Another quote from another thread:
Is the danger of reversing a turn the amount of time that it takes to roll wings level then continue rolling into a turn the other way? I thought that one of the advantages of the early FW 190 over the Spitfire was roll rate. It could roll into a turn or split S to escape much faster than the Spitfire. Maybe they were trying to reverse their turn to take advantage of the 190s perceived roll rate over the American fighters.
I'm not sure how Hartman could transition from a high G turn into an outside loop. Maybe I'm reading that wrong. I'm just trying to picture that in my head.
I know there are several reports of German fighter pilots performing a split S out of a turn too low and hitting the air/ground interface.
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When considering the FW-190A, which could roll at 180 degrees per second, peaking at around 280 mph, and the Spitfire Mark IX, which could only do 50 degrees at a peak of 220 mph (the Mark XIV being even worse at 40 degrees), one would think the chances for the 190 to get away with a roll-out would indeed be greater in that particular match-up.
Despite this, I have not found any account where this clearly happened. The closest indirect allusion I found was, I think, in "Spitfire: The Canadians", where one pilot mentions: "
The Spitfire Mark IX had a slower rate of roll than most other fighters, and this had to be kept in mind when going up against the FW-190A."
That's it.
Already, against a Spitfire Mk V (in wide service well into 1944, often with clipped wings), the margin would be less, since it peaked at around 80 degrees per second at 220 (perhaps 90-100 at 250 clipped). Maybe, at very high speeds, a reversal would work against a Mark IX being down to 30 degrees per second (the Spitfire's control stick being broken in half for rolls, to rob the pilot of the leverage to twist his thin wings).
However, at high speeds, the FW-190 no longer turned well at all, and especially not to the right (from its more common left turn), so such a reversal would not be of much use at high speed, where the Spitfire rolled the slowest, but still turned very well. A more frequently mentioned tactic for the FW-190 was that it stalled itself in high speed turns, to drop itself suddenly under the cowl view. This is often mentioned, perhaps in the wake of Eric Brown, but less common in encounter accounts, and it would be hard to say, the few times it does happen, if it was deliberate or not...
The basic geometry problem of reversed turns is that, as you initiate your reversed turn, the pursuing aircraft will usually succeed in initiating his turn at a point behind your own reversal point, which means that if a 90 degree quarter of a turn has a depth of say 500 feet, and the following aircraft was 600 feet behind, and reversed its bank in 300 feet, then its own quarter radius requirement to get a perfect 0 angle shot is now 500 + 300 feet: 800 feet...
So unless your 90 degree turn requirement is much better than 300 feet shorter than your pursuer, which is an enormous 60% difference (unlikely), the pursuer will inevitably get a perfect zero angle line astern shot. In that case, the hit rate is certainly not the usual gunnery average of 1-2%, but more like 10-30% or more...
Even if, as you follow through the turn, you subsequently gain, no aircraft will survive in good shape even a short stint of zero deflection fire. Which is why it was much better to continue turning, eventually spiralling down or up, to keep generating angles no matter what.
As to the Hartman "escape maneuver", I said an outside loop for clarity, but it was more likely just a vertical dive engaged by suddenly pushing on the stick, then rolling 180 degrees to pull up upright in the opposite direction. Since the point of firing for the enemy would have been after more than one or two circles, the speed would not have been much higher than 200 mph, which probably made the negative Gs quite tolerable.
The problem with this method is that it required waiting for the exact moment the enemy was ready to fire, not before, and of course not after. I would add that it might have required keeping the circle a little broader than the opponent (compensating with higher speed), so that, for the pursuer, getting a correct lead buried you a little deeper under his cowl... This broader but faster turn implies not down-throttling in the way Karhila describes. Only Hartmann mentioned this trick, so it must have been difficult to pull off. (He did like MW-50 boost, the only German pilot I read to say this, so he probably kept his power high in combat, which could be a reflection of his entire style, and of his ability to hit at high speeds)
Interestingly, by far the most common mention of the target being obscured by the cowl, at the moment of firing, is from the P-47, as the nose is long, broad, and (quite rare among WWII fighters) has virtually no downslope to help vision forward and down. In most cases, especially with the Razorback against the Me-109G in early 1944 (less so against the Bubbletop, which did not turn as well), the P-47 is making a noticeably smaller radius (at all altitudes, but only to the left) than the Me-109G, which makes it gain easily in left turns, as much as 90 degrees per turn(!!)... The downside is that the target is often "buried" at the moment of firing, because of the P-47's smaller turn radius, which tells me the Me-109G is certainly not using the Karhila trick of reducing power for a reduced radius (or partial flaps, which it could, unlike the P-47's blown flaps).
This lack of flaps and down-throttling probably explains why the 109 was so badly out-turned in the first place. In about 800 encounter reports, the 109 being out-turned very rapidly is actually surprisingly representative of the majority of P-47 Razorback vs Me-109G combats (in early '44 at least), the Razorback typically reversing a tailing Me-109G in 4-5 turns, which is like a 70-90 degree gain per circle, all the way down to the deck. (Virtually no hit and run combat is to be seen from the Razorback, only turn fighting, hit and run being much more common to see from the 109)
Turning is noticeably more equal between the P-51B (or D) and the Me-109G (in 900 encounter reports on Mike William's site), which tells me the P-51 certainly does not turn as well as the P-47, and this was sort of distantly confirmed in the 1989 testing by the SETP (Society of Experimental Test Pilots), where the P-47D Bubbletop was found to be slightly more maneuverable, notably 180 turns being 9.5 seconds to the P-51D's 10 seconds. It's not much but it is there, and for the Bubbletop on top of that...
I do think the poor 109G turn performance vs the P-47 is not representative of actual Me-109G turn performance, but instead reflects the lack of Luftwaffe emphasis on turn fighting training on that particular type... The P-47D finds in the FW-190A a much tougher customer in sustained low speed turns (and in fact often loses), yet I no longer feel this is because the difference between the FW-190A and the Me-109G is that large (it is there, just not that large): I now think FW-190A pilots turned better simply because the characteristics of their aircraft left them with NO choice but to learn to use low-speed turns in combat. The FW-190 being much more of a one-trick pony compared to the Me-109.
But that one trick was in fact the most important trick to have, hence, even with just that (plus the firepower), the FW-190A was still superior to the far more rounded Me-109G at lower altitudes. At altitudes above 20 000 feet the Me-109G became superior to the FW-190A in all respects, including turning, which is why it could not be replaced, and was in fact complemented by the 190.
Gunther Rall said of this (and this is the actual wording concerning the actual blades): "
They complemented one another. The Me-109 was like a rapier, the Fw-190 was like a saber."
Rapiers were used mainly as straight-trusting stabbing weapons, while cavalry sabres were curved, and used mainly in broad curving edge-forward swings, then pulling back to make the curved edge slice.
If one aspect of the aircraft was emphasized at the expense of the other in training, it would explain why the difference in turning performance between the Me-109 and the FW-190 was more stereotyped in practice than what the airframes actually offered. It would also explain why Me-109s in late 1943-early 1944 turn very little or very badly, and then seem to turn better in later '44: The hit and run dogma was gradually losing its grip, even on the 109.
