Quote:
Originally Posted by IceFire
I also found this RAF report very interesting:
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.o...-47-1658-D.pdf
The notes remark about how excellent the FW190 manoeuvrability in the roll plane is but how the elevator tightens at speed (ours does not appear to) and how easy it is to stall the aircraft in tight turns and at stall speed. Interestingly they talk about 10 degrees of flaps to help tighten the turn. I've long since stopped using combat flaps on the FW190 in IL-2.. does anyone else?
You could argue that the RAF report is biased. It might be... is there a similar pilots notes comparison out there from a German source? I know the comments in my FW190A-5 Aces of the Eastern Front from Osprey have the same notes with one translation from somewhere (its not referenced which gives me pause) suggesting that FW190 pilots should employ the same tactics on the East Front as they are finding effective on the West Front - that is to say the high speed hit and zoom as a group tactic avoiding Spitfires or Yak's alike in the horizontal. |
From the German side there is no direct comparison with the Spitfire I am aware of, but the P-47D was recognized by KG 200, with a captured Razorback, as superior-turning to the Me-109G in low-speed sustained turns, while the same thing was not said of the FW-190A vs the P-47.
Also the P-51B was not described as out-turning the Me-109G by KG 200, while the P-47D definitely was. (source "On special missions" KG 200)
In combat the P-47D never took more than four-five 360° turns to gain the upper hand vs the Me-109G, while the FW-190A was always roughly equal to the P-47D, or slightly better, in early 1944, and for some reason the FW-190A grew much better in later 1944, the later Bubbletops P-47Ds being clearly inferior to the later FW-190As in sustained turns... All this agrees 100% with KG 200's evaluation.
Tests in Italy by the Allies show the FW-190A as slightly superior-turning to the Razorback P-47D below 250 MPH, and drastically inferior turning above 250 MPH.
FW-190A dive pull-out was also drastically inferior to the P-47D, the nose-up loss of altitude of the FW-190A ("mushing") on pull-out being described as a "tendency to black-out the pilot".:
http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/3950/pag20pl.jpg
The best FW-190A comparisons are all with the Me-109G or P-47D: Significant RAE comparisons with the Spitfire all refer to the Spitfire's tighter "radius", but to my mind, in those days, "radius" means an unsustained 6 G+ turn in which the Spitfire will undoubtedly be superior to the FW-190A:
See the P-47 comparison which underlines the poor high speed turn performance of the FW-190A (confirmed by the abyssmal dive-pull-out "sinking" noted even by Eric Brown as well, making rather nonsensical his conclusion to use it in the vertical: Russian sources mention a 220 m (660 ft.)
nose-up drop after levelling out from a 40° dive of 1200 m... One fifth of the short dive's momentum expended in brutal
nose-up deceleration: Hence the "Tendency to black-out the pilot"...)
Note that the RAE found the P-51B
with full drop tanks in place to vastly out-turn the Me-109G, while the same P-51B
without drop tanks was considered only equal in turn rate to the FW-190A.
The RAE test thus make it abundantly clear the FW-190A was the better sustained turn fighter vs the Me-109G, but in my opinion the tests exaggerates the issue in disfavour of the Me-109G: This might have been due to a misunderstanding of the use of the leading edge slats, or of those slats being in poor condition.
Combat accounts show the Me-109G generally inferior to the P-51 in unsustained high G turns (5 G+), but the Me-109G is, despite this, more responsive initially when speed locks the controls in steep high speed dives (due to its advantage of a fully mobile tail trim which overcomes aerodynamic forces more efficiently for the initial pull-out in dives for instance)
In sustained turns, the P-51 is slightly better but they are fairly close. However sometimes on the deck, when they are forced into horizontal turns, they are
very close to the point of a prolonged stalemate of 15-30 minutes (45 to 90 horizontal turns!). But this only before MW-50 was widely available, not so much after May of 1944.
The P-51 however will gain a marked sustained low-speed turn edge if it reduces its throttle, which has the -unrecognized by flight physics- effect of reducing its wingloading in low-speed sustained turns:
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/m...an-24may44.jpg
But then the Me-109G here might not have done the same throttle reduction, and could have gained as much... (This throttle reduction trick was not widely accepted by pilots)
The FW-190A (also by downthrottling) was better than either at low altitude and low speeds, while being very poor in high speed unsustained turns, especially to the right(!).
The Me-109G's inferiority in turns vs the FW-190A is recognized correctly by the RAE, but to an excessive extent.
After the first few months of the FW-190A's introduction, I think we can go with Russian pilot opinions on the way it was handled: "Experienced FW-190 pilots never use the vertical"...
In any case if you take comparative evaluations and "evaluate" them, the best are by the Germans, as are also front-line Russian observations, the worst are by the US (except that absolutely superb P-47D/FW-190A Italy front-line evaluation -linked above- made by
Front-Line US pilots,
not test pilots: A real masterpiece of its kind), with the UK being somewhere in the middle, and using these (the first two being perfectly consistent), a clear hierarchy becomes apparent if you correlate with thousands of combat accounts:
Best low speed sustained turn rate on the late-war Western European Front (P-38 excluded): FW-190A/P-47D Razorback (needle-tip prop) are both at the top (P-47D higher speed/FW-190A lower speed), then the Hurricane, then further out the Spitfire, then last the Me-109G and P-51 close to each other.
Later in the war the Bubbletop P-47D seems to drop back quite noticeably, as seem to do the later Spitfires.
Gaston