Speed gives you the ability to enter and exit a fight at will. No other plane characteristic gives you such a tremendous advantage IMHO.

And endurance gives you the ability to fight as long as you want - or to leave the fight, reposition, or to fly around known enemy concentrations -and it gives you the ability to get the best aircraft performance for prolonged times - though in IL2 most missions are considerably shorter than real life 4-5 hour missions so endurance is as you said of limited use.

And my aiming problems have little to do with the stability of the P-51, more with usually great closure rates leading to small shot windows -and very largely to not beeing used to flying it.

Agree with all but the last point. However, the Mustang with half a fuel load gives you all of that. The idea that you need to fly with anything in that damned fuselage tank is--there are no words for it, but it seems to me that it's like letting the other guy dictate to you that you have to fight with one hand tied behind your back. I find that more often than not, as I am closing on the target I am fighting my stick and sometimes my pedals trying to keep my pipper centered on target while the ball under the sight does its best pinball impression, something I rarely experienced flying a Dora or late model big gunned 109 in other campaigns. Of course, the fifties don't give you that deeply satisfying insta-kill 99.9% of the time either. You must either slow down or make multiple passes.

I have to wonder whether most people decide not to fly the Mustang in-game because it is so much extra work.

cheers

horseback

What's so bad about polemics?
 

From Wikipedia: A polemic /pəˈlɛmɪk/ is a contentious argument that is intended to establish the truth of a specific understanding and the falsity of the contrary position. Polemics are mostly seen in arguments about very controversial topics.

The art or practice of such argumentation is called polemics.

Along with debate, polemics are one of the most common forms of arguing. Similar to debate, a polemic is confined to a definite controversial thesis. But unlike debate, which may allow for common ground between the two disputants, a polemic is intended only to establish the truth of a point of view while refuting the opposing point of view.

I re-read the definition, to be sure that we are on the same page. I do not understand why engaging in a polemic argument is bad, if we are dealing with a situation where if one of us is right, the other must be wrong.

Your contention that the LW’s fighter arm suffered 800% casualties ignores the situation in the West or more specifically, the part of the West where the Mustang was exclusively engaged for the first six months of its combat operations, the Channel Front and specifically against the Reich Defense. You imply that 800% casualties for the jagdewaffe as a whole over a 39 month period applies evenly across all fronts, and that the Allies on the Channel were just as successful in their operational aims across the Channel and over Germany as the Soviets over Kursk or the Desert Air Force and the 12th/15th Air Forces over Italy and the Mediterranean, and that the Luftwaffe was on the run everywhere, men and machines were at the end of their ropes and they were on the verge of collapse in the face of triumphant Allied forces. Not so.

Several heavy bomber groups in the 8th Air force suffered well over 300% casualties during 1943, and when you lost a bomber over Germany or occupied Europe, you weren’t getting any of those men back, dead or alive. There were several occasions where individual bomb groups or squadrons lost more than half their strength in a single sortie that year, and there was at least one group that got hit that hard more than a couple of times. The only reason the three fighter groups in the 8th AF didn’t take similar casualties is because the German fighter command avoided them (HUGE mistake, IMHO—if I had been running the operation, the P-47 units would have been beaten like red-headed stepchildren at every opportunity to keep them in the proper frame of mind—scared and eager to avoid me and leaving the bombers unprotected for the ZGs and JGs in Germany) through most of the summer and fall of ’43. The Army Air Forces suffered a higher loss rate than the Infantry for most of that war, and 8th Bomber Command took the lion’s share of those losses, both operational and due to enemy action (and the sheer bloody-mindedness of Ira Eaker).

It is a fact that many if not most ground based USAAF and Navy/Marine fighter units in the first two and half years of the Pacific war took higher losses than the JGs and ZGs along the Channel Front and over Germany from 1940 to 1943; they lost men to disease, operational accidents (guys who ‘safely’ ditched right next to friendly ships were still lost about a fifth of the time, never mind the ones who got lost over the ocean or some jungle) as well as to enemy action. There is hardly a single veteran of those campaigns who did not suffer from malaria the rest of his life (right off the top of my head, I can think of three top aces who were forced to leave combat at the peak of their powers because of tropical diseases).

Similarly, ground combat units in every combatant army were suffering at least as high a casualty rate.

The greatest health problem the jagdewaffe had while staying in France, Holland and Belgium was apparently venereal disease. Yes, they were taking losses from enemy action, but they were inflicting much greater losses on the RAF and the USAAF and they knew it quite well. According to Caldwell in his Top Guns of the Luftwaffe homage to JG 26, 43/44 was not that much different than the previous winter until ‘Big Week’ in February of ’44, and morale, particularly in the German-based units who never saw enemy fighters was high.

If they were in trouble, they didn’t know it and neither did the folks on the other side. Only hindsight allows you or anyone else to suggest that it was inevitable. I don’t think that it was entirely; if the Mustang was only as successful as the P-38s in the 8th AF, we have to wait for all of the P-47s to get the improved wider props and the increased fuel capacity from the wing pylons before air superiority over Europe is established, which sets the Allies back by at least three or four months.

The injection of first, just fifty Mustangs able to reach over Germany in December ‘43, then fifty more in January, and then another hundred or so over February and March just blows all of that to hell. The P-47s and Spitfires are reaching no farther than they did in October, and the P-38 group is suffering high abort rates and scoring at a lower pace than the P-47 groups. The serious losses to the Jagdewaffe were taking place over the Franco-German border and Germany itself, where only Mustangs can reach.

Those are established historical facts. Could an aircraft as twitchy, trim sensitive and unstable as the in-game Mustang have fared as well in those conditions if the Bf 109Gs and FW 190As depicted in the game were directly comparable to their real-life counterparts?

Please note that I leave out the spurious performance of the rear gunners of the in-game Bf 110Gs and the other twins out of pure Christian charity.

cheers

horseback

Chronicling the history and development of the P-51 Mustang through a timeline


http://p51h.home.comcast.net/~p51h/time/time.htm

:grin:

I found data, Maybe not good for P 51 D's

FM:

One problems with the P51D was that on take-off with a full load of fuel (with drop tanks and ammo) the plane at maximum weight AND was tail heavy.
Instructors in the US trained the new pilots to burn off their drop tanks FIRST, then begin burning off fuel from the tank behind the pilot in order to get maximum range.
The problem was that if a problem came up that meant returning to the field o land, the plane could not be landed in the tail heavy condition: it would flip upside down on its tail on approach.
Many green pilots were killed.
The experienced pilots quickly retrained the green kids to take off on the wing tanks, then at about 2000 feet switch the tank behind the pilot to burn off the 85 gallons that was making the plane tail heavy during the remaining time it took to climb to 30,000 ft plus. That way if they did have to drop the wing tanks to go after BF 109s for FW 190, the Mustang would not have to fight in a tail heavy configuration, which would mean sure death.
Landing the Mustang had some Do's and Don'ts. The plane required itself to be flown onto the runway with ample power. Too many green pilots would find themselves "short" of the runway and at just above stall speed, trying to add a big burst of power from the Merlin. The Merlin is not a high rev engine, but it IS an extremely high torque engine. Opening the throttle would cause an immediate increase of torque to be applied to the massive bladed propeller which reacted slowly causing reaction torque causing the plane to roll in the opposite direction of the propeller rotation, usually causing a stall and crash since there was no time to apply opposite stick to correct. Most experienced Mustang drivers landed well above stall speed and slightly long to assure that they would not be caught with this problem.
This high torque problem showed up on the F6F Hellcat and the Corsair which used the same design prop. Both Navy and Marine pilots reported the problem which was very bad on flat top landing where there was no margin for error.

When the D model became available in quantity in the summer, cases of the aircraft losing its tail surfaces in flight began to be reported.
Flight restrictions were placed on the aircraft and the tail surfaces were beefed up. Wing failures were also reported due to control stick force reversal in high-speed dives.
The bobweight was added to the elevator control system to fix this problem. But for the aircraft to be even marginally stable, the fuselage fuel tank had to be less than half full.
The Mustang still had problems a year later when the 7AF began B-29 escort missions to Japan. Incidences were reported of tail surface failures in
dogfights.


History:

The first combat unit equipped with Merlin-powered Mustangs was the 354th Fighter Group, which reached England in October of 1943. The 354th FG consisted of the 353rd, 355th and 356th Fighter Squadrons, and was part of the 9th Air Force which had the responsibility of air-to-ground attacks in support of the upcoming invasion of Europe. However, they were immediately ordered to support the bomber operations of the 8th Air Force. The 354th flew their first cross-Channel sweep mission on December 1, 1943, and scored their first victory on a mission to Bremen on December 16. However, inexperienced pilots and ground crews and numerous technical problems limited operations with the P-51B/C until about eight weeks into 1944. From the early spring of 1944, the Merlin-powered Mustang became an important fighter in the ETO.

The 357th Fighter Group, also initially assigned to the 9th Air Force but was quickly transferred to operational control of the 8th Air Force for bomber escort. It flew its first P-51B escort mission on February 11, 1944.

The 363rd Fighter Group became the third P-51B operator in Europe on February 23, 1944.

Most of the P-51B/Cs were assigned to the 8th and 9th Air Forces in England, with a lesser number with the 12th and 15th USAAF in Italy. The P-51B/C remained the prime Mustang variant in service from December 1943 until March of 1944, when the bubble-topped P-51D began to arrive. However, P-51B/C fighters remained predominant until the middle of 1944, and remained in combat until the end of the war in Europe even after the arrival of large numbers of P-51Ds. Even as late as the l ast month of the war, 1000 out of the 2500 Mustangs serving in the ETO were of the P-51B/C variety.

However, many pilots regarded the Malcolm-hooded P-51B/C as the best Mustang of the entire series. It was lighter, faster, and had crisper handling than the later bubble-hooded P-51D and actually had a better all-round view. Its primary weakness, however, was in its armament--only four rather than six guns, which often proved prone to jamming. Some of the modifications applied to the P-51D to improve the ammunition feed were later retrofitted into P-51B/Cs, which made their guns less prone to jamming. With modified guns and a Malcolm hood, the P-51B/C was arguably a better fighter than the P-51D, with better visibility, lower weight, and without the structural problems which afflicted the D.

.


WWII 8thAAF COMBAT CHRONOLOGY
JANUARY 1944 THROUGH JUNE 1944

http://www.8thafhs.org/combat1944a.htm

???

XLS spreadsheet showing all the 8th Air Force missions and targets with losses by date throughout the war. The 8th flew Mission #1 17 August 1942 when 12 B-17s attacked Rouen Marshalling yards and the last mission on 8 May 1945 Mission.

http://www.taphilo.com/history/8thaf/8thaf-missions.xls

???


.

The fuselage tank was used first as this is what caused the tail heaviness. Then the drop tanks as the wing tanks were required to get home.

No!

You have the main fuel tanks inside the wings :grin:

http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/...stang-92-2.jpg

http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/...utaway12-2.jpg

It all depends on the distance of the mission..

Maybe you need keep full the 85 gallons fuel tank behind the pilot on fight in order to get home.

The tanks in the wings are the wing tanks, same as the ones you shoot for.

Really can't be bothered to reply to all of your chitchat here horseback, as most of them are unrelated to what I said anyway, but as you mention JG 26 as the unit who "easily won" the air war in the west in 1943, JG 26 had to write off 400% of their average operational strength in 1943. And as losses are not the only thing indicative of winning, lets look at other aspects as well:
- it was tasked with protection of Germany and territories against bombing raids, which were conducted more frequently and more destructively by the end of 1943 than at the beginning of 1943
- it was tasked with the destruction of the enemy air forces, which by the end of 1943 were a lot stronger than they were at the beginning of 1943

Those are the facts. "Winning easily" looks different. By any rational standard.

If you start with two 110 gallon drop tanks you have a fuel total of 489 gallons. Lets say you use 225 gallons each way, and keep 39 reserve. If you use up the 85 gallon fuselage tank first, you'll still have 80 gallons at the far end of your trip in the drop tanks. If you happen to be engaged there, you can't drop them if you want to return to your base, as you'll need 225 gallons, but only have 184 internal.

Practice was to use half the rear tank first, then the drop tanks. In this case, you'd have OK control characteristics and could always drop the drop tanks and make it home.