Hi there,
well I do not think that anyone here wants to be convinced by arguments. But I would still like to share something that might be considered interesting for those who wonder about the differences between FM, test results and pilot accounts.
I always loved the FW 190 but, alas, this love is not really returned in IL2. I find it much harder to fly than other aircraft. In the beginning I used to blame the game, since all German fighter pilots I heard in interviews (Rall, Krupinsky etc.) agreed that the FW was "much easier to fly, and especially to land". Naturally these are highly subjective personal points of view, but most pilots seem to have felt the same. Now, why don´t we (or maybe just bad pilots like me) experience this in the game? A possible answer is given in the book "Feindberührung" by the late Julius Meimberg. I don´t know whether this brilliant book was translated into English, so here I try to present some relevant paragraphs (translating as good as I can). Meimberg was a fighter pilot from ´39 to ´45, flying in France, Africa, France again and during the last month of the war in Germany. He scored 59 confirmed kills. After being severely wounded in summer ´41 he returned to the channel front May 4th 1942, and was brought up to date by his commanding officer Walter Oesau:
"But there were good news as well, and they all had the same name: Focke-Wulf Fw 190. ... Immediately (after its introduction) kill scores went up considerably, especially against the British Spitfire V, which is inferior to the FW 190 in all respects, with the possible exception of turn-fights."
May 5th Meimberg for the first time tests his 190 in flight:
" I climb up to my workplace ... and slide into the seat, which allows an almost lying position: thus the pilot is better equipped to endure the impact of forces during aerial combat. The cabin is narrow as in the Messerschmitt, but you do not feel cramped. On both sides of the seat there are panels with switches for landing gear, flaps, trim, radio, oxygen supply and the electrical fuses. Nothing of all this is protruding annoyingly into the cockpit (as in the BF 109); everything is arranged in such a way that, given some routine, it can be felt and operated blindly. Coarse mechanical contraptions are completely absent. Were in the Messerschmitt you had to turn big wheels and small cranks, here you push a switch and everything is done by a servomotor. Trim, gear, flaps - all electric.
This airplane, you see it with every detail, was constructed by people who fly themselves and know what a fighter-pilot needs most: a clear head for the fight. In accordance with this special care was given to engine management. On the left side of the cockpit, were I am used to three different operating levers for power, mixture and prop pitch, there is only one. According to its position and the atmospheric conditions a so-called Kommandogerät is optimizing the engine management. This disburdens the pilot enormously. He can fully concentrate on flying, aiming and shooting. In the air as well the Focke-Wulf is pure joy. Controlling is smooth and harmonic; its roll-rate is breathtaking and it dives like a stone. ..."
To illustrate his point Meimberg, little later in the book, quotes the very same passage by Alan Deere that was referred to earlier in this thread, not least because it was an encounter of Deere´s 403rd squadron with Meimbergs own 3./JG 2.
Meimberg himself shot down six Spitfires with his FW 190 A-2, nine more from August to December 1942 flying a Bf 109 G-1.
Now, all the things he praises most about the Focke-Wulf that make it superior or "easier to fly" than the Messerschmitt (the feeling of being save and comfortable and the ergonomics of the controls) is not and cannot be modelled in our beloved flight sim. Such a pity! But that´s what we have got.
(@ ElAurens: no idea if Meimberg liked Knackwurst, such as I do. But neither of us is or was a Nazi ... while Hitler was a vegetarian).
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