Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Gaston on March 18, 2009, 10:59:21 PM
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I have encountered this notion regularly from various sources, but paid little attention to it until the show "Dogfights" aired. In that show, several actual U.S. WW II fighter pilots make, in separate interviews, reference to the 109 turning more poorly to the right.
I know all these powerful single-engine aircrafts, especially the radial-engined ones, had a preference to one side, varying with speed, both in rolls and in turns, but the repeated mention of the 109 is unusual for an in-line engine aircraft. Interestingly, the very same thing was mentionned at least once in my readings on the Ki-61, an aircraft with an identical inverted engine, and very low spinner axis nose shape.
All single-engine prop fighters had these assymetries, but the 109 seems to stand out in this respect from too many sources.
For example, numerous actual combat turning contests to the left with P-51s are described as lasting typically 4 to 6 complete 360° turns, before the P-51 reverses the 109's tail position. To the right, it seems more along the lines of 1 to 2 complete 360°s for the same result, more commonly closer to just 1 X 360° at higher speeds around or above 400 MPH TAS(!).
Apparently the P-51D at 400 MPH could make a 180° turn of 450 yards radius, wich handily beats even the Spitfire Mk XIV, quoted at 650 yards radius at this same speed. (Some may recall I had quoted this wrong in feets...)
Except for fairly close turning matches below 250 MPH and at low altitude, I have yet to see a single combat report of a 109G out-turning a P-51B or D. The only exception being a rather vague Finnish encounter (the 109 pilot being a bit vague of the rather doubtful identity of his target; no insignas mentionned).
If the turn assymetry on the 109 is more severe than on most others, it might account for the wide disparities of descriptions of its actual turning ability, even by the Germans themselves; much better than the 190/ much inferior to the 190 ect... The 109's roll was also assymetrical because of the increasing left rudder needed to keep the nose straight above 250 MPH. This left rudder action slowed the roll to left significantly, and increasingly so with speed, leading to the joke about the overdevelopped left leg... But on the roll rate this assymetry is fairly clear and consistently described. For the turn being inferior to right, the issue seems to surface in combat accounts, modern day displays (a Hurricane pilot described how he supposedly used it to surprise Mark Hanna in a display), but rarely in tests, especially those vaguely-worded Farnborough tests that are so often quoted.
My basic question is; was this turn assymetry more severe on the 109 than on most other similar single-engined aircrafts? If so, to what approximate degree and at what speed did it degrade the right turn compared to the left; minor, significant, severe?
Any clues would be appreciated.
Gaston.
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Lots 'o torque on a small, light airframe.
wrongway
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Lots 'o torque on a small, light airframe.
wrongway
And less on an underpowered heavy airframe.
Nilsen
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"
but the repeated mention of the 109 is unusual for an in-line engine aircraft
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The 109 did not have a In-line engine. This is out of the Book " The Great Book of World War II Airplanes" Pg 441. This is the Bf 109G-10: which has a Daimler Benz DB 605DCM twelve-cylinder inverted-vee liquid-cooled engine, not a inline engine. All you have to do is look at both sides of the engine to see exhaust ports.
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someone said that it had 2 radiators is this true???
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"."
The 109 did not have a In-line engine. This is out of the Book " The Great Book of World War II Airplanes" Pg 441. This is the Bf 109G-10: which has a Daimler Benz DB 605DCM twelve-cylinder inverted-vee liquid-cooled engine, not a inline engine. All you have to do is look at both sides of the engine to see exhaust ports.
someone said that it had 2 radiators is this true???
Can't have 2 radiators with an in-line engine, because with an in-line, they would have to be one behind the other, and that would suck cooling-wise. :rofl
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"."
The 109 did not have a In-line engine. This is out of the Book " The Great Book of World War II Airplanes" Pg 441. This is the Bf 109G-10: which has a Daimler Benz DB 605DCM twelve-cylinder inverted-vee liquid-cooled engine, not a inline engine. All you have to do is look at both sides of the engine to see exhaust ports.
I believe the "in-line" distinction is that the cylinders on each side of the V are in a line versus in a circle a la RADIAL engines. Technically the author is correct but when making the distinction between WW2 military aircraft, it's kind of silly. I can't think of a military aircraft of the time with an "in-line engine.
wrongway
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Can't have 2 radiators with an in-line engine, because with an in-line, they would have to be one behind the other, and that would suck cooling-wise. :rofl
really???? the all knowing luftwaffe experten schlowy, has stated this to the contrary.
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Bruv, the 109F (sometimes) and 109K (always) had a radiator shutoff switch in case one was damaged so the pilot could return to base on reduced power, just like the later marks of your beloved Spitfire.
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really???? the all knowing luftwaffe experten schlowy, has stated this to the contrary.
It's a joke Bruv. Gotta read both posts. Sorry, sometimes I crack myself (and only myself :() up. Gonna go take my meds now.
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Bruv, the 109F (sometimes) and 109K (always) had a radiator shutoff switch in case one was damaged so the pilot could return to base on reduced power, just like the later marks of your beloved Spitfire.
Question: On early Spits, what is that opposite the radiator under the (left?) wing? Oil Cooler?
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The starboard wing has a radiator, the port wing has an oil cooler.
Late Spitfires had the rad in each wing with the oil cooler still on the port and a new intercooler in the starboard.
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Gaston:
Apparently the P-51D at 400 MPH could make a 180° turn of 450 yards radius, wich handily beats even the Spitfire Mk XIV, quoted at 650 yards radius at this same speed. (Some may recall I had quoted this wrong in feets...)
Is it still doing 400 mph after 180 degs?
Anyway, tactical trials:
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/mustang/mustang-tactical.html
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Oh, the P-51 is certainly NOT going at 400 MPH after a turn like that! This is apparently an 8 G limit turn...
Yes, it does significantly out-turn the Spit Mk XIV at these speeds, but may come out of the 180° at a much slower speed than the Mk XIV. I would say that IS in fact a certainty, given the Spit's wider turn and much better power-to-weight acceleration...
Those tests you cite DO say the Spits Mk IX/XIV out-turn the P-51 at ALL speeds, but then they also say the spits Mk IX/XIV out-roll the P-51 at ALL speeds untill a parity is reached at 400 MPH...
The fact that they say the P-51's turn is not improved by the use of flaps makes their entire methodology doubtful, as does the vagueness of their data-free comparative descriptions. In other hands, a more detailed Polish combat pilot description of the use of the P-51B's flaps states that it DID improve the turn rate, but made the stall more dangerous. An informative give-and-take description that is correlated for the first part by thousands of U.S. combat reports... (Interestingly, no American mentions the worsened stall characteristic, a bit of positive-only thinking here I think...)
In fact, many descriptions I have read of the P-51 states it had the best high-speed turn rate of any WW II fighter, but that this abrubtly ended somewhere above 400 MPH with wartime fabric elevators. (Metal-skinned elevators were almost exclusively post war; maybe they lowered the low-speed response compared to fabric skin?) The 109G could be superior to the fabric-tailed P-51 above 400 MPH, and Noth American duly copied the moveable tailplane for the Sabre...
Those Farnborough tests are not to be trusted; they completely fail to specify that the 109G performance numbers they quote had underwing gun gondolas INCLUDED for the 625 km/h War Emergency max. speed. At a minimum, the G-6 did 637-640 at 1.3 ata, and 650 at 1.42 ata. ( I suspect they didn't like the fact that this matches the Spitfire Mk IX with less power...) The G-2 did 640 at 1.3 ata, and they DID have a G-2 on hand. The climb rate is also just about the poorest data you could possibly get out of a Gustav; wing guns included etc... They certainly didn't use the climb rate of a clean G-2...
I think failing to even MENTION the 109's wing guns speaks volume about the mind-set these tests were made with... These are the vaguest, most warped comparisons tests I have seen out of WW II... Perhaps some Soviet tests can offer a challenge, but I think even they didn't go that far, and simply accurately recorded the performance of highly fine-tuned and hand-made Soviet prototypes...
The best example of this is the mysterious roll performance of the Spitfire, always described in Farnborough tests as being among the best around, despite in actual combat being one of the slowest of any fighter... Robert Johnson (of the P-47D's legendary 72" 470MPH TAS at 10 km..., so not entirely a spotless observer himself...), says that his 80°/sec P-47 could change sides "2-3" times before a Mk IX Spit could bank once; a perfect match to a Mk XII's specific roll data of 40-50°/sec at 300 MPH TAS (worsening after!), and in line with a Supermarine's test pilot's claim of only 2/3 of the Spit V's 60-78°/sec, meaning about 40-50°/sec for Mk IX/Mk XIV Spits...
Fo once, I'll believe Robert Johnson, and a mountain of other combat pilot impressions, axis and allied combined, that would dwarf the Himalayas...
Sadly, that Farnborough data was repeated in the famous, and otherwise very instructive, NACA 868 fig. 47 roll rate chart, BUT WITH THE MARK UNSPECIFIED, which is rather strange, since all the others allied types are precisely described...
The answer to this mystery seems to be that these test Spitfires had non-standard wings, and also it seems the Spitfire's roll benefits immensely from not carrying wing guns, further clouding the issue in modern airshows. I think the Spitfire's roll rate would also benefit from higher altitudes with the thinner air, which is why clipped wingtips were introduced for units specialized in the low-altitude combat role (the gain in speed was apparently minimal).
The very fact that clipped wingtips even EXISTED at all, and WERE widely operational on MkVs (such as Johnny Johnson's)even during D-Day (speed could not have been a major issue!), says everything you need to know about the near-criminal misinformation of these roll-rate tests... Maybe these claims were intended to confuse the Germans? The fact that these tests are so vaguely-worded may mean an intention to supply semi-public info, with tweaks to boost non-pilot morale? Whatever the case may be, these roll rate quotes are clearly in the land of the bizarre...
Going back to the P-51's turn rate, one of the things obvious to me is that the wingloading is not the final word to predict an aircraft's comparative turn radius. On that basis, I have given up stoically ignoring the thousands of combat reports that say the P-51B/C/D series, above 200 MPH at least, ALWAYS out-turned the 109G, and increasingly so as the speed went up (until above 400 MPH), while it did NOT do quite so well against the FW-190A at low levels, at least up to 250-300 MPH (and may have done significantly worse, especially against a broad wood prop, and long-chord aileron, FW-190A-8, below 250 MPH TAS!). The wing/power-loading is obviously completely misleading in all three aircrafts for the turn rate, although it does correctly predict that the 109G's spiral climb will be far superior...
There are many things I think we still don't know about these aircrafts, most crucially how wingload relates to turn performance, and how lag-time in stick/pitch or pitch/turn response affects the actual turn performance. (Any WWII gun camera footage is often notable for the huge lag-time in turn response after a bank is completed.)
Believe me, some of these obviously biased, and vague, British comparative tests do a lot more to cloud things up rather than the opposite...
Gaston.
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The 109 does turn poorly going right at the top of loops. It however rolls extremely well to the left if you roll right and get it to stall into the top of your loop, and swing back left. It kinda sling shots you around usually giving a good shot in a rolling scissor.
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While it is usualy the case that a turn to the right could be harder than the left and also that rolling to the right harder (Note:decreasingly so as the throttle is closed) it by no means means the 109s should never use a right turn. It's a matter of text books and charts rather than practical flying. Using a right turn move in a 109 can be essential and thinking "I can't turn right, I'm in a 109" could mess you up at a vital moment. Remember not to think about anything other than gravity, thrust, lift and gunnery, leave the text book theories behind at the times when thinking for a few seconds instead of acting will be your undoing. If the worst comes to the worst, roll 270 degrees to the left as fast as possible to replace a difficult 90 degree right roll.
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Actually, at higher speeds (above 250 MPH TAS), the 109E through G required increasing amounts of LEFT rudder to keep the nose straight, and quite heavily so on the pilot's left leg, leading to constant high speed cruising being extremely tiring to the left leg. Gustav pilots (since, in the 109G, the cruise was getting faster, the problem was getting worse!) would joke about a 109 pilot being recognizable by his overdevelopped left leg... Maybe the problem was alleviated by the rudder-trim equipped tall tail of the G-10/K series... The Zero had the exact same trait, but needed instead RIGHT rudder to keep the nose straight, and this time the more fortunate pilot had a very light rudder at all speeds (emphatically NOT the case on the 109!)...
This means that above 250 MPH, the 109 rolled more slowly to LEFT, and increasingly so with speed. This was noted in allied evaluations.
This had nothing to do with torque, but was caused instead by the prop slipstream hitting the left-deflected rudder.
Historically, above 250 MPH, the 109 rolled worse to LEFT, but apparently ALSO turned worse to right, to the point of being singled out by allied pilots as significant in this last regard. Again, in both cases, this was a prop slipstream issue affecting directional stability, NOT a torque issue.
According to a detailed Spitfire IX pilot account, most 109 pilots STILL usually preferred to break RIGHT after a diving attack, BECAUSE of the faster roll to this side (He attributed this to torque, but I am sure he was wrong on this point, given the higher speeds involved), this was common to the extent that the slow rolling Spitfires would bank in advance to anticipate this. These right turning 109s would then be easily caught.
However, the same pilot said that if the diving 109 went to the slower rolling left side, they would usually escape the Spitfires. Though he did not actually say it, it does suggest a faster turn rate to the left than to the right despite the handicap of the slower 109 left roll.
Note that below 250 MPH, perhaps mostly in climbs and under acceleration, the 109 directional assymetry is reversed and required a much less unpleasant right rudder to keep the nose straight. That was probably not a big issue.
Other aircrafts had similar assymetries; the Zero mostly turned better to left, as did the P-47.
The FW-190 turned better to right, flaps down, below 250 MPH, and to left, flaps up, above that.
The Razorback version of the P-47 rolled significantly slower to left at most speeds, probably because of the propeller air spiral catching sideways on the razor spine.
ALL powerful single-engine aircraft would show a roll preference OPPOSITE to the prop rotation under climb or acceleration at low speeds (to the LEFT on all RIGHT-turning prop types, and this indeed due to torque), but would reverse this roll preference to the RIGHT side at higher speeds, as the propeller slipstream spiral became more important, and constant, than any torque effect (obviously reverse all this for left-turning props; Gryphon engines, Soviet types etc...)
Getting back to the turn rate symmetry, IF it turns out to be true, as in several U.S. combat accounts, that the P-51 could indeed reverse the tail postion of a 109G, at higher speeds, in an average of 2 X 360 degrees turns to the RIGHT, while requiring 5 or 6 360 degree turns to do the same to the LEFT, then the choice of turning direction was hardly a small matter given that this bought the 109G something like a whole minute of survival(!).
Adding to this the fact that the P-51 at higher speeds can demonstrably out-turn even the late Spitfires (450 yds 180 radius to 625), this illuminates even more why the left-turning 109s often survived Spitfires compared to the right-turning ones.
That despite this, the roll preference still made most 109 pilot choose wrongly the right turn is surprising.
In any case, according to that Spitfire IX ace, that often made the difference between those 109s that fought on to another day, and those that did not, and this is certainly not academic or theoretical to those involved...
It would be nice to hear more anecdotes that would throw some light on these flight assymetries and their relative significance.
Gaston.
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I think this thread only affirms the fact that pilot anecdotes should always be taken with about a pound of salt. 60 year old pilot anecdotes even more so. The only data that should be considered anywhere near accurate is flight test data done by professional test pilots.
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I remember reading that P-51 pilots were told NOT to get into turn fights with German a/c. If the turn went more than 180* they were to break off and set up for another attack.
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Gaston the elevators of the Mustang were always metal. The rudder has always been fabric.
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First of all, "Dogfights" is a biased load of crap.
Second, without wasting all day at it, there were differences between all 109 models(just like any other aircraft), especially the Kurfurst.
The torque of the "K" completely impacts it's performance capabilities and can be used to manhandle the a/c and make it do amazing things. I find that right turns are much easier to pull off and tighter when chopping throttle.
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To begin with, answering Chalenge, according to Tom Cleaver, ALL P-51s ALWAYS had fabric elevators, until models later than the the P-51D-5... I had actually heard that the switchover was much later than that, making the metal-skinned elevators barely present in the WW II European theater. I await to be enlightened on this apparent contradiction.
These elevators made a big difference in high speed turns and pull-outs above 400 MPH, and may have equalled the 109's superior moveable tailplane above this speed. (The 109's trim was apparently so powerful it could do 7G pull-outs with the pilot not touching the stick...)
The Spitfire IX pilot mentionning the more common right roll for diving 109s was not from the show "dogfights". Since this show interviews mostly U.S. pilots that saw actual combat, and reproduces the battles with their input, I don't see how that makes the show more biased than the usual U.S. pilot combat accounts. The slower 109 turn to right has surfaced many times, including in the current airshow display circuit, and even during wartime for the similar nose-engine design Ki-61. Cutting the throttle might help, but I have never heard of it from any German account, at least not relating to the right turn issue. German wartime pilots make little mention of the right turn, which does raise the issue of the extent of the difference. It might have been more noticeable from the outside.
The right turn issue has been mentionned also for the Zero, and more rarely for the FW-190A, whose wing drop would switch sides depending on the position of the flaps. This would switch the 190's best turn side, and flaps were commonly used at low speeds on the 190. Incidently, the FW-190A, like the Zero, and to a lesser extent the 109, was an excellent LOW speed turn fighter, and all tests, including both German and U.S. combat accounts, are extremely clear about this. How this confusion about the 190 got started I have no idea, but it can only mean raw calculated data and some cherry-picked performance tests can bring a lot of confusion... Let's examine why this is for a moment, and how it might be relevant to the 109 vs P-51 debate.
I.E: In a test against the P-47D-5 with 72" output, the FW-190A-5 would vastly out-turn the P-47 below 250 MPH TAS at 5000 ft.. Above this speed, the P-47D suddenly gained a significant upper hand, RAPIDLY increasing the advantage with higher speeds and/or altitude. This does suggest a fairly high speed peak turn rate for the P-47, if the switchover is so dramatic; definitely it seems to be still improving its turn rate well above 250 MPH, while the FW-190 falls off rather dramatically...
Against the Spitfire, which was one of the rare fighters that could out-turn the 190 at low speeds, Eric Brown describes the 190A as having adopted a new vertical dogfigthing style, but I think this was based on his experience with early 190 fighting; listen how unconvincing his explanation sounds, even though he describes the tactics of earlier, much lighter FW-190A-3/4s, MUCH less prone to high-speed mushing than later A-8s;
E. Brown.;" The 190(A-4) had tremendous initial acceleration in a dive, but it was EXTREMELY vulnerable during a pull-out, recovery having to be quite progressive, with care not to kill the speed by "sinking". " This quote is right at the end of his description of the see-saw tactic...
So the best tactics for FW-190A-4s against the Spit was to use the vertical see-saw, but... even with these lightweights 190A-4s, they had to do SLOW pull-outs because, at the bottom of a dive, their high-speed handling stank so much... You can imagine what the high speed pull-out was like in the much heavier A-8...
Yet the A-8 was universally recognized by all 190 pilots as the most maneuverable of the entire A series, despite the much greater weight. (If you doubt this, you obviously have never listened to actual wartime 190 pilots...) You can be sure this extra weight and power did NOT improve the high speed handling... To witness(among many);
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/mustang/combat-reports/20-murrell-2dec44.jpg
Note the "elongated loop", the complete inability to compete with the P-51 in turns without high-speed stalling on late A-8s (Dec. 2 1944 combat), also carefully note the SPEED; 400 MPH at the end(!), and the 190A-favorable altitudes of 20-10 000 ft.. The 190A was indeed an excellent fighter, but NOT at these speeds. The heavier A-8 improved the LOW speed handling, and was a superior LOW speed turn fighter, probably to the point of being competitive with the Spit XIV at some medium-low speeds, and definitely much better than the Mustang, especially when the A-8 was fitted with long-chord ailerons and a wide-blade wood prop.
This shows two things clearly in the 109 vs P-51 debate; wingloading is not a reliable indicator of turn performance, this either at low or high speeds (Ie. Spit XIV turn beaten by Mustang at 400 MPH), AND light high speed controls, such as test pilots like to describe for the Spit and FW-190, do not necessarily translate into good high speed turn/pull-out performance. Yes the 190 WILL do a 7g pull-out... eventually! But not if you start pulling below 8000ft at 500 MPH+ speeds; it can take THAT much of an "elongated loop" for the pull-out to suddenly "bite" at the bottom, creating "a much inferior angle of pull-out to the P-47D", to quote the same extensive comparison of a correctly ballasted A-5 to the P-47 D-5.
To answer MiloMorai, I think prolonged, LEVEL, turn fights, below 20 000 ft., were a bad idea for the P-51 against the FW-190A-8, and were probably an even worse idea CLIMBING against the 109G at these altitudes, but this general recommendation not to exceed 180° turns with Germans fighters was routinely ignored by pilots, and rightly so, if the spiral developped downward at a sufficiently steep angle, which was very often apparently...
Since at high altitude picking up speed was more natural than maintaining altitude, and that, on top of that, the P-51's one-millionth-of- an-inch tolerance supercharger gave a climb advantage above 25 000 ft., even against most 109Gs(!), it is no wonder the overwhelming majority of the turn-fighting... turned in favor of the P-51. At low altitudes, it was a different story, and there was no 26 to 1 kill ratio for the Mustang there, or dumb bombers-only dictates for the Germans for matter...
When hundreds of U.S. P-51 pilots ALL say the same thing(see the "WWII Aircraft Performance" site); that they consistently out-turned 109s and 190s, they are not conspiring to lie, however bombastic we can assume them to be; it simply means wingloading calculations do not tell the whole story. The Soviets, with their slower aircrafts and lower combat altitudes, had a very different impression of both german aircrafts, though they did slover with contempt at the FW-190's rapidly declining energy in vertical fighting, and the way it "hung" at the bottom of pull-outs, making it, their words not mine, "a perfect target". Light controls, and a superb dive, simply did not make the 190 a high speed fighter, period. I hope this myth gets buried sooner rather than later...
To answer VonMessa, all 109s shared generally similar handling characteristics, except the Emil's ailerons, which were vastly improved on at higher speeds by the "F", but lost a lot of performance again in the heavier G (down from 109°/sec to 70°/sec?). Also, at high speeds, torque has little effect because the engine acceleration is so much weaker, and the slipstream spiral so much stronger. When trim-tab-less ruddered Gustavs sped up above 250 MPH, there was never any respite for the pilot's left foot, if he did not want to skid slightly sideways, making accurate and stable shooting, and a steady speed, unlikely... E. Brown; "At speeds above 250 MPH, the lack of a rudder trimmer is severely felt".
As for flight test data, there is very little that is concrete about WW II maneuverability besides roll rate charts (except two very detailed early-war turn-rate charts shown to me; Me-109E and Spit 1). There is no formula or standards for the curve an aircraft makes in the sky, or how it makes it, or decelerates in it... Constant speed turns times are hardly an indication of how the aircraft will perform in combat... Even basic minimum turn radiuses are extremely rare. Side-by-side tests can reveal those differences, but those are rare, and, unfortunately, one of these is the widely-quoted, and vague, Farnborough tests series, were gun-less prototype wings Spitfires are compared to wing-guns ladden 109s (without saying so!)... Combat is the ultimate side-by-side test in the end...
Gaston.
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How, pray tell, are you answering a question that I did not ask?
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If you want to know more about the fw190 "myth" that you want to save us from, you'll have to install the bloody game :devil
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To begin with, answering Chalenge, according to Tom Cleaver, ALL P-51s ALWAYS had fabric elevators, until models later than the the P-51D-5... I had actually heard that the switchover was much later than that, making the metal-skinned elevators barely present in the WW II European theater. I await to be enlightened on this apparent contradiction.
These elevators made a big difference in high speed turns and pull-outs above 400 MPH, and may have equalled the 109's superior moveable tailplane above this speed. (The 109's trim was apparently so powerful it could do 7G pull-outs with the pilot not touching the stick...)
Cleaver the plastic kit guru? I believe the transition occured much earlier and I will ask someone who will certainly know but I do recall having read the notes on this plane as making the transition to metal during construction of the prototype and not after revision.
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Sorry but you will have to do better then to cite this individual. There does not appear to be any evidence of a fabric elevator on P51s other then a fabric like molding on plastic kits produced by some model companies.
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Metal elevators were introduced on the P-51D in February of 1945, according to this site, more in line with what I have often heard than Tom Cleaver's claim of the D-5 being the introduction;
http://www.mustangsmustangs.com/p-51/p51variants/P-51D.shtml
As for the FW-190 myths, no WW II FW-190A combat pilot would recognize most of the aircraft characteristics described for the A-8 in AHWiki, except for the roll rate, and a vague description of "bottoming out" on pull-outs. U.S. pilots widely and repeatedly pointed out that if the 190 did not begin a high speed dive pull-out at 8000 ft., it was going to hit the ground belly-first; this was not the fault of the pilot; an emphasis was made in one quote that the 109 did not do this.
The AHWiki description is obviously based on wingloading and aerodynamic formulas; the result is totally opposite in almost all respects to the real aircraft, especially for the A-8 which was the consumate dogfighter. Ask ANY 190 veteran, including the 190A-8 Western ace whose family member posted his interviews on THIS very forum, about five-six years ago... High speed was poison in every way to this aircraft, to the point the veteran described downthrottling and popping the flaps to prepare for a fight against P-51Ds... He then describes turn fighting a P-51D Mustang to the right in two to four 360° turns to reverse a tail attack, shooting it down near the ground.
It seems the A-8's low speed, low altitude acceleration is a factor in this low speed turn performance, taking precedence over wingloading. (I also have a theory about heavier fighters being more top or tail heavy, thus being more able to yaw the thrust axis into a slanted, and thus slower, airflow, something often described as "hanging on the prop")
AHwiki makes no mention of the critical broad wood prop option, a major low-speed enhancement according to the above veteran, nor is any mention made of the THREE types of aileron chords available to the choice of the pilot (he chose the longest chord type, enhancing them further by adding spacers on their mounting hinges, to make them even longer and better at "catching" the stall at low speed).
This is all from this very forum, so I am not making it up... Like all comparative tests I have ever seen, he obviously considered his FW-190 very mediocre for fighting at high speeds, despite the dictum "speed is life", and this even though the aircraft could easily reach them. Unlike the much more fragile, more lightly armed Zero, the FW-190A could well afford to go head-to-head against a faster opponent, so loafing at a lower speed was less of a concern; it could always turn to face an attack. This late '44 veteran said on this forum; "In my FW-190A-8, I feared no other aircraft." He had much less praise for the Me-109G-6 from which he transitioned, probably an aircraft more suited to the Eastern Front.
In any case, I was interested in finding out about the REAL aircraft's flight assymetries, so a game or calculated figures are not really relevant.
Feel free to dismiss real pilot accounts as "unscientific", or anything that doesn't fit as "poor piloting"...
Gaston.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFl8X4y9-94
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Sorry but you will have to do better then to cite this individual. There does not appear to be any evidence of a fabric elevator on P51s other then a fabric like molding on plastic kits produced by some model companies.
Chalenge,
Pages 7 and 75 http://trainers.hitechcreations.com/historical/P-51%2051-127-5.pdf which by the way is posted on the P-51D AHWiki page. That is not to say that the significance that is being placed on that topic in this discussion is anything short of misguided and misleading.
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Gaston, when you consistently come up with stuff that does not appear on any pilot reports or tests anybody has heard of, and directly contradicts the reports and tests that ARE well known, you are going to get called on it. This is not even mentioning the parts that contradict physics...
For instance, in the case of your FW-190, every test I've ever seen would has agree that it was rather poor in rate and radius of turn and decent in dives, up to the relatively high speed of 460mph IAS in fact.
Your theorizing about its pull out capacity just does not hold water. Unless you've taken the airplane into the transonic and compressability, IF you can input elevator deflection, then said deflection WILL create forces that will cause a change in pitch and thus angle of attack. This is not even remotely debatable. An accelerated stall was said to be vicious in the Fw, but at 400mph IAS even a heavily wing-loaded 190 would have more Gs available for pullout than the pilot can likely stand, before ever reaching the stall point. (Assuming a clean 1g stalling speed of 127mph IAS for the 190, the 9G stall speed of the aircraft would be 381mph. An airplane leading with its belly would be definition be in a *stall* my friend...boy would it ever!) And according to the tests of captured 190s I am familiar with, elevator forces were said to not be objectionable within placarded dive limits. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
The combat reports regarding Mustang vs. 109 turning are also far from inexplicable. As compared to the heavier *late war* 109s, the Mustang has competitive wingloading, competitive power-loading at high altitudes, as well as lighter stick forces at high IAS and maneuvering flaps that could be deployed at very high speed without fear. These factors, as well as the individual pilot's aggressiveness, G-tolerance, and skill at riding the "ragged edge" easily explain why the fight could be won by the Mustang despite the 109's implicit advantage in sustained turning.
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"The range would be further increased with the introduction of an 85 gallon self-sealing fuel tank aft of the pilot's seat, starting with the B-5NA series. When this tank was full the c-g of the Mustang was moved dangerously close to the aft limit, as a result of which maneuvers were restricted until the tank was down to about 25 gallons and the external tanks had been dropped. Problems with high-speed "porpoising" of the P-51Bs and Cs with the fuselage tanks would lead to the replacement of the fabric covered elevators with metal covered surfaces and a reduction of the tailplane incidence." [Gruenhagen, 1980, p.91.]
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Chalenge,
Pages 7 and 75 http://trainers.hitechcreations.com/historical/P-51%2051-127-5.pdf which by the way is posted on the P-51D AHWiki page. That is not to say that the significance that is being placed on that topic in this discussion is anything short of misguided and misleading.
I cant seem to get to the link you posted. Everything in the link Gaston referenced (MustangsMustangs.com) is very nearly a direct quote from Detail & Scale except for this bit: Metal elevators were added in February 1945. The P-51D continued to have a fabric rudder. Of course every Mustang I have ever seen has a metal elevator and that includes B & C models so I want to see/hear this from a reliable source and not the internet.
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http://www.amazon.com/Mustang-Story-Fighter-Robert-Gruenhagen/dp/0668048840
Notice the author, then read my previous post.
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Thanks DH I will order that and see what I can learn from it. :aok
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I cant seem to get to the link you posted.
Give it minutes to load, or right-click save as... It is a 46.5Mb file (Original scan 1945 USAAF manual.)
Links to historical documents (Pilot's notes, training manuals, flight operational manuals, ect.) added to the following aircraft pages.
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-38G
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/F6F-5
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/Tempest_Mk_V
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/Spitfire_Mk_IX
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-39Q
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-38J
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-38L
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/Typhoon_Mk_I
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-51D
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-39D
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-47D-11
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-47D-40
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-47D-25
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/P-47N
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/Mosquito_Mk_VI
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/Me_262
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/B-25C
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/F4U-1D
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/F4U-1
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/F4U-1A
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/F4U-1C
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/FM-2
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/wiki/index.php/F4F-4
Note: A few .pdfs are tens of megabytes, and are not optimized for downloading. They will eventually (several minutes) load and display in a browser, or you can right-click to save.
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As Sunsfan said the 109 performs poorly when you roll it to the right at the top of the loop, the pony is equally as bad. It's a brick when you get it into a rolling scissors fight and go to roll to the right :O
Gaston if I remember right you haven't plyed AH before right? I think you should do a two week trial and see what the plane modeling is like. I think you'd be surprised.
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The AHWiki description is obviously based on wingloading and aerodynamic formulas; the result is totally opposite in almost all respects to the real aircraft
PTR-1107 February 1944 (http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/fw190/ptr-1107.pdf)
TURNING CIRCLES - Results of comparative tests of turning characteristics showed the F4U-1 and F6F-3 to be far superior to the FW-190. BOth the F6F and F4U could follow the FW-190 in turns with ease at any speed, but the FW-190 could not follow either of the other two airplanes. The FW-190, when in a tight turn to the left and near the stalling speed, exhibits a tendency to reverse aileron control and stall without warning. Similarly, when turning to the right it tends to drop the right wing and nose, diving as a result.
From a head-on meeting with the FW-190 both the F4U-1 and F6F-3 could be directly behind the FW-190 in one turn. From a position directly behind it was possible to turn inside the FW-190 and be direectly behind again in about three turns.
MANEUVERABILITY - The F4U-1 and F6F-3 were found to be much more maneuverable than the FW-190. No maneuvers could be done in the FW-190 which could not be followed by both the F4U-1 and F6F-3.
It was found that the FW-190 requires a much greater radius in which to loop than do either the F4U-1 or F6F-3, and tends to stall sharply when trying to follow the F4U-1 and F6F-3 in a loop.
In zooms after dives the FW-190, F4U-1 and F6F-3 were found to be about equal.
THe FW-190 stalls with very little warning, but recovers easily.
In any case, I was interested in finding out about the REAL aircraft's flight assymetries, so a game or calculated figures are not really relevant.
Here is a developers screenshot showing just a portion of the many points of force that are simultaniously being calculated in real time from the flight model. That's 32 independent lift calculations across the main foil cords alone.
(http://hitechcreations.com/pyro/poweron01.jpg)
Your continuing dismissive attitude toward the laws of physics, underestimation of flight modeling in general by a factor of a magnitude, and assertions based on flawed understandings is a bit ridiculous.
Gaston if I remember right you haven't plyed AH before right? I think you should do a two week trial and see what the plane modeling is like. I think you'd be surprised.
B4's suggestion is a good one. At the very least you might learn a bit of pratical knowledge about ACM techniques. Something your posts indicate you misunderstand quite a bit about.
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Post the bit about 190 dive performance from that same report for all to see if you don't mind Murdr.
The 190 perhaps handles dives and maintain elevator authority a bit better in AHII than the actual flight tests would seem to indicate. I have no qualms about taking a 190 to 500mph IAS, vs. the r/l 460 limitation. However, every plane in the set seems to handle speed and maintain control authority at high IAS abit better than I would expect from my research, so it is not a quirk of the 190 flight model.
Here is a developers screenshot showing just a portion of the many points of force that are simultaniously being calculated in real time from the flight model. That's 32 independent lift calculations across the main foil cords alone.
(http://hitechcreations.com/pyro/poweron01.jpg)
Your continuing dismissive attitude toward the laws of physics, underestimation of flight modeling in general by a factor of a magnitude, and assertions based on flawed understandings is a bit ridiculous.
B4's suggestion is a good one. At the very least you might learn a bit of pratical knowledge about ACM techniques. Something your posts indicate you misunderstand quite a bit about.
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Just to get the metal P-51 elevators out of the way...
Gruehagen's description of the reason for their introduction does not jive with numerous sources I have read that placed their introduction very late in WW II, at least for the European theater. Also the rear fuselage tank weight balance issue seems an odd reason for stiffening the elevator's surface. Note ALL post-war P-51s, including B and Cs, could very well display metal elevators WITHOUT this being relevant. In any case, the Potter-owned Mustang IV, at "Vintage Wings", is described on their website as having fabric elevators, which could also be wrong!
I mentionned metal elevators only as a counter to the odd combat account that might show superiority in 500 MPH dive pull-outs against the generally superior Me-109 moveable tail. In any case Me-109 pilots most often did not remember to trim tail-heavy in the dive, hence the baseless legend of impossible pull-outs (In fact, an actual strenght of the type!)...
BnZ says I mention tests nobody has ever heard of, well here it is; the test most relevant to my argument of poor 190 handling at high speed vs P-47D-4 (and of increasing P-47D turn rate past 250 MPH!). I did mangle some of the wording, but the points all bear out my claims;
http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/9568/pag17bm.jpg
- (Below 250 MPH)"Turns were made so rapidly it was impossible to accelerate, and the ability of the FW-190 to HANG ON ITS PROPELLER and turn inside the P-47D-4 was very evident"
- (Above 250 MPH)"The P-47 EASILY out-turned the FW-190.... This superiority increasing with altitude. The FW-190 was very heavy in fore and aft control, (Me; possibly not exclusively a stick weight meaning? Since not "on the controls") vibrated excessively, and had a tendency to black out the pilot" (This last is odd, and suggest to me stick response was not progressive, but instead delayed with noticeable mushing that would be followed by a sudden "pitch up" leading to this comment.)
Incidently, I happen to believe the delayed response to elevator input control is obvious from much WW II footage depending on speed, and is probably a great unexplored area of WW II aircraft performance... Pilot/stick, stick/pitch, and pitch/trajectory are all areas of large variables in my opinion for elevators. Ailerons are much more predictable and quantifiable; they fight much less weight/leverage, and roll rate charts are thus usually more representative.
Returning to the comparative turn test, NO mention is made of a speed zone of relative equality in turns, which I find VERY telling. To me this probably means the P-47's turn response is STILL improving past 250 MPH, while the FW-190's is rapidly descending. Recent (1990!) tests of the P-51 and P-47 found the pilots saying the peak turn rate was MUCH higher than they expected, leading them to conclude that low speed turn performance was probably not that good...
Now note; "The airplane (FW-190) is quite nose-heavy, which makes dives near the ground dangerous". I mean... With Eric Brown's "addendum" to his see-saw tactic description ("EXTREMELY vulnerable on pull-outs"), the Russian's "perfect target" while "hanging" on pull-outs, U.S. pilots describing an 8000 ft. minimum to start pulling out or else... The INNUMERABLE descriptions of "pankaking" 190s, of which not one I remember concerning the 109... There IS a pattern here...
I think YES the 190 could pull 7Gs on pull-outs, but there could be a very long "lag-time" for that response to happen, and even when it DID happen, much of those Gs could have been generated in deceleration by an abruptly shifting, "automatic" tail-down "sinking", not turning, leading to the following inferior performance compared to an aircraft not immune to "sinking" itself!;
"The P-47D-4 had a DECIDEDLY better angle of pull-out." Suggesting the nose-heavy 190 wanted to stay flat.
Aside from Kurt Tank's 7G pull-outs on tests, which is quite well explained by the sudden "blackout" pitch tendency described in the test (following the lag-time of control response), I am really at a loss to explain where is there ANY evidence of great high speed FW-190A behaviour from actual flight tests, or from any combat report except when going straight...
The comparative with the F4U-1 and F6F-3 is very interesting, if a bit sparse on speed data. The equality in zoom after dives is interesting, and a potential counter to my point, but neither of the american aircraft were known for their zoom (the Ki-61 would out-zoom the F4U-1!), so the ability of the 190 to retain speed in the climb could have brought it to equality against these unimpressive zoomers... Also note that Eric Brown admonishes that careful pitch control allows pulling-out without "killing speed" by sinking, so we don't know if ONLY the height reached was used as the measure of the zoom performance, without considering the lenght. I don't think a test against the P-47D, P-38L and P-51D would have led to these optimistic zoom parity results...
That the F6F-3 out-turns the FW-190A-5 should be a surprise to no one; it was the only late american aircraft to tangle regularly with the Japanese, probably equal to most late Spitfires... The F4U-1 is an unknown quantity to me, but a factor should be remembered here. The actual FW-190A-8 ace on this Forum mentionned "catching" the stall with the ailerons, after a slight forward push on the stick, choosing extra aileron chord to boost this, boosting this further with SPACERS, having the broad wood prop, etc... You don't think American test pilots were that well versed in those shenanigans, do you?
Also THAT pilot, plus many others from several sources, ALL say the FW-190A-8 was a MAJOR advance in maneuverability over ANY previous model. You cannot assume just because it was heavier it did less well, which brings me to a possible alternative I found to wingload calculations;
http://www.sci.fi/~fta/JohnBo1.jpg
This is a turn rate performance chart from actual flight data comparing the heavier F-86 Sabre to the lighter Mig 15, both maximum and sustained. Josf14, in the following thread, makes quite a messianic point that this actual data chart goes against every precept of wingloading calculations, because the heavier/weaker thrust F-86 beats the lighter more powerful Mig-15 at low speeds in maximum turn rate.
If you forgive his difficulties with the English language, and his strange style of expression, I think he has quite a valid point. Here is the entire thread, hopefully, from the "FW-190 consortium" forum;
http://acompletewasteofspace.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=8470
Of couse the countering argument is that a myriad of reasons could explain this "physical impossibility". He explains it as the extra weight allowing better speed retention throughout the turn, increasing the amount of air being moved out of the way in a given time.
I don't know. My theory is this, for all it's worth; heavier aircrafts, up to a point, have the equivalent of a higher center of gravity compared to the center of aerodynamic pressure; AS IF they were sitting more "top heavy" on a soft medium; this gives them an extra leverage, or tendency, to orient their axis of thrust OFF CENTER to their trajectory. This would mean the axis of thrust is at a SLANTED angle, meaning the axis of thrust is hitting SLOWER air relative to itself. This would increase the thrust more than the low-speed friction cost of being at too high an angle of attack. A primitive form of vectored thrust in other words...
Now I hasten to add this is just an impression planted in me by the expression "hangin on the prop", which in fact you encounter frequently when reading on the FW-190...
What I DO know for sure, is that an actual wartime FW-190A-8 Western ace said, on this very forum, that the A-8 model was a major advance in maneuverability over all previous Antons, with concurring opinions from other pilots about the very same variant elsewhere. (I think the main advance was due to the increase to a standard 1.58 ata power rating).
If you want to believe they bent the laws of physics improving those turns, apparently the laws of physics don't agree...
Gaston.
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Gaston, with respect I think the vast majority of the real pilots back then never came close to understanding the full potential of any one aircraft. A pilot who shot down many spitfires in a 109, or flight tested a post-war Fw190 may easily come away with a factual and yet hardly scientific opinion of any given aircraft in terms of equal advantage combat.
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Note; the link to the P-47D vs FW-190 report broke when I corrected a typo.
I cannot find it again.
This comparative test was titled as such;
Aeronautical Research Committee.
Stability and control sub-committee. S.&C. 1718. April 24 1944.
If someone can fix the link (it is the first in my last post) or find it, it would be appreciated. This test report is NOT available at the "WWII aircraft Performance" site.
Gaston.
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Found it and fixed it...
The link to the F-86/Mig-15 turn chart is still broken, but the same chart is at the top of the "Games vs Reality" thread link, and I'm not touching this post again!
Gaston.
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Sorry i was thinking along the games line more than reality when it comes to this forum. Was not trying to start anything more.
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"He explains it as the extra weight allowing better speed retention throughout the turn"
I have though of that idea too and it might be possible if the AoA is kept at moderate levels, otherwise all that mass and energy would be used to practically stall the wing through turn resulting in quick deceleration (i.e. mushing through turn or in dive pull-up). One other idea I have read from someplace was that small wing increases energy retention by posing a smaller drag area (with AoA) in high speed than a bigger wing. That too might hold water if, again, the AoA is kept at moderate levels.
In practice I have sometimes noticed in AH that since even 190A8 is relatively fast at low level fights missing the other elevator ofter increases my chances of survival because I cannot "dump energy" on a whim as I normally do. :lol
But comparing e.g. Spit 9 and 190A8 in landing the Spit9 decelerates rather quickly without power where as I need to slide and wiggle the A8 a lot to dump the energy to even get gear out for the landing. I'm not sure that if the drag figures are that different without power how the Spit can make up all the difference with engine power when on full power. One possibility is that while at low AoA the Spit has relatively low thickness of the wing (13%) it can go fast but it might bleed energy heavily in high speed turns but again when it decelerates further the engine thrust comes more on par with the drag and it gains the ability to hold a tight turn in very slow speed. In practice this would mean that in a high speed engagement a 190 could make the Spit bleed out is energy by doing a series of high speed turns with low G trusting that with a bigger wing area, and less weight the Spit would actually lose quicker its momentum due to more drag that it could make it up by trying to cut the corners. Disclaimer: This is just an idea, don't take it too seriously. ;)
One more interesting feature about 109 and 190 is that they fly "tail high" which tells something about their thrust-line so that in maneuvers the thrust is vectored a bit more lower than in planes that flew tail low. Considering the prop flow and how it energizes the flow over the wing in near stall situation I have no idea if it is a more optimal solution than others, but I think that even if it could be its effect could be negligible.
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Interesting idea about the tail-high attitude, Charge!
I myself have been wondering if the square wingtips don't bring more lift by leverage, because a broader wing surface area further away from the weight of the fuselage would have more "leverage" against that weight, maybe delaying the true stall and allowing a more prolonged "mushing" behaviour while a pointy tip wing would have stalled outright.
In any case, my link to the P-47D vs FW-190A was incomplete; here is the most relevant part in the original document form. I consider this test one of the most informative aircraft comparisons I have ever read, full of intricate unexpected details. I find it surprising it is so hard to find...:
http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/3950/pag20pl.jpg
The first part; http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/9568/pag17bm.jpg
I couldn't put it back in my original post... As with the FW-190A-8 ace's descriptions six years ago on this forum, the results are consistent and illuminating.
As for the very interesting video about the 109G airshow pilots discussing its turning ability versus the P-51D, I had seen it.
Note that I never claimed the P-51D definitely out-turned the 109G below 250 MPH, and certainly NOT while climbing below 20 000 ft.
If the spiral is slightly descending, however, I think, with flaps, the P-51D can be thrown about in such a way that it will catch up briefly even at speeds below 250 MPH, but the risk of a stall is great, and the gain will be fleeting. Airshow pilots would not try this...
Under some circumstances, it seems, specifically at speeds above 250 MPH, but below 420, and maybe ONLY to the right, the P-51D has several anecdotes of gaining 360° in 720°, or even in 360°, against the Me-109G-6. This is an incredible rate of gain against a lighter aircraft, and the fact that I know of several anecdotes where the 109's tail position was reversed in one or two turns, so far always to the right, suggests that it is more than just pilot incompetence or exaggeration, as even if you halve the performance gap to four 360° turns, it is still a pretty quick way to gain a whole 360°...
I don't think the 109's turn rate was inferior across the board to the Mustang, but I do note the Luftwaffe considered it close to, or less, maneuverable in turns against the 190 at low altitudes. At low altitudes it was considered close at any rate, which is not what you would expect. A larger assymetry in turn ability to one side might account for this anomaly, especially against the Mustang pilot's descriptions.
I general, in combat reports below 20 000 ft., one definitely gets the impression the FW-190A matches the P-51D's turn rate more often than the Me-109G. At higher speeds though, the 190A is very poor;
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/mustang/combat-reports/20-murrell-2dec44.jpg
Note the ellongated loop, and the significance of the 400 MPH speed at the end(!).
Gaston.
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Interesting idea about the tail-high attitude, Charge!
I myself have been wondering if the square wingtips don't bring more lift by leverage, because a broader wing surface area further away from the weight of the fuselage would have more "leverage" against that weight...
No it wouldn't. A pound of lift is a pound of lift no matter where it is created on the wing.
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"I myself have been wondering if the square wingtips don't bring more lift by leverage, because a broader wing surface area further away from the weight of the fuselage would have more "leverage" against that weight, maybe delaying the true stall and allowing a more prolonged "mushing" behaviour while a pointy tip wing would have stalled outright."
AFAIK thats what angular wing tips actually do but not quite like that. I saw someplace a pressure distribution plot for an angular wing and it pretty much explained why an elliptical planform is more desirable if pressure distribution (dragwise) is considered, but unfortunately it also partly causes the wing to lose all of lift at the same time at critical AoA, unless there is wash-out, and in case of Spitfire as a representative of elliptical planform, there is, and I have understood that it works if you don't approach the stall too rapidly. If you do and the wing loses lift all at once you have a very serious stall there.
In fact I suspect that clipped wing Spitfire was a tad more forgiving in accelerated stalls compared to normal wing Spits although there is no anecdotal evidence that this was the case. Of course the same goes for 109E and 109F too.
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BnZ says I mention tests nobody has ever heard of, well here it is; the test most relevant to my argument of poor 190 handling at high speed vs P-47D-4 (and of increasing P-47D turn rate past 250 MPH!). I did mangle some of the wording, but the points all bear out my claims;
http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/9568/pag17bm.jpg
This links to an image of an acceleration test. It is stated that the 190 accelerated better below 350mph at low altitudes but above this speed the P-47 began to catch up. This difference is hardly surprising given the 190s better power/mass and the P-47's lower drag. Nothing to contradict flight physics as the rest of the world has learned them or to confirm some of you more wild idea. It is hardly a revelation that the P-47's turn rate would increase above 250mph IAS, given that 250 is still below the Jug's corner velocity.
Incidently, I happen to believe the delayed response to elevator input control is obvious from much WW II footage depending on speed, and is probably a great unexplored area of WW II aircraft performance... Pilot/stick, stick/pitch, and pitch/trajectory are all areas of large variables in my opinion for elevators.
If you can pull back on the stick to deflect the elevators (below compressability speeds), they WILL create the forces that change pitch, and thus AoA. It is that simple. An elevator deflected fully up for example would create even more down-force on the tail to pitch the nose up at 300mph IAS than it would at 200mph IAS. The only variable is how much the pilot is physically able to deflect the elevator. Stick forces in the 190 were apparently quite trim dependent, a factor which may easily explain seeming contradictions in reports of that airplane's elevator authority at high IAS.
Returning to the comparative turn test, NO mention is made of a speed zone of relative equality in turns, which I find VERY telling. To me this probably means the P-47's turn response is STILL improving past 250 MPH, while the FW-190's is rapidly descending. Recent (1990!) tests of the P-51 and P-47 found the pilots saying the peak turn rate was MUCH higher than they expected, leading them to conclude that low speed turn performance was probably not that good...
The oft-quoted 8g corner speed for the P-51 of 270mph IAS is with one notch of flaps and at 9,611 lbs. Heavier weights, a clean configuration, or pulling additional Gs will all cause an increase in the needed airspeed. Once again, this does not mean aerodynamics as the rest of the world knows it is wrong.
And of course, a prop fighter cannot sustain its corner speed without descending precipitously. As a practical matter I would not deliberately slow a P-51 down to 270mph IAS initially in a dogfight. I think you have mis-extrapolated a lot of anecdotal information that comes out of the complexities of air combat into wildly erroneous speculations about airplane performance. If you had any actual time in a good prop combat sim, these factors would not be so confusing to you.
U.S. pilots describing an 8000 ft. minimum to start pulling out or else...
An airplane diving straight for the ground at 460mph TAS would be descending at a rate of 40,480fpm! That is 5000 feet to *splat* in 7.4 seconds, assuming the local terrain is at sea level. If you are possibly dealing with heavy elevator forces, (possibly having to fool with the trim to reduce them) then yeah, you are quite probably going to lawn-dart. Nothing surprising here. Oh yeah, and if you've caught a stray .50 cal in the head, you are probably going to lawn dart.
The INNUMERABLE descriptions of "pankaking" 190s, of which not one I remember concerning the 109... There IS a pattern here...
Still you fail to grasp that a "pancaking" airplane does not indicate poor pitch authority, it indicates the opposite. The "Pancake" crash while trying to recover from a dive occurs when the airplane does not have the lift available to alter the trajectory of the airplane enough to avoid hitting the ground and the pilot pulls it into an accelerated stall trying. (Everyone who has played a combat sim is quite familiar with this effect BTW) Obviously this would be more likely to occur with airplanes that have a very wing-loading...like say Fw-190s. Once again, the ability to pull an airplane into an accelerated stall at a given speed indicates pitch authority, not the lack thereof!!!
I think YES the 190 could pull 7Gs on pull-outs, but there could be a very long "lag-time" for that response to happen, and even when it DID happen, much of those Gs could have been generated in deceleration by an abruptly shifting, "automatic" tail-down "sinking", not turning, leading to the following inferior performance compared to an aircraft not immune to "sinking" itself!;
Hogwash. "Gs" (in the sense normally used) occur when the airplane's wings develop lift, period. Once again, sometimes the lift developed may not be enough to alter the course of the aircraft enough to avoid the big splat, but so what?
The actual FW-190A-8 ace on this Forum mentionned "catching" the stall with the ailerons, after a slight forward push on the stick, choosing extra aileron chord to boost this, boosting this further with SPACERS, having the broad wood prop, etc... You don't think American test pilots were that well versed in those shenanigans, do you?
Every real pilot is familiar with recovering from a stall by easing forward on the stick to reduce AoA. Every pilot familiar with high-torque single engine jobs either in reality or a sim is familiar with doing this plus using some aileron input to "catch" a dropping wing. If you had any hands on familiarity with flying, even well-simulated virtual aircraft, these things would not be such great mysteries to you.
his is a turn rate performance chart from actual flight data comparing the heavier F-86 Sabre to the lighter Mig 15, both maximum and sustained. Josf14, in the following thread, makes quite a messianic point that this actual data chart goes against every precept of wingloading calculations, because the heavier/weaker thrust F-86 beats the lighter more powerful Mig-15 at low speeds in maximum turn rate.
It is odd you think relative performance of the F-86s vs. the Mig-15 is damming to physics, since there is negligible difference between the wingloadings of the aircraft. And of course wingloading and power-loading is merely a good indicator of relative performance. Other factors come into play when figuring sustained turn rate, such as the wing's l/d efficiency. Good example of this is the Ta-152. Better sustained turn rate than many lighter loaded aircraft because the high-aspect ratio wing is efficient. However, this speculation of making an aircraft turn better by INCREASING the weight...hogwash, if this were the case they'd have armor plated an airplane to create the uber-fighter.
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This is a turn rate performance chart from actual flight data comparing the heavier F-86 Sabre to the lighter Mig 15, both maximum and sustained. Josf14, in the following thread, makes quite a messianic point that this actual data chart goes against every precept of wingloading calculations, because the heavier/weaker thrust F-86 beats the lighter more powerful Mig-15 at low speeds in maximum turn rate.
The thrust efficency vs speed paradigm for jets is different from propellers. Hmm, two swept wing jet fighters from different countries...Two prop WWII varients of the same airframe... "Why do these charts look different?" Well DUH!
beats the lighter more powerful Mig-15 at low speeds in maximum turn rate.
Obviously you don't understand what you're looking at becase this statement is factually incorrect. Your referenced poster also seems to have that problem when he plops a dot in the middle of the chart and says the F-86 is stalling. Not to mention you're still going off on this ill concieved "wingloading calcuations" line, when you really have no clue of the factors and parameters that this or any other sim takes into account beyond (appearently) what you've read lerking disccusion forums.
I already provided you with a real vs AH flight model E-M analysis (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,103594.msg1071642.html#msg1071642) in the other thread. Why don't you try apples to apples instead of apples to anvils or kitchen sinks, or whatever other irrelevent topic you'd like to bring up next.
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if this were the case they'd have armor plated an airplane to create the uber-fighter.
Ok lets put some lead weights on a zero see how it goes :)
but neither of the american aircraft were known for their zoom (the Ki-61 would out-zoom the F4U-1!),
Mmmmmmmh what ? IF the F4U-1 is not known for its zoom then what plane is ?????? Never Heard of a Ki-61 out-zoom a F4U....And a F6F hanging with a Zero is turns...Lol !!! The F4F couldn't hang with the Zero, and you think the heavier F6F could do better ? Don't try this at home kids !
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To answer Noir; The Zero's turn margin narrowed or disapeared above 250 MPH...
And yes the Ki-61 would use the zoom to get away from the F6F-3 AND the F4U-1, as a rare actual Ki-61 pilot account described; "I could use the zoom climb to get away from the F6F and EVEN the F4U, but against the P-38 this tactic did not work at all. Never had I found myself in such a predicament."
Quote-"This links to an image of an acceleration test."
-You didn't use the LATER posted DOUBLE link (My fault for the omission of the second page!); ARC's S&C 1718 of April 24 1944 is NOT just an acceleration test. Your answer does not address the VASTLY decreasing FW-190A higher speed turn rate above 250 MPH that is apparently news to people here, and a supposed FW-190A strong point (roll eyes)... Such a strong point an experienced German ace, fighting for his life, will LOWER his speed and pop the flaps before engaging P-51s... (Not a wild idea this, but an actual quote from this forum from an experienced 190A-8 ace with a demonstrable track record of shooting down P-51s...)
In addition, the ARC report clearly mentions the turn disparity KEEPS increasing with speed past 250 MPH, starting from immediately severe to increasingly severe. In other words, the transition is sufficiently harsh it does not really even flatten out or much less narrow down with speed, this despite the FW-190's ability to to pull 7 Gs, after a looong pull, which is probably equal to the P-47's best Gs, but is apparently not impressive enough to get mention in the report as tightening the disparity at some point... Now that probably means the G's in the 190 are not as useful trajectory-wise as G's in the P-47D's more gradual control response...
Quote-"If you can pull back on the stick to deflect the elevators (below compressability speeds), they WILL create the forces that change pitch, and thus AoA. It is that simple."
-Stick forces are one thing, elevator effectiveness another, and pitch effectiveness yet another...
You don't address the multiple reports of poor 190A pull-out behaviour. You don't address this report's "tendency to black-out the pilot", which is HIGHLY significant. You would say, according to your above quote, that the P-47D ALSO has a tendency to black-out the pilot if he pulls hard enough. But note that THEY RESERVED the negative to the 190A. Why? Because the 190's high-speed elevator response DOES NOT follow your progressive response theory, and THAT is the only explanation for this comment; the 190A has a tendency to not respond (either in stick force, in pitch, or in lift, or a combination of all three) for a LONG while, and THEN it responds abruptly BEFORE the pilot can alleviate the response. And this NON-gradual response obviously makes the possibility of a smooth gradual pull-out unlikely, and instead it causes a brutal level attitude sinking that would indeed be HARDER on the pilot and at the same time create a mediocre angle of pull-out. No other WWII prop aircraft that I know of has its poor high speed handling described so precisely and consistently in this particular way. You seem happy to ignore that I have quoted this peculiar behaviour from E. Brown, Russian "perfect hanging target" combat, several "pancaking" quotes from U.S. pilots, the Dec. 2 '44 Murrel combat report, and last, but not least, the Aeronautical Reseach Committee's S&C. 1718's fly-off between the P-47D-4 and a 190A-5, a report which, by the way, makes the Farnborough's vaguely-worded fly-offs look like they are intended for the schoolyard...
Quote-" If you had any actual time in a good prop combat sim, these factors would not be so confusing to you."
Quote-"An airplane diving straight for the ground at 460mph TAS would be descending at a rate of 40,480fpm! That is 5000 feet to *splat* in 7.4 seconds, assuming the local terrain is at sea level. If you are possibly dealing with heavy elevator forces, (possibly having to fool with the trim to reduce them) then yeah, you are quite probably going to lawn-dart. Nothing surprising here. Oh yeah, and if you've caught a stray .50 cal in the head, you are probably going to lawn dart."
-I didn't say straight down, I said around 500 MPH, which could easily mean over 10-15 seconds at 45° from 8000 ft., with several observed ineffective nose pull ups (which were probably in my opinion more like several ineffective tail push-downs), until finally an abrubt nose-up flattening out, followed sometimes(often?) by an even more abrupt pancaking...
Am I to undestand that flight simming experience beats quotes from actual WW II combat pilots? Why don't you find me a combat quote of great 190A high speed handling for FAST dive pull-outs and anything not related to the ailerons? I'd be curious to see that... There are hundreds of actual U.S. combat reports if you google the "WW II aircraft performance" site...
Quote-"Hogwash. "Gs" (in the sense normally used) occur when the airplane's wings develop lift, period. Once again, sometimes the lift developed may not be enough to alter the course of the aircraft enough to avoid the big splat, but so what?"
-Well, if the lift comes too late, and ALL AT ONCE, not giving a chance for a trajectory change, that's not "so what". And that's why the 190 "has a tendency to black-out its pilot", while they stay mum on this about the P-47, despite the heavy jug being also capable of some sinking, just not as abruptly...
Quote-"Every real pilot is familiar with recovering from a stall by easing forward on the stick to reduce AoA. Every pilot familiar with high-torque single engine jobs either in reality or a sim is familiar with doing this plus using some aileron input to "catch" a dropping wing."
-Oh yeah? When have you last heard an experienced P-51 pilot selecting longer-chord ailerons, made specially for the purpose, to catch his stall? Note that longer-chord ailerons implies sacrificing high-speed roll, which high-speed performance the German ace did not apparently care much about, since he made his high-speed leverage even WORSE by adding SPACERS on the hinges. When was the last time you heard a P-51 driver do that?
Quote-" However, this speculation of making an aircraft turn better by INCREASING the weight...hogwash, if this were the case they'd have armor plated an airplane to create the uber-fighter."
-Oh, I was expecting this one... Note that I said weight CAN improve the LOW-speed turn UP TO A POINT. Although most German low-altitude tests agree the 190A OUT-TURNED the 109G, it probably wasn't by a wide margin for the earlier models, since Gunther Rall said "Yes they told us the new 190 would out-turn the 109, but(insert smirk here) for ME at least, I could out-turn it..." This is a reference to earlier FW-190As, and ALL 190 pilots agree the HEAVIER 190A-8 was a MAJOR advance in turning agility, but IN the 190A's strong areas, not high-speed/high-altitudes where the 109G was vastly superior, as a late '44 high-altitude test demonstrated with AS gustavs against the even more powerful 190A-9. (The 109s basically made fun of them...)
What I really said was that at LOW speeds, higher weight was not in PRACTICE the absolute penalty it is assumed to be, and I speculated that the top-heaviness of higher weight allowed more readily a slanting off-center of the thrust axis into slower relative airflow. Hence "Hanging on the prop". This would explain German pilot enthusiasm for the A-8; the only real difference with previous models was the significantly higher standard power of 1.58 ata, combined with perhaps essential cg alterations...
Listen to ANY U.S. veteran pilots of summer/late '44, when most of the combat shifted to low altitude; ALL agree the 190A of that time frame turned better than the 109G; that was the heavier A-8. As 1944 progressed, the FW-190A's presence grew to represent 70% of Western Luftwaffe fighter strenght, the 109G being apparently still better suited to the Eastern Front (still having a high altitude advantage against Soviet types).
I will post again the link to the second page of the ARC S&C 1718 report, since some have missed it.
http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/3950/pag20pl.jpg
first page;
http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/9568/pag17bm.jpg
The above is perhaps among the best-written, most informative WW II side-by-side tests I have seen. I wish they were all this good...
The Zero 52 evaluations versus the P-51D/P-47D-25/P-38J were also unusually good (On the "WWII aircraft Performance" site this time)
And again for good measure, in case you missed it, this Murrel combat report, at the FW-190-friendly altitudes of 20-10 000 fts. Note the complete inability to turn at high speed, the elongated loop, and the 400 MPH speed at the end.
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/mustang/combat-reports/20-murrell-2dec44.jpg
Thanks Charge, for explaining why the leading edge washout was more important on pointier elliptical wings...
As for everyone else who still clings to the notion of a happy handling high speed FW-190A-8, that is DISADVANTAGED by low-speed turning(roll eyes...), I would like to see some anecdotal evidence other than Kurt Tank's 7 G "pull-outs", as the above test, AND Eric Brown, AND the Russians, AND others so numerous I forget don't seem so optimistic...
If all else fails, some pancaking Me-109s would do...
Gaston.
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Such a strong point an experienced German ace, fighting for his life, will LOWER his speed and pop the flaps before engaging P-51s... (Not a wild idea this, but an actual quote from this forum from an experienced 190A-8 ace with a demonstrable track record of shooting down P-51s...)
Because you, frankly, do not know what the F you are talking about in regards to ACM, you do not realize how being slower than your opponent can win the dogfight, regardless of putative turn performance. The 190A at high altitudes is outperformed by the P-51. Nor is a prop airplane, already laboring with a worse powerloading at this high altitude, and a wingloading of ~45lbs/foot going to overcome another prop airplane with a wingloading of ~40lbs/foot in the realm of pure turning. What remains in the bag of tricks for the expert pilot is scissors/overshoot fighting, the race to get slower fastest.
BTW, I caught you trying to deny aerodynamics 101 again. There are no "useful" and "useless" classes of Gs. Two airplanes pulling the same Gs at the same speed WILL have the same rate and radius and turn at that particular moment in time. This is not up for debate.
And again for good measure, in case you missed it, this Murrel combat report, at the FW-190-friendly altitudes of 20-10 000 fts. Note the complete inability to turn at high speed, the elongated loop, and the 400 MPH speed at the end.
This report *clearly* describes the 190s as having the ability to pull into an accelerated stall multiple times during the fight! For the umpteenth friggin' time, the ability to pull into a stall does not mean you lack sufficient pitch authority, it means the exact opposite. The 190 is also described as pulling "streamers", IOW vortices from the wingtips as the wing approaches critical AoA. Once again, this indicates the 190s have the pitch authority available to pull a turn as hard as is physically possible for the airplane to do without stalling. The 190 is described as being able to pull these "streamers" at an estimated 400mph! IOW, in this particular case, the elevator is working just fine! The P-51D pilot speculates that the 190 pulled enough Gs to black out...once again, if correct, this does not indicate poor pitch response, it indicates the exact opposite.
The P-51s for their part, are able to easily turn inside the 190s in the initial level turn...not surprising for airplanes which possess that sort of wingloading advantage. It is amazing to me you posted this report as "evidence", the events described totally contradicts what you have been trying to prove. Once again, you have wildly misinterpreted what you were reading due to an utter lack of either academic or hands-on knowledge of basic aerodynamics and ACM.
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Since BnZ pretty much has the point here considering the elevator authority I'd also like to add that in P47 vs FW190 case it is not physically possible that a 190 turning worse would black out the pilot and a P47 turning better would not, since the fact is that the ability to turn itself produces Gs. This particular description of the mock fight merely describes how a slower flying P47 is able to turn behind a faster flying FW190 pulling too much Gs, i.e. the P47 is "cutting the corner".
In a dogfight the one flying behind another always has the option of reducing speed and turning tighter i.e transferring turn rate to turn radius, than the target that relies solely on turn rate, that is if the qualities of the pursuers plane make that possible. I'm sure German pilots who flew captured allied fighters made similar non-scientific "user experience" statements which some where correct and some probably did reflect the actual abilities of the planes but in such context that their true meaning to other plane's relative performance was unclear or outright erroneous. That means you have to have a deeper understanding of what is actually going on when you read those test reports, unless the test method is adequately described and results measured with adequate accuracy -i.e. meaning they are scientifically valid. They usually are not, nor all the participants have adequate experience of training to interpret their observations in relation to hard fact. The same goes for any combat record. An error made by opposition (usually leading to a kill claim) does not necessarily reflect the bad performance of the plane but a bad choice of tactics which ultimately leads to the demise of the pilot in the receiving end...
I have previously posted a link to a video where a 190 handily out turns a P47. That does not reflect the actual turn performance otherwise than that 190 could do it, but it d o e s n o t mean that 190 was the better turner. It just means that P47 was pulling "streamers" in higher speed and the pursuing 190 happened be on a speed range where it could fly a bit slower and match the turn rate of the P47 with its resulting smaller turn radius. I think any virtual ace would have used the excess energy the P47 had in that video a bit differently than wasting it in trying to turn with a plane which obviously could match your turn at that particular speed range. But then again we have the option to try again if something does not work out right and learn -and we don't have four 20mm pointing to our head like the P47 pilot in that video had.
There was also a story by a Spitfire pilot how his low level flight was bounced by a group of FW190s and he describes how a 190 was gaining on him even if he was blacking out trying to evade them. Let me analyze that situation here: Firstly 190 had a better reclined seat compared to Spit so the 190 pilot probably was not blacking out unless he was turning inside Spitfire in equal or greater speed meaning that 190 was also gaining in distance. So at certain speed the pilot's G tolerance becomes the deciding factor, not the actual turn ability of the aircraft (you may also consider the G tolerance of the aircraft itself which is very high for the FW190 due to small loading of wings and very rigid construction). Second factor to be considered is the compressibility of air (if I got the term right for this use!?!) which possibly dictates that at certain speed the wingloading becomes more and more insignificant, meaning that while at slower speed to have equal turning ability you need more AoA for the smaller wing to match the loading of a bigger wing, in higher speed the difference becomes smaller but it never goes away, again meaning that a bigger wing always has the edge in turning over smaller wing unless significantly handicapped by planform or profile. But the form drag may become an issue at this point making the bigger wing more prone of drag build-up in maneuvers as I suggested in my earlier post. However considering this I have no idea if WW2 era planes could operate at speed ranges where this factor would have been deciding.
As usual have a grain of salt with these ponderings. ;)
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Am I to undestand that flight simming experience beats quotes from actual WW II combat pilots?
No, I believe he is saying that if you actually had knowledge of theoretical and practical ACM tactics and geometry, and a better understanding of flight phisics, you might be in a position to better understand first hand sources. As opposed to wildly jumping to the wrong conclusions :)
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I'll try to be brief but...
The 190A in the Murrell combat report is going at high speed throughout, except perhaps when pulling-out at the end, agreed?
As it tries to turn with the P-51D, it mushes through the turn, because it has plenty of elevator authority, but the change in pitch is probably mostly tail-down and not nose-up, which means that what is occurring is a poor, but not seriously delayed, turning response. This would probably require the German pilot to perform constant aileron roll reversals in a downward spiral to compensate the slow FW-190A's turns against the P-51D, while managing to keep the speeds as disastrously high as he did...
To the P-51D pilot, it looks as if the 190A is responding without much lag-time, but is not turning as hard as the P-51D can.
Then the 190 pilot tries to prolong his poor mushing turn one way only, without switching sides by rolling, to try to slow down to finally get some better turn performance, when the wing's lift FINALLY, and abruptly, overcome the nose-heavyness/momentum, and suddenly the nose pitches up (hence, the "tendency to black-out the pilot", NOT attributed to the P-47...), and the FW-190A appears to tighten its turn dramatically. THEN he snaps out of control, because this abrupt new turn rate is at far too high an angle of attack.
Quote; "He invariably snapped out of control everytime he REALLY tightened-up his turns." What the P-51 pilot could not know, was that the "tightening up" was the result of staying in the turn, and not voluntarily controlled, which is why the German pilot could not avoid "snapping out" after. In turns, the FW-190's high speed mushing had a limit when the wings started to "suddenly" lift. In dive pull-outs, the "sudden" wing lift leads to an abrupt change to a much less nose-down attitude, maybe even horizontal or slightly nose-up, but the pull of gravity is this time symmetrical on the aircraft, leading to a very "flat" and decelerating pull-out, NOT a "snapping-out".
Quote; "Finally he pulled streamers at the bottom of an ELONGATED loop, and he seemed to have straightened out a LITTLE going up (meaning the angle of pull-out was FLATTER than the P-51 pilot expected, which he attributed to a VOLUNTARY "straightening out", but was in fact an UNVOLUNTARY shallow angle of pull-out, because at high speed the angle of pull-out of the FW-190A is "inferior", "makes it EXTREMELY vulnerable", "dangerous to dive close to the ground", "making it "hang", creating a perfect target", "inferior to the P-47D, which had a decidedly better angle of pull-out". Should sound tediously familiar by now doesn't it?).
THEN, right after that pull-out, so mediocre the P-51 pilot thought it was a VOLUNTARY "straightening out", what do we hear coming after that "voluntary" slackening of the pull? My oh my; "I think he must have blacked-out right then, and I scored many hits"
Now doesn't THAT sound like "a tendency to black-out the pilot"? There IS such a thing as bad Gs, if the pitch change is TOO brutal and too late in the maneuver, instead of starting gradually and continuously with the stick pull. Pitching up SUDDENLY, and "Sinking" belly first (probably slightly nose-down still), in a malleable medium can lead to a LOT of vertical deceleration, because of the broad surface abruptly presented to the airflow, even if the time of the actual "sinking" is very short. Coming out of the pull-out, the FW-190A is "vulnerable", because either at the pull-out start it is a "perfect" nose-up target, or it is, coming out of it, much lower and slower than its pursuing opponent, and may have in addition a blacked-out pilot!
The altitudes in the combat report are ALL below 20 000 ft., where the FW-190A has no major engine power inferiority to the P-51. It is the speed the problem here, and it is still 400 MPH for most of the descent, though probably below that after the final pull-out... So it bears out the vast inferiority of the 190A at high speeds, which in this case can only mean that the 400 MPH was maintained by a descending, often reversing, spiral, while at low speeds and altitudes I know of at least three accounts of FW-190A-8s continuously turning, straightening out shortly, then turning again, all the time out-turning multiple P-51Ds (Dec. '44 and Jan 1st '45). Then there is this forum's FW-190A-8 Western ace, who had NO doubt about out-turning P-51Ds at low speeds, in one case to the right with flaps, and would ALWAYS avoid going fast, by downthrottling if necessary... "I had no fear of any other aircrafts in my FW-190A-8". I have yet to hear the Me-109G do the same while not turn/climbing, but at low speeds it probably was a match... to the P-51D with flaps, NOT the FW-190A-8!... The Me-109G could barely match earlier 190s, and I'm sure the later 190A-8, with its greater power and altered center of gravity, could beat the Gustav's turn by a significant margin at these lower speeds and altitudes, and even more so with the broad wood prop!
At these lower speeds (below 300 MPH for low-level hard turns), there is not quite enough Gs to really black out the pilots for a long time anyway, so if the FW-190As could compete in turns with Spitfires at low level, and at medium-low speeds, it doesn't surprise me. In the initial turn-in against Spitfires, the FW-190A held a short-lived and minor advantage even at slightly higher speeds (300 MPH+), because its initial (30-40°?) of turn had less lag-time than the Spitfire, whose pilot could not start to pull back on the stick more than 3/4 inch(!) without going into its gentle and fully controllable mushing stall. (The Spitfire could always use this, even at fairly high speeds, to shoot precisely accross the circle when attacking, but this was of no use to evade an enemy behind...) This Spitfire lag-time response was less severe at lower speeds, but its comparative prolonged turning advantage was actually much larger at higher speeds. It could compete and win at low speed turning, but would be still penalized by a far inferior roll rate. The late Spitfire's climb rate was definitely its most compelling superiority against the FW-190A.
I think the 190A-8's greater ability to offset the engine's thrust, outside of the turn into slower air, allowed it to compete perhaps with the later, heavier Spitfires. Certainly it was not far behind at any rate from a MK XIV... Especially with the broad wood prop, and as long as it stayed below 300 MPH.
The fact that the extremely heavy wingloading of the P-38 allowed it on at least one occasion to compete and then beat the Spit Mk XIV in repeated mock combat should invite anyone to prudence as to the predictions we can make from wingloading...
I know of one extreme example of a P-38L, at LOW speed, matching for about 360° the maximum turn rate of a Ki-43II Oscar, but it did get the help of a short dive prior to the turn.
I don't understand why the FW-190A-5 vs P-47D comparison test is not perfectly eloquent as to the superiority of EACH at DIFFERENT speeds. At 5-10 000 ft., The P-47D ALWAYS out-turns the FW-190A-5 above 250 MPH, while the FW-190A-5 ALWAYS out-turns the P-47D below 250 MPH, when BOTH are at equal speed to each other in each of those two bands of speeds. It could hardly be clearer than that, and it completely confirms what I have been saying all along...
I would like to see my detractors point out a comparative test where the FW-190A-5, and later variants, are better than another aircraft in high speed turns... (A-4s have a shorter engine mount and different cg, so may be a little less "typical")
Note that, on occasions, the heavy P-47D was considered equal or better in turns than the Me-109G, including by the Germans themselves in mock combat, which, along with P-51 combat reports, brought me to the 109 symmetry issue.
I have yet to see the issue of off-axis engine thrust at low speeds addressed in any way here, despite the common "hanging on the prop" pilot lingo...
You may delve into your theories and calculations all you want, but I have provided supporting evidence for my claims, and I haven't yet seen any pilot account supporting the general complete lack of knowledge about the FW-190A's character.
Gaston.
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Someone should educate themselves on critical angle of attack and accelerated stalls. It might save on pargraphs of non-sense.
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I'll try to be brief but...
The 190A in the Murrell combat report is going at high speed throughout, except perhaps when pulling-out at the end, agreed?
As it tries to turn with the P-51D, it mushes through the turn, because it has plenty of elevator authority, but the change in pitch is probably mostly tail-down and not nose-up, which means that what is occurring is a poor, but not seriously delayed, turning response. This would probably require the German pilot to perform constant aileron roll reversals in a downward spiral to compensate the slow FW-190A's turns against the P-51D, while managing to keep the speeds as disastrously high as he did...
Oh gack, just admit the Murrel report does not support your hypothesis one bit...it more blows it out of the water. Accelerated stalls when the 190s try to turn harder are clearly described, the fact that wingtip vortices are reported makes the point indisputable. If the tail goes down the nose *will* pitch up, in turn increasing the wings AoA, until the critical AoA. That anything else is a physical
impossibilty should be obvious to a child familiar with see-saws, to say nothing of an adult supposedly familiar with the dynamics of flight. Furthermore, the P-51Ds easily got on the six of the 190s in a level turn before the descending began, demonstrating the P-51's superior turning ability even before the turn descends and speeds up.
I have posted enough reports from test-pilots flying captured 190s who agree that the 190s elevator is usable until at LEAST 350mph IAS. (Do you know the difference between IAS and TAS at all? Your posts make wonder.) All you have posted are some reports of 190s augering, circumstances vague and unknown, and some speculation that rather badly violates the laws of physics.
All the German flight-test that anyone BESIDES you has ever heard of confirms the 109's edge in the realm of pure turning, as does the Russian commentary. Allied tests confirmed the superiority of the P-51 to the 190 and 109 in turning circle; However, it is apparent that in many of these tests the pilots though the slats opening indicated stall was imminent, while the airplane can actually be pulled into a somewhat harder turn without stalling after the slats open, a fact belabored upon by some Experten. "Embarassed by the slats" is the phrasing I believe is used. So the machine was not actually being flown to its maximum potential during these tests. There is no such troublesome device on the 190 to cause confusion.
The P-47D has slightly lighter wingloading than the 190A, legendary stick forces, and maneuvering flaps that can be deployed at speeds up to 400mph IAS. The 190A has superior power-loading. It is unsurprising that the Jug might turn better carrying a little speed into the turn, but that the 190s engine power might let it sustain a better rate as speeds bleed down.
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:lol carriage return warfare
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The 190A has superior power-loading. It is unsurprising that the Jug might turn better carrying a little speed into the turn, but that the 190s engine power might let it sustain a better rate as speeds bleed down.
Yes, I tried to tell him that weeks ago...
Obviously the lower the available thrust, the lower the best sustained rate of turn and speed are going to be. So when you reference the P-47D-4 with the Curtiss Electric C542S propeller, vs the captured FW 190A3, I can see why at lower speeds the 190 faired better in that match up. Even though the P-47 has a more favorable stall boundary for turning and can turn a slightly tighter radius, the 190 can sustain a better rate of turn. The lack of the later paddle bladed props on the 47D-4 probably only exacerbated the power deficit situation. However when we take the speeds closer to the two planes corner velocity, the P-47s better instantaneous rate of turn, and smaller turning circle changes the outcome. So I also question your conclusion about the high speed handling of the FW 190. Everything I've ever seen says that the stick forces were generally light and not objectionable at high speeds.
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:lol carriage return warfare
Yeah...I think the next time I see a case of cranal-rectal inversion of this magnitude, I'm just going to pop a pill to keep my head from exploding and pass right on by...
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None of you have even adressed the meaning of the report's quote: (Turns and handling at 250 MPH +) "The 190 displays a TENDENCY to black-out the pilot", as OPPOSED to the P-47D-4, which doesn't apparently share quite the same trait, despite being VERY light on the elevators at high speeds itself, and quite capable of blacking out the pilot... Why not both?
If it doesn't fit into your theories, it doesn't exist, right?
Murdr states the FW-190's superiority during turns in the test at low speeds (-250 MPH) is based on better acceleration in sustained turning ONLY; Yet the low speed test is titled; Turning AND handling, with NO mention of the word "sustained" anywhere... All the report actually says is that all the lower speeds, turns were made so tightly it was impossible to accelerate, which does not EXCLUDE unsustained turns. Better yet, a few words later, its states the FW-190 WAS able to accelerate SUDDENLY to gain a better position, so the speed WAS allowed to deteriorate SUBSTANTIALLY for both, and in fact a whole range of maximum-rate turning IS implied by this, because it would be stupid to limit turn tests to SUSTAINED turns, without prominently saying so, and then say broadly the 190 "hanging on the prop" "very evidently" out-turns the P-47, if it did NOT apply ALSO to unsustained turns... This is a turn AND handling test... Read the title...
The high speed turns (250 MPH+) are described as being held "as tightly as possible", and are put next to the low-speed turns without any special mention of the conclusion being any different in nature as to the relative turning merits of the two aircrafts. This describes an increasingly crushing superiority of the P-47D-4 over the FW-190A-5 in turns, which statement is not qualified in any way (just as it was not at low speeds, except for the oblique turn "trick")...
Then they mention "the FW-190 had a tendency to black-out the pilot", which ALSO doesn't fit ANY of your handling theories...
So you ignore it.
Then we have the words, on this very forum, of an actual FW-190A-8 Western ace who describes DOWNTHROTTLING prior to medium/low-altitude combat (with P-51Ds!), and honing his ride mightily for LOWER speed combat (popping flaps, extended-chord ailerons etc..), and using ONLY lower speed turn-fighting combat to gain his victories. But that doesn't fit neatly into your FW-190A-8 handling theories, now does it?
So you ignore it.
There's also the numerous accounts of Western Front Luftwaffe officers admonising "new" Eastern Front pilots to ALWAYS turn with American aircrafts, and NEVER use the vertical like they could do with the Russians. Doesn't quite fit with the Boom and Zooming German hordes now does it?
But that doesn't fit either, so you ignore it.
Then there is the issue of "hanging on the prop", which does imply in its very description something beyond what your sustained turn/ lift-only/wingloading theories can provide, but that doesn't fit neatly either, so it can be ignored also. As can most pilot accounts, while you are at it...
Oh and I almost forgot: The MAJOR advance that the 190A-8 represented in MANEUVERABILITY, over ANY earlier mark, by the words of its own pilots? Well, what do these handsomehunkes know anyway? Don't they know the wingloading was worse?
They turned all the time with it, and survived, but they didn't know the low-speed handling of the A-8 was BAD...
It's just not scientific guys... We're simmers, we know they're wrong...
Gaston.
P.S. The ballasted FW-190G-3 used in the test is NOT equivalent to an A-3, but to an A-5, and is referred to as such in another version I saw of this test. Get your facts straight before poking fun at the expertise of someone else...
G.
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I have limited time at the moment, so I'll pick one thing to briefly reply to.
Don't they know the wingloading was worse?
I'm a bit perplexed on who exactly you have been arguing with all this time that you keep bringing up wing loading. As I said, your assumption that sim modeling is so simple as to be based on that data point is an extremely false assumption. Wing loading only give some ballpark indications about a plane. Looking at only that completely excludes lift coefficent, and gives no indication on thrust and drag properties. I would hope people replying from the community already know that wing loading is by no means a be all end all indicator of turn performance. However, you keep beating on this point like a kindergarden teacher tring to instruct a college class.
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Gaston the former model decal maker by any chance?
Never, ever quote TC as a reliable source, his command of facts is always suspect. Also, he is certainly not a model guru (except in his own mind) and generally considered somewhat of a joke by other experienced modelers...
Bazi
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P.S. The ballasted FW-190G-3 used in the test is NOT equivalent to an A-3, but to an A-5, and is referred to as such in another version I saw of this test. Get your facts straight before poking fun at the expertise of someone else...
What leads you to believe the FW190 in Italy is the FW190G-3 flight tested in Ohio? Author Peter Caygill cited that the Italy bird was an A varient. (I'm not sure where I got the -3 from).
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Murdr states the FW-190's superiority during turns in the test at low speeds (-250 MPH) is based on better acceleration in sustained turning ONLY;
I was saying the results make perfect sense to me. I don't see a great mystery in it. I'd elaborate further, but it appears that would be a waste of time. No big surprise that you'd be tacking words on in caps that I never said :lol
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The G-2 and G-3 were based on the A-5. The G-3 was a G-2 with a PKS-11 aotopilot.
What was the WNr of this Fw?
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In this article posted on Flight Journal
Flying the Bf-109
Two pilots give their reports
Eric Brown, Mark Hanna
Both pilots claimed the 109G10 OUT TURNED the P51D but the pony was faster.
Also there was another piece with a 190 vs a F6F and several were surprised at how well the 190 did against the F6F!
Both of these articles were sent to HTC and I'm pretty sure they got read!
And as HTC has repeatedly expressed any verifiable information will be considered, I think the 190 and 109 FM's might have gotten a slight tweek AFTER this information was related.
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Murdr:
However, you keep beating on this point like a kindergarden teacher tring to instruct a college class.
Murdr: I take great exception of you kinder garden analogy. In reality it is more like a bad student of a bad kinder garden teacher, who was fired last year , trying to teach PHD holders in physics that an Apple will fall up if has the correct sugar content.
In reading this thread all I can say is WOW, another crump.
HiTech
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Murdr:
Murdr: I take great exception of you kinder garden analogy. In reality it is more like a bad student of a bad kinder garden teacher, who was fired last year , trying to teach PHD holders in physics that an Apple will fall up if has the correct sugar content.
In reading this thread all I can say is WOW, another crump.
HiTech
:rofl That was funny
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Although most German low-altitude tests agree the 190A OUT-TURNED the 109G, it probably wasn't by a wide margin for the earlier models
Russian time to turn data at 1000 M altitude does not reflect this.
FW190A-8 = 21-22 seconds
FW190A-4 = 22-23 seconds
109G-4 = 21 seconds
109G-2 = 20-21.5 seconds
" w/ 3 x 20mms = 22.6 seconds
Just say'n
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FW190A-8 = 21-22 seconds
FW190A-4 = 22-23 seconds
Oh, interesting. Heavier A8 outturning lighter A4, more thrust available perhaps...? :lol
-C+
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Didn't the A4 have a pretty weak engine? And then it could be just one test on one airplane.
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Same source has the A-5 with identical times as the A-4.
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My head hurts.
I've studied and read a great deal about the 190 from its' development to its' upgrading through the series and its'
performance in combat. The majority of what I've read indicates that allied Pilots thought the 190 better then the
109 and questioned why they made the numbers of 109s as they did. The 190 and 109 were at least a decade
apart in development. The 190 far superior in technology.
Gaston when I need a question answered about flight dynamics I ask two people....now I'm adding a third one.
Murdr, Widewing (who does most our ingame testing) and now I'm adding BnZ'.
With all do repect Sir never trust a Wicki unless you know the Author and his sources.
And two, in the future pose this type of topic on our BBS as a question.
You will get far more information then thought possible from this community. Solid information btw.
Hajo
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Murdr, Widewing (who does most our ingame testing) and now I'm adding BnZ'.
Nothing I tediously illustrated in the whole thread was much more advanced than knowing 2+2=4, that is the bad part.
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"."
The 109 did not have a In-line engine. This is out of the Book " The Great Book of World War II Airplanes" Pg 441. This is the Bf 109G-10: which has a Daimler Benz DB 605DCM twelve-cylinder inverted-vee liquid-cooled engine, not a inline engine. All you have to do is look at both sides of the engine to see exhaust ports.
YES, but i believe that the V engines were refered to "inline" engines in general. this is because they had 2 rows of cylinders inline with each other, as opposed to radial engines.
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YES, but i believe that the V engines were refered to "inline" engines in general. this is because they had 2 rows of cylinders inline with each other, as opposed to radial engines.
This is true.
Although the engine configuration of the DB605 is an inverted V, it is often simply referred to as an inline engine because it is "not" a radial. The pots, although in two rows, ARE "in line" with each other which is in stark contrast to a radial design like the BMW801.
Ive heard the same thing stated with respect to the Merlins wedged into Spits and 51's.
Technically correct? No. Big deal for amateurs trying to differentiate between "sleek-nosed" fighters and "flat-nosed" fighters, not really.