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I had always assumed when I came across a figure for max speed in my readings that this referred to the speed attainable in level flight. I seem to recall that Sea Fury was something like 475 mph. Yet I never seem to get any where near these values, so I suppose such figures refer rather to max speed in a dive. Can anyone confirm, please?
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The maximum speed for an aircraft is usually attained at a medium-high altitude. It is measured in level flight, but note the speedbar and instruments give indicated airspeed (IAS), rather than the true airspeed (TAS) - instruments of the time couldn't give accurate TAS, and for many purposes, IAS is more relevant, but IAS gets relatively slower than TAS with increasing altitude. If you shitch to 'no cockpit' view (ctrl-F1 toggles this, I think), you will get a dial showing TAS (or more correctly, groundspeed, though without wind TAS = groundspeed anyway), this is in Km/h.