Since we now both agree that overcoming the prop's passive resistance to longitudinal twisting is a heavy burden, then it is not much of a stretch from now on to accept that overcoming it requires taxing the wing's available lift with a leverage force coming from the tail?
Which does mean that lowering power will reduce the depressing force on the wing all by itself, not just as an aerodynamic byproduct of lowering the speed (this is why in combat accounts the turn rate benefit seems INSTANTANEOUS rather than delayed by the time it would take a heavy airplane to slow down), which is what is being tirelessly argued against me...
Well I am glad I finally did not type all this for nothing! That we don't agree on the FW-190A's relative turn performance is not important: pilot accounts of the day all agree on its superiority to at least the Me-109, barring a handful of test pilots running things at full power...
I'll add a few links for your perusal about the FW-190A issue:
...
I would think you might be an engineer of some sort?
Gaston
I do accept this disk issue and, after going through my vector-based prop-alpha argument, as I'll coin it, I still cannot conclude that this is a "heavy burden". While I believe it would be entirely correct to conclude it as an incremental burden, barring test data, it is difficult to know the relative scale of torque due to this minor incremental angular deflection of the disk relative to the other forces resisting the turn. Testing it would be relatively easy using simply the spinning disk itself, sans other aero elemetns of the a/c, and rotating it with respect to freestream, then measuring the torque required to hold that angular deflection.
Where you had me thinking you bananas, briefly, was in your statement about the wingloading. While this effect will incrementally affect the instantaneous load on the wing, it does not affect W/A - the weight to unit area ratio and what we commonly call wingloading. After reading that, I was guilty of prejudiced dismissal.
All that said (I do go on - tiresome, isn't it?), I think your conclusion that the Wright-Pat testing was conducted at higher speed was likely correct. As for your assertions regarding the low-speed handling of the 190a - we're still left with an evidentiary deficit. The Russian accounts are anecdotal and of mixed assertion. While they claim HO's and turnfights are typically offered, they also assert that the LA-5 is a better turner. The time data is, as you stated, cryptic, since the flight condition is not stated. The Spit account is anecdotal and occurs in RW conditions. I can easily see how a pilot might think he's being outturned even if the machine so attributed actually doesn't possess a better turn rate or lower turn radius. Incidentally, when I first started flying AH, I always got the impression that the slowest aircraft in the sky was the one I was flying.
Finally, there are at least two things that I think bear follow-up:
1. while we have data regarding, and frequently discuss sustained turn performance, we tend to neglect instantaneous turn performance. I think that a peak turn rate is qualified by the displacement - we could talk about time to a given heading displacement, right? Do we agree that for such a given change, the faster "displacer" will tend to be the one with a strong combination of off-zero roll and pitch response? This is where, I think, the "close-coupled" assertion may be meaningful since, for a given level of elevator authority (peak force and distance combination - the "moment-producer"), the machine possessed of a lower pitch inertia (and lower pitch damping as we get into rotational pitch velocities that are non-zero, i.e., as displacement increases - this might be significantly different b/w types though I believe it will trend much like the inertial since mass-distribution is likely to be something like aligned to surfaces at distances) will be more responsive. I would LOVE to see quantitative data describing pitch authority for the different AH types - think of how valuable it would be for, for example, deciding on how much roll to use in your (generic pull vert and roll - not classical) immel against a given yank-and-bank banana - even if you can't see him. Of course, we already know the FW will get to the banked condition very quickly.
2. We know the AH FW is overweight, right?
3. It'd be very interesting to see if there was any low-speed eval done.
And yes, guilty as charged, though I now live on the dark side - PD Process Development. My academics in Eng were all Aero though I haven't been in that field since the early 90's. I'm automotive these days.
