How will the Hawk 75 fly in game?

ElAurens · #1 10-05-2012, 12:05 AM

Been looking over the Army Air Corps test data, and it's interesting to note that the Army tested the P 36 A and C ballasted to or just over max gross weight, so I would assume that the published performance in their documents would (should?) be the worst they would perform. Are the French tests and Finnish data similar? Both the French and the Finns had good success with the H 75, against very different types of opposition.

Anyone know how the RAF Mohawks did in Burma vs. the Hayabusa? I'm having a hard time finding anything about them.

The US pilot evals say that the aircraft was stable and easy to get into trim, which is much different than the P 40. It's lighter engine installation perhaps being the reason here.

Just really curious how the game engine will sort out the Hawk.

JtD · #2 10-05-2012, 06:06 AM

The US weights are without the rear fuselage tank filled up. Also, the US birds have 1200hp due to 100 octane fuel being used, which was not the case with the export models. Finnish and RAF Hawks used 87 octane, and French data is also with 87 octane, so I suspect this was representative for service. Export Hawks also were somewhat heavier than at least the P-36A, due to more guns and ammo and other equipment being added. You'll end up with a 6600lb plane and 1000hp power maximum, and performance, in particular climb, is going to suffer accordingly.

There's a 10 page chapter in the Osprey P-36 Aces of WW2 book on Mohawk service in Burma.

The P-36 was more stable the the P-40 because it had less surface area and arm in front of the CoG - the long nose did screw up the aerodynamics quite a bit. With the change to the H87 model this problem got so bad, they decided to lengthen the fuselage 20" in order to get back to sufficiently good lateral stability.

IceFire · #3 10-06-2012, 04:10 AM

Not sure if this is on topic but I was looking around for Hawk 75 information (possible mission building opportunities) and the Finns seemed to get quite a bit of good use out of them. Mind you the Finns seemed to get excellent performance out of everything they flew which probably speaks to the pilots and their training levels moreso than the aircraft itself.

Some great information here:
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/en/hist/...ilEnglish.html

Seems like the Hawks did fairly well against I-16s and I-153s.

ElAurens · #4 10-06-2012, 06:12 AM

Thanks for the link IceFire, very interesting read.

JtD, I guess I totally missed that the rear tank was not filled. So max gross weight, as listed in the test documents, could be exceeded simply by filling the tanks? I'll have to ponder that.

I've always wondered how things would have worked out if Curtiss continued development with larger radial engines instead of the V 1710.