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Originally Posted by MaxGunz
Herra, you should have been around 8-10 years ago when the aero-engineers were posting actively. All the little details, the full 9 course meal was laid out and the result was more to disagree on!
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I have no doubt.
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As to pilot stories, just count the missing details starting with who was piloting the other plane(s) or how good were they? Don't forget that 'much' is not a detail! In the end, if they tell 10% then that is a very detailed story.
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Yep, exactly my point. It's unlikely, and unfair, to expect pilot accounts to be a viable source of
objective information, considering most anecdotes come from pilots who happened to survive multiple encounters with the enemy.
The dead men tell no tales of why their aircraft "failed" them while the survivors claim that you could outmaneuvre spitfires with FW-190's - a claim, I am certain, that was absolutely certain with regards to early FW-190 A versus Spitfire Mk.V's, but outmaneuvering... outflying... power, climb, dive speed, roll rate... it's not necessarily the same as "turning harder" (though that does help).
Fact is, ALL the aircraft in the war - were a product of their time, derivatives of same technology and engineering principles. Most of them could do the same things as the other, with small variations on how fast or how well or how hard it would do thing X, and it was up to the PILOTS to identify the strong points and weak points versus this or that aircraft, and then USE the strong points while AVOIDING the weak points against that particular aircraft. The pilots with good situational awareness, or the lucky ones who managed to gain enough experience to learn the basics, would usually survive longer and longer as their experience about their plane and the enemy planes increased.
I remember hearing that during the Battle of Britain, if you survived the first five sorties, your odds of surviving the whole war increased exponentially, and this is exactly why, in my opinion.
And now you have the surviving pilots telling how they out-turned the enemy plane, so you would likely find anecdotes about ANY plane having out-turned ANY enemy plane. Question is whether the enemy plane was turning as hard as they could. After all, the bandit you don't see is the one that gets you. As long as you can maintain visual contact on an enemy, you can usually evade pretty effectively even if you are flying "inferior" aircraft - either in energy, angles, or both aspects.
But when you're not sure where the enemy is, and you're trying to locate them, you don't necessarily turn quite as hard as you could because you like being able to see and breathe and turn your head without breaking your neck... that's when the FW-190 that has your Spitfire in your sights will "out-turn" you, maybe?
I could think of a myriad more reasons why pilot accounts, interesting stories as they are, should only be viewed as evidence of why that pilot happened to survive the war, and not necessarily so much related on the aircraft they flew on. Then, flight valuation test data and performance data of engines and airframes from the most reliable sources remains the best option...
More anecdotes: Finnish Air Force pilots tend to have thought almost universally that there was not much difference between the turning ability of Bf-109 G-2 and G-6 - only if you had wing cannon gondolas, the handling of the G-6 would be significantly reduced...
...and the leading Finnish ace, the highest scoring non-German ace (Eino Ilmari Juutilainen) finished the war with 94 confirmed aerial combat victories in 437 sorties, without having
ever been hit by enemy aircraft. He also never lost a wingman.
Naturally, from this anecdote we can deduct that the Bf-109 G-6 and by extension all the other late Gustavs are undermodeled as far as their turning ability goes!
