Originally posted by Lephturn:
At the very worst case, Badboy's theory will prove to be wrong in the long term, and we'll have learned something about E and prop fighters.
I don't agree that is the worst case, please allow me to explian... The issue seems to be, can the attacker gain energy more quickly than the defender? The answer is yes… by using best energy transfer. That begs the question, why does it work? That seems to be where folk get stuck... Ok, let’s review the facts.
1) It is possible to draw Ps (P sub s) curves for every aircraft, regardless of type.
2) It is possible to superimpose those curve onto Es (E sub s) curve.
3) The maximum energy state along any Ps curve is where it is tangent to the Es curve.
4) Such a point will always exist, regardless of aircraft type.
5) That point will lie somewhere between the best climb speed and the top speed for that alt.
6) The speed at that point yields the best energy transfer, call it V sub t or just Vt.
7) Best energy transfer gives you maximum energy gain in minimum time.
8) Every powered aircraft, regardless of type has such a Vt speed.
9) It can be used to gain an energy/time advantage over an aircraft that doesn’t use it.
10) If you start a fight below that speed energy transfer will be optimised by diving to it at 0g.
Those are facts!
The only remaining question I hope to resolve is what are the actual Vt speeds for each aircraft. That, in my opinion, is the last remaining piece of the jigsaw. Unfortunately my current schedule means it may be a while before I can return to that problem. The worst case scenario is that we may find that some aircraft are not able to take advantage of it.
Meanwhile The simple fact is that it does work. A lot of people have already confirmed it and have been doing it for a long time already. It is also rather easy to confirm. It doesn't just work in Aces High, it also works in Warbirds, Air Warrior, MSCFS, and EAW... Infact almost every other WWII sim since Chuck Yeager's Air Combat.
The Aerodynamic theory explained above predicts that it works, and the flight models of most of the sim's that replicate it are not so shabby that something that major would be wrong.
Another issue I want to consider when I have the Vt speeds at hand, is how the above procedure for optimising energy transfer should be tempered by the alternative strategy of optimising closure, which would involve abandoning Vt near the critical altitude to achieve maximum true airspeed. That raises another new issue… Personally, given the choice of having my Es as altitude or Speed, I tend to prefer speed, but it is a delicate balance and can be subjective because many pilots prefer to always be higher with correspondingly higher total energy, but that can be a problem in the above situation because the defender loses a lot of energy when forced into their break turn. My personal preference would be not to follow a best energy transfer solution to its conclusion. So it should make an interesting, perhaps contentious article.
In the best case we will all have gained new insight and information we can use to be better virtual pilots. The bottom line here is that there is nothing at stake except pressing the Fly button again. There is no need to keep beating this horse, it died about 10 posts ago. 
Amen to that!!
Badboy
