Quote:
Originally Posted by Robotic Pope
I don't know, My experience is that the La-5 and La-7 turn a lot tighter than the spitfires and the cannons on both are pretty deadly thanks to them being mounted so close to each other it needs very little convergence, so acuracy of long range shots is much better. When Im flying my Fw190 or Mustang the La.7 is the plane I have most fear of because of its instant power. If I boom and zoom an La.7 and miss (quite often because of its insane turning ability) quite often the La can turn 360 degrees to follow my zoom climb and still catch me and start shooting in less than 30 seconds. Once that happens I'm dead meat.
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Exactly. There is undeniably some turn advantage, enough to be significant. And the placement of the cannon in the nose of the La's helps your aim by reducing the recoil and and convergence problems, like Pope said. The Spit may pack more guns so that on paper its firepower is superior, but how is it in practice?
I ran the numbers on 15 piston engined fighters in realistic, xbox (so no patched performance): Bf109F, Bf109G-6,G-10, Bf109K, Fw190A, Fw190D, La-5, La-7, Yak-3, P-51D, P-47, Spit II, IX, XVI, and Hurricane II.
The fact is, the La-7 has the best acceleration below 5,000' - where the bulk of dogfighting takes place. On its heels are the 109K, the 109G-10, La-5 and Yak-3. Once you hit 10,000' the two 109's are in front and followed by the La-7, Fw-190D, and La-5. So, even up to 10,000 (a very high altitude for multiplayer dogfights) unless you're in one of the 109s an La-7 will catch you. This is why Pope's Mustang gets run down from behind, even after executing a good BnZ attack on an La-7 bleeding speed in a high-g turn (the P-51D manages to out-accelerate only the Hurricane below 20,000').
So, already with a turn advantage, the La-7 gets to have a substantial advantage in putting knots back on the plane at the prime dogfighting altitudes.
As to why the two finalists in the contest chose to each take a Spitfire Mk IX, who knows? The Spit IX is a solid upper end of the pack fighter, so it is a good choice. Maybe they were both British. Maybe they decided they would see who the better pilot was by taking the same machine. Maybe they both flew the Spitfire so much that they knew it the best and decided not to change things up at the last minute in a competition. Just because two random dudes chose to fly it over the La-7 in a particular fight, doesn't mean the La-7 has no advantages over the Spitfire. There could be any number of explanations, and their endorsement of the Spitfire IX doesn't necessarily mean anything.
In a brief bit of anecdotal evidence for the La-5 as well, I was once nearly chased down by one while flying a Dora-9. I did as Pope did, got some altitude, rolled in on the giant team battle furball, tried to pick a target, fired but didn't kill anything, exited the fight and began my zoom. An La-5 that was last seen 90 degrees off my heading, below me, and pulling around towards 180 off of my heading, is now suddenly within 1km of me and tracers are whizzing by my cockpit. It took staying within a very narrow sweet spot in pitch attitude, laying on the WEP for the entire time, and a climb to at least over 15,000 (probably over 20,000 but I don't quite remember) for me to slowly open the distance. It was him finally losing interest that brought the engagement to an end. If it had continued, I'm not sure what would have happened. But, if I had tried to escape by rolling inverted, pulling it around in a dive and trying to zoom away again, I have little doubt that he would have closed the gap and probably shot me down.
If it had been an La-7, I probably would've had a long parachute ride down from about 10,000.