[horseback]

Originally Posted by Woke Up Dead

I agree with this, though I admit I know nothing about how the real life Mustangs flew.

What exactly is wrong with the way the P-51 flies? It needs a lot of rudder and elevator trim adjustments, but no more than a lot of American planes or Yaks or Spits in the game. It stalls violently and somewhat unexpectedly, but so do P-40s, a lot of USN planes, I-16's, Hurricanes, Tempests. It shakes when firing, but again, it's not the worst plane for this. And unlike those other planes, it's pretty much untouchable when flown well. The Mustang III can even turn-fight with Bf-109s from 1943 or later.

When I get into a groove in a P-51 online, or when I see an even better pilot in that plane on the opposing team, I wonder where the complaining about the FM is coming from. So seriously, without snark or sarcasm; what would you like to be able to do in the P-51 that you can't now?

First, it needs a lot of rudder and elevator trim adjustments; this is in direct contradiction of both British and American wartime pilot and test reports. These were not propaganda, because these reports were part of the training regimen and they are confirmed by the personal testimonies of the men who flew them who are still with us. The oft-cited Anderson account is from one fight in thin air at high altitudes and at often low indicated airspeeds at the extreme ends of his climbs at which point, yes, the Mustang has higher stick forces and needs a bit of trim adjustment. There are literally thousands of other pilot accounts that tell you that the Mustang was eminently controllable and needed minimal trim adjustment in all but the most extreme conditions. Most WWII fighters tended to have high stick and rudder forces at low speeds and high throttle; most of them were designed to be at their best at somewhat higher speeds than 200 kph.

Go to Zeno's Warbird Drivein and watch the Mustang video here:
http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com/P-51.html

It's a training film; air forces don't lie to their pilots about the aircraft they are going to fly into combat (at least not the ones that win). Pay attention, and you'll hear them say that it doesn't need a lot of trim adjustment through most of the normal speed range. There's also a few comments on the stall characteristics, which say clearly that the Mustang had a fairly predictable stall warning in both normal and accelerated stalls, and that the stall was easily recovered from by the standards of the time. I have more than one pilot's account that confirms this, so maybe the modern pilots who fly the restored warbirds have a more limited context, or they are comparing the Mustang to slower and lighter modern general aviation prop planes.

Find a copy of America's Hundred Thousand and read the sections on trimming for each American fighter (I've posted them on these forums at least once); the Mustang's section is full of superlatives, not because it was easy to trim, but because it hardly needed to be trimmed at all. The in-game Mustang requires at least a couple of trim clicks each in rudder and elevator for any change in speed of 10 kph; how does that square with contemporary pilot complaints about the P-40 needing trim adjustment for speed changes of as little as 10 mph (that's 16 kph, or more than one and one half times less often than the in-game Mustang)?

The P-40 was well known to be a couple of orders of magnitude worse for trim demands than any other US fighter, and the Soviets got several thousand examples, but the in-game Mustang, which was considered the second least trim hungry aircraft in the US inventory after the P-38, (and that one has some in-game issues too in terms of the amount of elevator trim) is worse, even after the recent changes to the Warhawk's FM.

Keep in mind that we are talking in the context of high powered propeller driven fighters in the 1940s, not light general aviation of the early 21st century; of all the fighters that have survived to this day, none is more numerous or more thoroughly documented than the P-51 and comparing contemporary pilot evaluations of any aircraft nearly 70 years old to virtual aircraft modelled on factory data and pilots' reports from seventy years ago may give you the wrong idea. This isn't anything like your Daddy's Cessna.

By the standards of the high performance taildraggers of WWII, the Mustang was a remarkably easy aircraft to master and fly; only the Spitfire was considered superior in this regard among Allied fighters. The Mustang had a reputation for doing what the pilot wanted it to do and for doing it more precisely than the pilot's skills would warrant. In the game, it takes a lot of effort to master, not least because the instruments are slow to give you accurate information --remember, a pilot in an actual airplane has the sensual inputs of his inner ear, the pressure on his backside from the seat, and at least 180 degree range of vision--in the game, you are forced to rely on what the sim gives you--and if you're flying a P-51, the sim lies shamelessly.

Your 'ball' ricochets around and takes precious seconds to settle the moment you deviate from straight and level flight, the climb & dive indicator is a good second and a half behind the altimeter, the artificial horizon is hard to read in Wide view and it seems just a bit offset, which makes it hard to detect whether your wings are actually level, and at the same time, if you're accelerating or slowing down, you have to constantly be hammering at your trim buttons or your stick will soon be all the way back or all the way forward as you struggle to keep it on track.

Compare the cockpit displays of the Japanese fighters (which in real life used mostly license built copies of older American designs) in the game, and you will see that the display is faster to respond and much, much more accurate under the same circumstances. German and Soviet cockpits are similarly advantaged, in my opinion, although not quite to the same degree.

People who have mastered the in-game Mustang and can actually shoot accurately with it have done so after many hours of effort and frustration; they have learned which cockpit displays are accurate and when to ignore them, how to anticipate the trim requirements and the right time to shoot.

I won't go into the DMs, because that is a contentious mess; I will point out that the Mustang was a typical American fighter, and it could only be called 'delicate' when compared to the P-47 or the Hellcat. Period. Compared to any European or Asian design, it was a big, heavy and rugged aircraft. It could take a lot of punishment, but the game permits some remarkably high hit percentages in the forward parts of the fuselage, which rarely took the same sort of hits in real life from what I've seen of the historical record. And of course, the AI never miss that engine or fuel tanks from any range...ask yourself if maybe someone decided that it was 'fairer' to make the American planes just or 'almost' as vulnerable as the smaller, more lightly built a/c from the rest of the world in the interests of 'game play'...

Which leads us to gunshake: I think it excessive, considering the weight of fire of four or six .50s is less than that of the much lighter FW-190A or Bf 109 with 20mm gunpods. Again, that is a judgement call, but all of the judgments seem to be going in one direction...

The speed is there; it's well documented, so taking that away is practically impossible. I even suspect that the acceleration is somewhat higher than it should be, given that the P-38 should be better at all alts in that regard, and it isn't. Maybe they're just going by the general impression, or maybe I haven't figured out how to squeeze the quickness out of the Lightning that should be there. Speed is very important, and it gives you lots of advantages, but the in-game Mustang has a lot of its other well documented historical virtues erased or hobbled.

cheers

horseback