the same pattern- a quick pass and away, sound tactics against Spitfires and their superior turning circle. Not so these 190 pilots: They were full of confidence... We lost 8 to their one that day..."
Except the "Superior turning circle", at least at low speeds, was more a fictional creation in the minds of Supermarine designers and engineers. SCIENCE you know... Below is a quote by top French ace Pierre Clostermann, who was, by the way, the RAF's mission record holder at 432, an 18 kill ace, as well as being a Caltech trained engineer, his technical knowledge of German aircrafts being so widely recognized he gave technical conference about them to fellow RAF pilots, while having 10 FW-190A kills himself:
https://youtu.be/c2zdA9TcIYo
(At 12:44)
Translation: "So there are legends on the Spitfire... Aahhh the legends... Legends are hard to kill... One of those legends is that the Spitfire turned better than the Messerschmitt 109, or the FW-190. Well that is a good joke... In fact all those who found themselves with a 109 turning inside them, at low speeds, well those in general did not come back to complain about the legend... Why? Above 280 to 300 knots, the Spitfire turned better than the Me-109. But, first and foremost, in a turning battle, the speed goes down and down and down and down, and at one point there comes a time, when the speed has gone down below 200 knots, that the Me-109 turns inside the Spitfire."
The above quote underlines, in an indirect way, that low-speed turn fighting is what really mattered... The same pattern is visible throughout the War. Surprisingly few combat accounts fit the pattern of a hit and run attack, except for a significant proportion by the Spitfire, which was uniquely suited to hit and run, being a moderately poor turn fighter (it still had a fair rate of turn, but with a larger minimum radius at a higher speed, and, worst of all, it featured no partial flap extension in combat, since the flaps were only "full up" or "full down", a huge -and absurd- handicap. That being said, the "blow up" automatic flaps of the P-47, F6F and F4F were similar, in that the pilot had no partial deployment control (though they could be slid back slightly, increasing the wing area, on both Grummans). The Spitfire did have a kind of "crutch" to help it dogfight: It could "stall" itself with efficient 3 axis control, and briefly point its nose "across the circle" towards a smaller radius, but only briefly: This is described by many Spitfire pilots).
In "Le Fana de l'Aviation" #496 p. 40: (This is in a Russian use context, so far away from the usual British deference to non-combat test pilots)
Première citation : " Dans la journée du 29 avril, le régiment effectua 28 sorties pour escorter des bombardiers et des avions d'attaque au sol et 23 en protection de troupes, avec quatre combats aériens. Les premiers jours furent marqués par des échecs dus à une tactique de combat périmée dans le plan horizontal, alors que le Spitfire était particulièrement adapté au combat dans le plan vertical."
[Abbreviated translation: "The Spitfire failed in horizontal fighting, but was particularly adapted to vertical fighting."]
FW-190D-9 pilot Eric Brunotte, when asked about MW-50, said: "We never used it. Only maybe to go towards something or get away. There was a notch to go past and it engaged, but in combat we pulled back even from that."
No great interest in the significant extra speed, apparently...
By late 1944, all that MW-50 plumbing was being taken out of the majority of German fighters. It seemed almost as if German pilots liked fighters that went slower... The reality is that the extra speed was not very useful, particularly in a defensive context where the enemy typically started higher.
Hartmann himself, in late 1944, was flying a G-14 that had its MW-50 removed, even though he is the only pilot I ever found quoted as liking MW-50... He was a dedicated "hit and runner", so that could explain his own predilection for speed.
You might wonder, then, why Japanese aircrafts did not dominate, since they were famous for using turn fighting? The key problem I think was their mismatched and weak firepower, particularly on the Ki-43 Oscar. (Which did not prevent the Ki-43 from having more kills than all the other Japanese Army fighters combined...)
And Japanese Army front line officers often much preferred the Ki-43 to the Ki-84, and not for reliability reasons: Osprey "Ki-43 aces of WWII" p.50: Sgt. Toshimi Ikezawa, Ki-43 ace:
"I heard Major Eto had refused delivery of the Ki-84. They could not avoid an attack if it came from above, because of the Ki-84's poor rate of turn. I think we owe our survival to the Ki-43, as the Ki-84 would have left you in a tight spot if attacked from above... Skilled Spitfire [Mk VIII] pilots would pull out of their dives when they realized we had seen them. New [Spitfire] pilots would continue to dive straight down on us, leaving them vulnerable in a turning fight..."
Perhaps you begin to see just how important was slow-speed turn fighting in WWII, compared to what historians usually make of it?: Experienced pilots would pull out of their dives (!), when they realized they could not catch the target unaware... Quite extraordinary.
And the Ki-43 did not have that poor an air-to-air kill-loss ratio versus Allied aircrafts, if only going by the large number of aces it had. Even the F4U was demonstrated to have achieved no better than a 1:1 air to air kill ratio for the entire first year of its introduction (Osprey Duel #119, F4U vs A6M, p.73-75, "Statistics and Analysis")... There was not much of a lopsided air-to-air kill ratio in many cases: It was merely attrition (mostly against ground targets) throughout.
A story I read of the Ki-43 had a single one pitted against 16 P-38s for half an hour: It just kept making circles at slow speed, loafing at reduced power with the canopy open, while 16 P-38s tried hit and run attacks for 30 minutes, before running out of both ammo and fuel, leaving behind the Ki-43 unharmed. It was a real story in a serious history magazine, narrated by a US pilot who was actually there, but unfortunately too far back to now be sourced precisely... By itself, it pretty much says it all.
You might then wonder; why did the Zero fare so poorly (aside its mismatched armament, apparently so hard to get to converge it is claimed, by Saburo Sakai, that most of its kills were achieved from the nose 7.7 mms guns alone)? The reason it did poorly is likely very different: Turn fighting was not an integral part of Imperial Japanese Navy doctrine.
If you read actual detailed accounts of the Zero in combat, and not just vague hearsay, you will find it was used almost exclusively in hit and run tactics. This sounds quite astonishing, but it is apparently confirmed (the discovery is based on scouring original Allied intelligence archives). It is an entirely new perspective, opened recently by Pacific War historians, particularly the one being interviewed in the video below, and in my opinion it has completely turned on its head our entire understanding of the Japanese Zero:
https://youtu.be/ApOfbxpL4Dg
57:55: Useful intro to the discovery.
At 59:07 "Intelligence reports assumed that these tactics indicated the Zero lacked maneuverability."
59:22 "Judging from their apparently long fuselage, these planes do not have a small turning circle, and are not very maneuverable."
59:33 "The Chinese report in question noted the reluctance of the Japanese Navy pilots to dogfight."
1:00:05 "Chinese pilots report that the Japanese will not engage in a turning duel."
1:01:32 "Accounts of Japanese hit and run tactics against the Allies are so numerous, we'd be here for days..."
And, finally, my favourite of all of the quotes in this video, from a US Navy pilot on September 27, 1942:
1:01:45 "Japanese Zero pilots have generally poor fighter tactics. Zeroes could not be shaken by us if they would chop their throttles and sit on our tails."
Hit and run ("Chung-Ching" method), remained Japanese Navy doctrine for the entire War, not to mention that the Zero got its wingtips shortened in late 1942, which likely made its hit and run tactics even more prominent. Later models were less turn-fighting capable than the early full-span A6M2/3s, and were in fact nearly matched by the F6F, and probably out-turned by the FM-2.
But if you still want to believe speed, and hit and run, were the kings of the WWII prop era, well...
G.
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P.S. And what about the P-47? At least for the Razorback version, that is probably the funniest question of them all. In the nearly 1000 8th Air Force combat reports I have read on the Mike Williams "WWII Aircraft Performance" site, the P-47D Razorback emerges as literally the most turn-fighting obsessed aircraft of WWII... It virtually does nothing else (not surprising, given it climbed so poorly, even with the paddle-blade prop), and it does seem to out-turn the Me-109G to the left by quite a margin, even at low altitudes. I think the real margin was actually much smaller, and maybe non-existent, if the Me-109G pilot knew enough to reduce the throttle (as Kyosti Karhila describes doing above). Remember, however, that reducing the throttle to turn better in combat was NOT part of the known physics of these things (it still isn't), and so it was not part of the training of fighter pilots. They were on their own to figure that one out. (I think the needle-tip prop of the P-47 Razorback might have had the same effect as down-throttling, because this slow-speed turn advantage -to the left- seems to disappear on the Bubbletop versions.)
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Interesting. This Karhila's case was familiar for me and I have read Saburo Sakai's "Samurai', where he describes his flights and fights.
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Hi Gaston,
Welcome back.
You can study pilot accounts to learn what pilots believed.
You can study aerodynamics to learn how aircraft turn.
If you are over 'corner speed' you turn better when you slow down. It's not a mystery.
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Oh my gosh, not this guy again...... :noid
Gaston, there's a saying on the internet for people like you- go touch some grass. If you clearly have nothing better to do than to type up page upon page of pointless conjecture on game forums, then I don't even know anymore.
Have fun losing all your energy in a dogfight. :banana:
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Is there a point to all this?
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Is there a point to all this?
I guess it makes him less bored, he clearly has nothing else to do.
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Is there a point to all this?
Yes,a P51 turning at 160km will out turn a P51 at 320km…..now I didn’t mention the direction of turn cause well…. :uhoh
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Another post I thought was worth sharing:
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[q="Stiglr"]In the prop era, a "high speed dogfight" is a contradiction in terms.
And, when you do a different kind of research, you find that a very goodly percentage of kills came unseen by the victims. A VERY low chance that any of these kills were scored by guys trying to maintain corner velocity... no, they came from "boom and zoomers" and high speed passes from the clouds or out of the sun.
And finally in the European theatre, where the Germans had to defend against huge bomber boxes, speed was a HUGE weapon for them. You could not crawl up the back of a big formation of B-17s and survive. You HAD to make fast, slashing gun passes and/or head-on passes to try to thin the herd. You didn't try to "dogfight" bombers.[/q]
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Maybe so, but the bombers still crawled at 170 mph for the B-17G, and the B-24 at 180-190 mph... The best approach was found to be a curving attack from the side, more so than high speed frontal attacks. Again, gun time on target was critical, so the "curve of pursuit" proved the best. My mother observed a B-17G being shot down at very low altitude over Ukraine (then Poland) in the Summer of 1944 (one of the shuttle raids participants that was headed for Russia), and it was being attacked from the sides, clearly in the "curve of pursuit" mode.
As to the idea that the majority of victims never saw the attacker coming (in broad daylight), this largely emanates from a quote by Eric Hartmann who, from what I could gather, studiously avoided furballs whenever possible, and basically stalked damaged stragglers going home on their own, out of formation. This is how he could boast never to have lost a wingman. Like many high scoring aces (but not all), the point of the game appeared similar to those who loaf near the net in hockey, and happen to be just there to chuck it in...
He did say he was not paid "to play" and turn-fight with the opposition, but there is a sense that a lot of his kills were done by waiting for the hard work to be done by less well-known pilots, then swooping in on smoking stragglers.
The fact he was shot down 17 times, many, if not most of them from being hit by the debris of his targets, does not speak well to the ease of doing fatal kills on a fast-growing target... Again, the lack of "gun time" is very evident when the speeds are mismatching.
From the thousands of combat reports I have read, only a small minority were fighter targets caught unaware... To take Pierre Clostermann and his "Le Grand Cirque" as an example, he does mention one or two fighters caught unaware, out of his 18 air to air kills.
In those thousands of 8thAF P-47 and P-51 combat reports, the Me-109G appeared to have better situational awareness than the FW-190A, and seemed to almost never be caught unaware. My theory about that is that the Me-109's seating position was further back from its quite small windscreen, which encouraged looking out the sides rather than the front, and I think this actually caused the pilot to have broader and more frequent lateral sweep views through undistorting flat glass on its sides. On the P-51D and FW-190A, the pilots were scrunched up nearer to taller windscreens, whose sleek backward angle actually created a periscopic effect that gave a better, deeper forward view: This would have encouraged spending more time looking forward, and I think on the Me-109 the less forward pilot position helped to widen the angles and frequency of the lateral views... Another theory of mine is that the Me-109G had lower engine noise/vibration level compared to the FW-190A: The FW-190A was noisier and had more vibrations than most other WWII fighter types (widely commented on by Allied test pilots, but also some Germans), and this must have proved more distracting to the outward vision of new pilots... This is how much better visibility, in theory sitting on the ground, translate to a whole different world in actual practice...
The P-51D was also pretty noisy, given the exhaust pipes high on the nose, and the continuously curved canopy always had reflections, sometimes "exploding" into a canopy-wide myriad of polishing swipe marks, when the sunlight hit just right... Again practice sometimes gave different results than theory.
In many of the cases were the pilot is caught unaware, he was often busy shooting at a another target.
Reading thousands of Western Front combat reports, you quickly realize the "caught unaware" situation is actually fairly uncommon, especially at high altitudes, where the visibility and condensation trails make this very unlikely... I would say 10-20% of kills overall, regardless of sides, would be exceedingly generous.
I do not think Hartmann lied, but you have to be wary of the very peculiar Eastern Front context: Russian Lavochkin fighters had such poor canopy quality that up to the La-5FN (by far the majority of the production), they were always flown canopy open (also to let engine gases out)...
Another incredible aspect of Russian fighters also contributed to the "legend" of "most kills" being "unaware": Most Russian fighters were equipped with radios that were only receivers(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).
The flight leader had a radio that could both transmit and receive, and he ordered around up to 8 or 10 fighters which were all only equipped to receive!!! One of the more astounding facts of WWII... This was the rule in the VVS, not the exception.
As one German pilot described: "It was like fighting an apparatus: You took out the tip of a V formation, and the rest flew about in confusion."
You took out the leader, and all of a sudden the entire wing was without radio.... This amazing doctrine also held true for Soviet tank platoons, and for Soviet tanks this remained true all the way to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991: I spoke to a young Canadian tank crew in 2000 who told me this was still standard Soviet doctrine when he was serving in the early 90s.
So that is how the "caught unaware" legend grew its wings...
G
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When you compare early war aircraft to late war aircraft by combat report you're also comparing early war pilots to late war pilots.
Russian pilots still fly by ground control with limited fuel. Not a high trust society.
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Just learn BFM, ACM AND all the aspects of Situational Awareness SA ......Then Train and train and train and never stop....even in the ma, you are basically practicing for All of the special events! Where all that training you've been doing really counts!
Train like you Fight, Fight like you Train! WORD!
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I guess it makes him less bored, he clearly has nothing else to do.
Just wondering here, but are you not the new young 16 year old that just recently started playing and posting on this forum?
Gaston has not done anything wrong...just overlook his post, if you don't have a legitimate reason to reply 🙄
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This from another forum:
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Phil:
I think the bottom line is that you used whatever advantage the tactical scenario presented. But at the end of the day, the best way to intercept anything is with an altitude advantage. Boom and Zoom until you ran out of energy. The USN in the pacific eschewed dogfighting as doctrine: Use Altitude, Us High Side or Overhead Runs on bombers and if in a dogfight, rely on deflection shooting and mutual beam defense. I would hazard a guess that most fighter to fighter shoot downs in WWII were bounces, or from head on passes, or ambush. At least in the West/Pacific theater. Not sure the Eastern Front, with a lot of lower altitude fighting is indicative of any broad based conclusions. Sure if, your flying against inexperienced pilots then anything goes. At the end of Guadacanal Campaign, "Indian Joe" Bauer I believe was said to say "When You See Zeros dogfight 'em!" as he noticed a decline in the quality of their adversaries.
My 2 cents.
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I saw that Joe Bauer quote too, and he is quoted saying that in the Osprey's "A6M2 Zero vs F4F Wildcat".
The quote is from the very early F4F period... Later on, the Zero pilots probably finally learned to turn, but by then they had shorter wings... Same with Luftwaffe pilots, who by late 1944 turned a lot more, and yet lasted about the same with 10 times greater odds against them.
As to the idea most WWII shootdowns were clean bounce kills, without at least two full circles of continuous turning, the whole point of my post was that this rarely happened, not much more than 10% of the time, if that, and this is after reading thousands of encounter reports.
Even in the cases where kills happened without turning, it often took multiple passes to bring down a fighter, so the idea of an "unaware" target is rather unlikely. This is why hit and run was less efficient than turn fighting, because coming around from a distance, for multiple high speed passes, took more time than "sticking with it" for 3-8 circles, which is roughly 60 to 240 seconds.
I know of at least two continuous turning, always to the same side, turn-fights that lasted 30 minutes (between a P-51D and Me-109G in both cases), inconclusive in both cases, and that works out to around 90-100 consecutive circles...
6-10 circles dogfights (always without reversal) were much more common than Dive and Zoom passes, which were far too easy to break by turning, as the Ki-43 pilot describes.
If you combine fighter targets caught unaware, and slowly crept up to from behind and below, with Dive and Zoom tactics from a higher speed, maybe you would get 20% of cases at best, and creeping up slowly from below would likely outnumber Dive and Zoom.
In fact, repeated (or single) head-on attacks would probably match either.
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(continued)
If I were to guess a breakdown for fighter to fighter WWII encounters, it would go as follows:
1-Hit and run after diving from a higher altitude, multiple or single passes: 10%
2-Creeping up slowly from behind and below: 10%
3-Head-on or high angle opportunity passes, multiple or single: 20%
4-Erratic maneuvers while both are diving after a near-mutual split-S (deep spirals included, often from one circle): 30%
5-Multiple full circles horizontal turn fighting (including moderate spirals): 30%
Hit and run may have had more attempts, but I am counting only the successes. If you add up all the spirals, it could easily be 60% turn fighting, but I wanted a more nuanced picture. With a few deeper spirals mixed in, 40% turn fighting would not be out of line. Much of the turn fighting starts with spirals and then ends up flat, but the majority of that 30% pure turn fighting would actually start fairly flat, as pilots were reluctant to go under the opponent, for obvious reasons.
I wish I had rigorously tallied all the accounts as I read them (a tiresome eye-warering task), but, as you can see, the traditional bounce is a rare opportunity that pilots were unduly salivating over. Its actual effectiveness was largely a myth. Unless you were a Hans Joachim Marseille, a Douglas Bader, or you fired at nearly point-blank range (and then collided with pieces, as Eric Hartman), the guns were simply not good enough, although the actual engines were quite sensitive to direct hits, being under reciprocal stress.
Unless directly hitting the engine, or the wing spar under turning stress, the guns were surprisingly weak, as the airframe had a lot of surface, and especially a lot redundant strength for fighters.
G.
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Good info. Thanks
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Thank you nopoop! Much appreciated.
And on that other site, the discussion continued...:
A participant said:
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There is no possible way that any 109 had "better situational awareness" potential than any FW-190. Have you ever seen the cockpits of those two types? The 109s were incredibly cramped, had ZERO view to 6:00, and to boot had a heavy, square lid that closed over the fuselage, "coffin style". The FW-190s had bubble canopies and a rear/head armor that conformed, roughly to the shape of the man. It didn't protect the pilot as well, but it was infinitely easier to see out of a Wuerger than an Emil, Friedrich, Gustav or Kurfirst.
When you're considering all these combat reports and disputing the contention that many combat fatalities never saw what hit them, did you perhaps consider that these victims .... **never filed combat reports** to report that they got caught unawares? Reports were full of losses attributed to "Tail End Charlie" who was there just a minute ago, before the "furball" ever started.
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The victors did write their reports, so they did see what those who did not come back had done...
The roll rate was really of only secondary importance in combat.
The most fundamental rule of turn fighting in WWII was that, once committed to a turn fight, to never reverse your turn. Lt. Col. Horace C Craig, P-47 ace, observed (Osprey 8th fighter command at war, "Long Reach", P.31): "Once a turn is started, it is of the utmost importance to never reverse your turn. It has been my observation that a great majority of the victories of my unit were made good when the Hun reversed his turn."
I can concur that, in the thousands of combat accounts I read, I would not exactly call it a majority, but it was certainly an inevitable kill once that mistake was made.
At 300 mph a Spitfire Mk XIV (which peaked at 220 mph at 40 degrees per second to the right, 50 to the left) was down to less than 30 degrees per second of roll... Around 20 at 400 mph... The Fw-190A was at 180 degrees at 300, the Me-109G being around 80-90 degrees (similar to a Spitfire Mk V at 220, the peak roll speed on all Spitfires)...
Because of the wing's thinness and flexibility, to avoid roll reversal, the Spitfire's stick was broken in half to hinge laterally, for roll control only, this in order to rob the pilot of the leverage to twist his wings... Did this make the Mark XIV a poor fighter? It didn't help, but it wasn't that big of a deal...
Concerning Richard Bong, he did not die in a P-38 "in the jungle", but while test flying a P-80 in the USA on August 6 1945. It was second ranking P-38 ace Thomas Mcguire who died in the jungle on January 7 1945, by turning at low altitude while carrying two drop tanks. It was claimed (from in-theater sources I consider reliable) that the sortie of 4 aircrafts was not part of any official USAAF request, but was apparently an attempt to increase his personal score to become #1...
As to the FW-190A vs Me-109G cockpit, everything written about this is devoid of any serious first hand knowledge (mostly aging Allied pilots seated in Me-109 cockpits on the ground)... First of all, the Me-109G cockpit was far less restrictive in head movement than that of the normal "flat" FW-190A hood: Because of its triangular cross-section, the flat FW-190A hood literally prevented any broad side to side movement of the head(!). This was massively improved in the "blown" hood of the later 190 models, but the "blown" hood mounted on radial engine versions represented less than 10% of the 20 000 radial FW-190s made. The flat hood was also present on several FW-190D-9, though probably less than 5% of the 1700 built.
Because of this triangular fuselage cross-section (in the up-down direction, but also in plan view front to back), the vision to the sides and down was inferior on the FW-190A to the Me-109G. The FW-190A had a cockpit sill width of 628 mm to the Me-109G's 625 mm at the rear of the windscreen, but what this overlooks is that while the Me-109G's cockpit was of constant width at 625 mm, the FW-190A's cockpit width narrowed about 3 to 4 inches going back, so minus 75 to 100 mm, giving a shoulder width space of about 550 mm at the actual pilot shoulder position. At least 75 mm less than the Me-109G (the 190 canopy had a hinge in the middle to narrow laterally as it slid back).
Furthermore, the FW-190A cockpit had consoles that reduced space around the body and under the elbows. The Me-109G proved it could seat successful combat pilots that were nearly two meters tall (a Fin ace was 1.95 m). Both had seats that were adjustable in height to 3 positions on the ground, and so could take tall pilots, provided (in the FW-190's case) that they were not very broad shouldered or fat... The recently built Fluegwerke 190 full size replicas builders noted that the FW-190's cockpit room was much more restrictive in lateral head, shoulder and arms movements than in the Me-109, which might have affected pilot comfort.
Because of the opaque armor plate, the view to the rear in the FW-190A made little difference, but its canopy did come down to nearly the elbows, compared to the shoulders on the Me-109, so it certainly had a much more "airy" feel because of this... However, the lateral view was not really any better on the 190, especially with the pilot being seated so close to the windscreen, and due to the overall triangular section. To the front, the FW-190A windscreen probably had a better view due to refraction (which most simulators fail to replicate).
It is not true either that the Spitfire had a lot more room to accommodate taller pilots, being quite short on leg room, and, in terms of secondary controls, the ergonomic design of the Spitfire cockpit was a mess, like most Allied aircrafts, while the Me-109's cockpit was excellent from a to z. The FW-190 cockpit could be termed passable, although the lower rows of instruments was hidden from view, and the laid-back seating position was deemed less comfortable than the more upright angle of the Me-109.
This laid back seating position is an especially bad point, in that it was meant to allow high G turn maneuvers, which the FW-190 proved to suck balls at, being an excellent slow speed turn-fighter at around 3 Gs, to the point of being a one-trick pony at this. Russian "Red Fleet" Feb 8, 1943":
"The FW-190A will inevitably offer turning combat at a minimum speed."
Noise and vibrations are also factors of pilot comfort, and affect visibility and pilot attention. Despite this, I still consider that the FW-190A was a superior low altitude air superiority fighter to the Me-109G, but could we please lay to rest the idea the Me-109 had a bad, cramped, low-visibility cockpit?
Most Me-109 pilots, especially the aces, preferred sticking with the 109, after flying the 190. For low altitude combat it was a bad idea, but some insisted on it.
Incidentally, tactics on the Eastern Front were radically different to those on the Western Front (where FW-190As represented 70% of the frontline strength by late 1944): One Luftwaffe pilot describes an Eastern Front Me-109 ace (a high ranking ace probably, since he was flying a Me-109G6AS with MW-50, the fanciest stuff) that had recently arrived on the Western front, and overheard him say "in the case of a bounce, pull up". Hearing this (just this, nothing more!) he promptly took the ace aside and told him: "Here on the Western Front, it is different: You always turn, no matter what."
The man ignored his advice, and was promptly killed for that very reason... I can source this from the "In defense of the Reich" series, but I would have to look for my copy for the specific title. Another officer was quoted as saying, in the same series: "All the Eastern Front aces that were brought to me were shot down on the Western Front."
The Western Front was definitely a turn-fighting front, and apparently that took some getting used to compared to the Eastern Front... This is when you realize how much vague generalities are little more than misinformation, which make up nearly all of this area of interest. I know of no other domain where this is worse, or where the generally accepted notions are so exactly opposite to the truth.
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Reversing your turn when you're under the bandit's nose is a good idea. Reversing early is the problem.
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Thanks for posting. Gives me some ideas for trying some new techniques. :aok
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Was that you or Lusche who made a post with images ("ghost planes") showing how latency works? I know it's here somewhere but unable to find via search.
Reversing your turn when you're under the bandit's nose is a good idea. Reversing early is the problem.
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I think that was Lusche, I know it wasn't me.
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Was that you or Lusche who made a post with images ("ghost planes") showing how latency works? I know it's here somewhere but unable to find via search.
Yes it was Lusche who posted the 2 pix from 2 players and what each saw,might be in one of the many collision damage threads.
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Just learn BFM, ACM AND all the aspects of Situational Awareness SA ......Then Train and train and train and never stop....even in the ma, you are basically practicing for All of the special events! Where all that training you've been doing really counts!
Train like you Fight, Fight like you Train! WORD!
As TC says, learn, train, and practice. BFM/ACM skills are perishable and will deteriorate rapidly without constant practice. Scissors are very effective in causing an opponent to overshoot but, require a lot of practice, and perfect timing. Practicing scissors against different aircraft in a training arena is invaluable in gaining the site picture and timing to consistently turn the tables on an opponent. :salute
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Scissors... Lol... Yes that was a big part of WWII tactics... :D See below...
More quotes from another thread related to this...:
I will always contend it is the man sitting in the pilot’s seat that makes all the difference in the world.
Yes, but that amounts to saying there is no way to know anything...
Clostermann, in the above linked interview, identified gunnery as the largest difference between fighter pilots. He felt he could not hit anything beyond 15 degrees of deflection, and consequently had to constantly scramble to get there. Yet some of the upper echelon Germans could go as high as 45-90 degrees, and he felt, because of this, that they were simply better avoided than confronted...
Going below the exceptional cases, average pilots, between themselves, made a smaller difference than their doctrine and training, which was in part based on the type they flew. In the FW-190A's case, its high speed handling was so poor compared to its excellent low speed handling that most German pilots were "forced" to use horizontal turn fighting tactics, as the type was extremely poor for so-called "vertical fighting" (regardless of what sea of nonsense Eric Brown said about this). Hence the Russian observation that, at lower altitudes (Red Fleet Feb.1943): "They interact in the following manner: The Me-109s stay at a higher altitude, performing dive and zoom attacks, while the FW-190s, flying at a lower altitude, will inevitably offer turning combat at a minimum speed." This remained true throughout the War, and can be observed during "Boddenplatte".
The problem was, the German combat doctrine appeared generally opposed to turn fighting as a tactic (as was most of the rest of the World since at least the mid-30s, including the Japanese Navy), and as a result most German pilots lacked the basic understanding of how turn-fighting should be implemented, even if their aircraft (like the FW-190A) required it... One of the most basic rules of turn fighting was that, once you were engaged, you NEVER reversed your turn: German pilots were notorious among Allied pilots for routinely making that basic mistake. To not know this meant that your formal understanding of the geometry of turn fighting was basically next to zero...
One of the first clues I read of this was in the above "Red Fleet" article, which puts it into odd psychological terms: "German pilots are unable to withstand tense turning battles of any duration, and will always try to put an end to them too early. Because of this, you must never hesitate to engage them in a turning battle."
Lt. Col. Horace C Craig, P-47 ace, observed (Osprey 8th fighter command at war, "Long Reach", P.31): "Once a turn is started, it is of the utmost importance to NEVER reverse your turn. It has been my observation that a great majority of the victories of my unit were made good when the Hun reversed his turn."
Maj. Robert Elder, 350th FS, 24 March 1945, (Likely P-51D, but no serial written): "With this top cover to encourage me, I managed to out-turn another FW-190, and, just as I was at about 30 degrees angle off, this Jerry reversed his turn (they are stupid that way), and I latched on to his tail at about 100 yards range. I got strikes all over the plane, and he caught fire in the air and crashed burning. (As I was shooting the above FW-190 down, another FW-190 got on to me and Lt. Col. Bliekenstaff came down and shot him off.)"
So, if he had waited a little longer before reversing, he had a potential rescue underway...: This is one of the reasons you never reversed your turn, even if losing. Hartmann had devised a way out, which consisted of nosing down into an outside loop, right at the moment he was hidden under the opponent's cowl, as the pursuer tried to get deflection. Split-essing meant your wingtip showed above the cowl, which usually ruined this "disappearing trick"...
Capt. Glendon V. Davis, 364th FS, 357 FG, (P-51B vs FW-190A) March 8 1944: "I turned into him and he swung around, almost getting on the tail of Lt. Smith, following me. I called to him to put down flaps and turn with him, as I had 20 degrees myself. We went around five or six times with the issue very much in doubt. I couldn't get quite enough deflection to nail him, though I was firing short bursts trying to get him to roll out, which he was too smart to do."
Again, an Allied pilot well aware that rolling out is a grave mistake, and well aware that this is not common knowledge among German pilots, and trying to exploit this gap in knowledge... Again, the geometry behind this is so basic, it means that to not know this is to know virtually nothing about turning combat. Which is certainly a flaw in the way German training was implemented, probably giving more emphasis on speed than turning.
Beyond a poor ability to execute the turns (a FW-190A should have little trouble dealing, horizontally at low altitudes, with a P-51B, especially after 6 turns[!], unless equipped as a "Sturmbocke"), this widespread tendency to roll-out suggests that German air combat doctrine remained wedded to speed and hit and run vertical maneuvers way too late in the War, ignoring the difficulties of high angle gunnery for most low time pilots. Since their ace leaders were old hands who were capable of high deflection gunnery, it seems they had little interest in imparting different techniques, more adapted to their lower skill underlings. In other words, those experienced aces were probably the worst teachers, and the deference of their "pupils" meant they could not learn on their own.
To be fair, I suspect the theoretical situation on the Allied side was just as hostile to turn fighting as the Germans were (the "death of dogfighting" mantra had been going on for a decade at least), but there was a lot more initiative, feedback and sharing of information among the lower tier Allied pilots, and this allowed more practical knowledge to spread quietly and "unofficially", which is why Historians still think the Allied won the War with speed and hit and run(!): If you interview only the top aces, that is indeed the picture you are likely to get.
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Another quote from another thread:
Is the danger of reversing a turn the amount of time that it takes to roll wings level then continue rolling into a turn the other way? I thought that one of the advantages of the early FW 190 over the Spitfire was roll rate. It could roll into a turn or split S to escape much faster than the Spitfire. Maybe they were trying to reverse their turn to take advantage of the 190s perceived roll rate over the American fighters.
I'm not sure how Hartman could transition from a high G turn into an outside loop. Maybe I'm reading that wrong. I'm just trying to picture that in my head.
I know there are several reports of German fighter pilots performing a split S out of a turn too low and hitting the air/ground interface.
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When considering the FW-190A, which could roll at 180 degrees per second, peaking at around 280 mph, and the Spitfire Mark IX, which could only do 50 degrees at a peak of 220 mph (the Mark XIV being even worse at 40 degrees), one would think the chances for the 190 to get away with a roll-out would indeed be greater in that particular match-up.
Despite this, I have not found any account where this clearly happened. The closest indirect allusion I found was, I think, in "Spitfire: The Canadians", where one pilot mentions: "The Spitfire Mark IX had a slower rate of roll than most other fighters, and this had to be kept in mind when going up against the FW-190A."
That's it.
Already, against a Spitfire Mk V (in wide service well into 1944, often with clipped wings), the margin would be less, since it peaked at around 80 degrees per second at 220 (perhaps 90-100 at 250 clipped). Maybe, at very high speeds, a reversal would work against a Mark IX being down to 30 degrees per second (the Spitfire's control stick being broken in half for rolls, to rob the pilot of the leverage to twist his thin wings).
However, at high speeds, the FW-190 no longer turned well at all, and especially not to the right (from its more common left turn), so such a reversal would not be of much use at high speed, where the Spitfire rolled the slowest, but still turned very well. A more frequently mentioned tactic for the FW-190 was that it stalled itself in high speed turns, to drop itself suddenly under the cowl view. This is often mentioned, perhaps in the wake of Eric Brown, but less common in encounter accounts, and it would be hard to say, the few times it does happen, if it was deliberate or not...
The basic geometry problem of reversed turns is that, as you initiate your reversed turn, the pursuing aircraft will usually succeed in initiating his turn at a point behind your own reversal point, which means that if a 90 degree quarter of a turn has a depth of say 500 feet, and the following aircraft was 600 feet behind, and reversed its bank in 300 feet, then its own quarter radius requirement to get a perfect 0 angle shot is now 500 + 300 feet: 800 feet...
So unless your 90 degree turn requirement is much better than 300 feet shorter than your pursuer, which is an enormous 60% difference (unlikely), the pursuer will inevitably get a perfect zero angle line astern shot. In that case, the hit rate is certainly not the usual gunnery average of 1-2%, but more like 10-30% or more...
Even if, as you follow through the turn, you subsequently gain, no aircraft will survive in good shape even a short stint of zero deflection fire. Which is why it was much better to continue turning, eventually spiralling down or up, to keep generating angles no matter what.
As to the Hartman "escape maneuver", I said an outside loop for clarity, but it was more likely just a vertical dive engaged by suddenly pushing on the stick, then rolling 180 degrees to pull up upright in the opposite direction. Since the point of firing for the enemy would have been after more than one or two circles, the speed would not have been much higher than 200 mph, which probably made the negative Gs quite tolerable.
The problem with this method is that it required waiting for the exact moment the enemy was ready to fire, not before, and of course not after. I would add that it might have required keeping the circle a little broader than the opponent (compensating with higher speed), so that, for the pursuer, getting a correct lead buried you a little deeper under his cowl... This broader but faster turn implies not down-throttling in the way Karhila describes. Only Hartmann mentioned this trick, so it must have been difficult to pull off. (He did like MW-50 boost, the only German pilot I read to say this, so he probably kept his power high in combat, which could be a reflection of his entire style, and of his ability to hit at high speeds)
Interestingly, by far the most common mention of the target being obscured by the cowl, at the moment of firing, is from the P-47, as the nose is long, broad, and (quite rare among WWII fighters) has virtually no downslope to help vision forward and down. In most cases, especially with the Razorback against the Me-109G in early 1944 (less so against the Bubbletop, which did not turn as well), the P-47 is making a noticeably smaller radius (at all altitudes, but only to the left) than the Me-109G, which makes it gain easily in left turns, as much as 90 degrees per turn(!!)... The downside is that the target is often "buried" at the moment of firing, because of the P-47's smaller turn radius, which tells me the Me-109G is certainly not using the Karhila trick of reducing power for a reduced radius (or partial flaps, which it could, unlike the P-47's blown flaps).
This lack of flaps and down-throttling probably explains why the 109 was so badly out-turned in the first place. In about 800 encounter reports, the 109 being out-turned very rapidly is actually surprisingly representative of the majority of P-47 Razorback vs Me-109G combats (in early '44 at least), the Razorback typically reversing a tailing Me-109G in 4-5 turns, which is like a 70-90 degree gain per circle, all the way down to the deck. (Virtually no hit and run combat is to be seen from the Razorback, only turn fighting, hit and run being much more common to see from the 109)
Turning is noticeably more equal between the P-51B (or D) and the Me-109G (in 900 encounter reports on Mike William's site), which tells me the P-51 certainly does not turn as well as the P-47, and this was sort of distantly confirmed in the 1989 testing by the SETP (Society of Experimental Test Pilots), where the P-47D Bubbletop was found to be slightly more maneuverable, notably 180 turns being 9.5 seconds to the P-51D's 10 seconds. It's not much but it is there, and for the Bubbletop on top of that...
I do think the poor 109G turn performance vs the P-47 is not representative of actual Me-109G turn performance, but instead reflects the lack of Luftwaffe emphasis on turn fighting training on that particular type... The P-47D finds in the FW-190A a much tougher customer in sustained low speed turns (and in fact often loses), yet I no longer feel this is because the difference between the FW-190A and the Me-109G is that large (it is there, just not that large): I now think FW-190A pilots turned better simply because the characteristics of their aircraft left them with NO choice but to learn to use low-speed turns in combat. The FW-190 being much more of a one-trick pony compared to the Me-109.
But that one trick was in fact the most important trick to have, hence, even with just that (plus the firepower), the FW-190A was still superior to the far more rounded Me-109G at lower altitudes. At altitudes above 20 000 feet the Me-109G became superior to the FW-190A in all respects, including turning, which is why it could not be replaced, and was in fact complemented by the 190.
Gunther Rall said of this (and this is the actual wording concerning the actual blades): "They complemented one another. The Me-109 was like a rapier, the Fw-190 was like a saber."
Rapiers were used mainly as straight-trusting stabbing weapons, while cavalry sabres were curved, and used mainly in broad curving edge-forward swings, then pulling back to make the curved edge slice.
If one aspect of the aircraft was emphasized at the expense of the other in training, it would explain why the difference in turning performance between the Me-109 and the FW-190 was more stereotyped in practice than what the airframes actually offered. It would also explain why Me-109s in late 1943-early 1944 turn very little or very badly, and then seem to turn better in later '44: The hit and run dogma was gradually losing its grip, even on the 109.
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Reversing your turn is not a scissors maneuver per se.
Reversing your turn was used in the Thach weave in WW2.
It's still used, it's called the Beam defense now.
Gaston imagines what flying and A2A gunnery is like. We simulate it and have different opinions.
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I think that was Lusche, I know it wasn't me.
You're welcome
Cut-n-paste for teh slooowww types.
Tangle's external from his front end the moment of impact.
(http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n277/1bronk1/Tanglesview.jpg)
Same basic angle external, tangle's view from my front end moment of impact.
(http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n277/1bronk1/myview.jpg)
How would you feel taking damage looking at your film and seeing tangles front end view, hmmmmmm?
I know I'd be pretty POed.
Bronk
Edit: This also works nicely for the "none should take damage" people.
Yea I should be able to put the nose of my ac through another.:furious :furious :furious :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Look it over and let it sink in.
2 different films of the same collision. You will have 2 different times stamps on the moment of impact.
Click on "image removed "to show screenshots.
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thanks!
You're welcome
Click on "image removed "to show screenshots.
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no problem.
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Those same Japanese aces used boom and zoom once they had planes capable of it.
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The Sopwith Camel and Fokker Dr1 should have stuck around for WW2. They were slow and turned on a dime.
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A helicopter would've been the best fighter of WW2
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(http://www.aviastar.org/foto/sik_r-4-s.gif)