Quote:
Originally Posted by horseback
The loss of maneuverability was markedly disproportionate to the increased speeds, and American tests of the recovered 'Aleutian' Zero in the fall/winter of 1942 revealed that the stick became uncomfortably stiff at 200 kts and the faster you were going, the more difficult it became to exert fine control; I merely pointed out that it would be even more difficult for smaller men to handle, and it gets blown into some sort of racial slur.
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I see how your statements could be percieved as racism, but I don't think they were.
But I fail to see how the averagely bigger, stronger pilot
necessarily has an advantage over the smaller one. He MAY have, but if the construction of the cockpit is optimised for the smaller pilot he MAY even be at a disadvantage. We would have to put two or more test candidates into a Zero pit and see what stick force they could exert to be absolutely sure.
And even then I don't see the point - there are many other abilities that I'd like to see in a fighter pilot before considering physical ability, e.g.
eyesight, advanced combat maneuvres, team tactics, marksmanship.
Just imagine that the all the rookie Japanese fighter pilots in 1943 would look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his best days - but still have the same lack of training - would they have done any better?
And then imagine they all had top notch eyesight and 5000h of training - they could have looked like Homer Simpson and still would have had an impact.
A certain level of physical fitness is needed though, a fat astmathic will never be a fine fighter pilot - no matter how keen his eyesight is.
And I'm glad IL2 does not model different countries pilots differently - that would just open a can of very slimy worms.
Could be interesting to randomly have different pilot models - as selectable difficulty option -and the AI would be affected, too.