Quote:
Originally Posted by Furio
PE_Tihi,
Your reasoning makes sense to me. Where I disagree is about power (and power loading). In my opinion, max power time limitations have mainly to do with long term engine life. In combat situations, pilots used all they had, as long as the combat lasted (which usually was a very short time).
I agree with you that 21 m/s are way too much climb for the poor old I16. However, I have some doubt about the 109F having an “immensely” superior climb rate. According to my sources, its power loading was 2.11 kg/hp, not much better than the Emil’s 2.21 (or 2.27, according to my sources), and almost equal to a Type 28 at max continuous power (2.15, according to you). By comparison, an I16 type 24 (four gun model), weighing 1880 kg, had a power loading of 2,02 at maximum continuous power (930 hp), and an impressive 1,7 at max power for two minutes.
All of these numbers, anyway, should be regarded with some suspicion. Average operational planes, flown by average pilots, rarely reached peak performance.
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Lets simplify the climb performance factors like this:
Thrust (engine power), braked by the drag, lifts the plane weight high.
So talking about the power / weight ratio only, we are forgetting about the drag completely. Just how high the drag of the I16 was- plane flew a top speed of about 465 km/h while the similarily powered 109E flew at 555 km/h. Big difference- 90 km/h is due to the higher drag of the russian plane.
Btw, just found data that Emil could climb at over 16 m/s with the 5 min boost ( Russian tests ) and 16,7 m with 30 min boost is what the German plane manual says. So Oleg may be right with 17.5 m/s for the 5 min boost power.
So you see, in spite of its better power-to-weight, I16 climbs a nice bit slower with it's 14,5 m/s. That is due to drag.
109F not only had a more powerfull engine than emil, but is much refined aerodynamically at the same time- parasite drag has been reduced. It 's climb is quoted at 20 m/s , and this number has been used by Oleg, too.