Luno, the landing was indeed execellent, and I suspect historically accurate. I quite often boot full rudder and lift the nose a tad to burn off speed, coming in to land. You can see the runway as well when you're low on the final approach. The video also highlights how tough the landing gear was/is, not surprising as it was originally intended to operate from rough grass strips. Not like ingame where it loses it's gear and turns over if the wheels leave the runway! TD please take note.

Paper is patient.
Do you think the Germans told their 109 pilots to flip over after touchdown?

landing a 109

http://youtu.be/zG_EIaOzoXg

How many people died in it because they screwed up?


I didn't say it's impossible, it just said its far from easy.

It's important to note however, that what you see in Il-2 is not necessarily what the game is modeling. The green rectangular strip in Il-2 represents the mowed field that you see in the Bf-109 G-10 video. The areas outside of the airfield are bumpy and full of tall grasses that comprise a lot of the steppe.

Il-2 doesn't render landscape that precisely, but it does simulate the texture with bumpiness.

In fact, pilots were instructed to land wheels up if they couldn't make it to the base in order to avoid flipping over and potentially crushing themselves.

TD have already addressed the situation and you can set "friction" values for the home base (within a certain radius).

The narrow track was intentional, providing a stronger undercarriage and the ability to remove the wings while the aircraft stood on its main wheels.

Of the 36,000 total bf109 built around 5 to 6% were lost in ground accidents of all types over a 10 year period operating in very difficult conditions. Probably about 2000 in all. Not all those accidents were landings and clearly most were not fatal.

That record is actually not too bad, far better than the bf109s bad rep would suggest. Its possible the "horribly dangerous landing" rep is more a case of post war propaganda.

I think more of them died forgeting to lock the tail wheel on take off than when landing.

About as many as any other Air Force trying to fly a high performance aircraft with poorly trained and inexperienced pilots.

A very good analogy to represent 95% of the Luftwaffe pilots from late '43 would be the equivalent of a pilot with 100 hours in a Cessna 172 hopping into a P51 Mustang to fly a mission.

Under those conditions, the P51 would have a very bad reputation for its high rate of landing accidents.

Today, Insurance companies count "Hours in Type" as the major criteria for determining the probability of an accident in a pilot. The Luftwaffe was only giving its pilots ~20 hours in type before throwing them into combat.