Request tacticle help for USN planes

[horseback]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

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.

That wasn't my complaint-American test pilots had the same issues in captured Zeros at those speeds and made it part of their reports; that's how Allied fighter pilots knew what to look for. I merely mentioned in passing that if it was harder to roll for a fit, healthy guy, it would be that much tougher on a guy 30% smaller who was at a frontline base in Rabaul or New Guinea and had been missing a few meals of late.

Fighter pilots in WWII were generally the cream of the crop in almost all nations; you had to be a near perfect specimen before you even entered training, and if you weren't bright enough to pass the the classes and capable of accepting military discipline, you were washed out before you ever got into a cockpit. That shouldgo without saying.

We are moving far afield from the original issue; the real-life fact that the Zero’s maneuverability dropped off at higher speeds due to increasingly high stick forces as speeds went further past 200 kts indicated. It dropped off so much that the phenomenon became quickly recognizable to experienced Allied pilots, who then were able to exploit that weakness by keeping their speed above 200kts/225mph. It was not a matter of ‘greater strength’ in Western pilots because Western pilots who tested captured Zeros all noted the same high stick forces and also could not achieve the kind of precise or tight maneuvers in it at the higher speeds that it demonstrated at speeds just a few knots slower. It was a matter of Allied designs having lighter ailerons at higher speeds, because Western design philosophy placed a higher premium on speed and firepower than on low speed turn and climb/acceleration.

If the AI pilots all have the ‘same’ strength AND the high stick forces were part of the A6M series’ FM, one could reasonably expect the Zeros’ high G maneuvering to drop off at higher speeds and their recovery from dives to be mainly in a straight line until their excess speed was burned off. But they don’t, just as AI gunners in some planes are much more accurate than AI gunners in other aircraft for reasons unknown. In an offline campaign, it is that much harder to use the tactics used successfully in real life when your AI wingman bugs off and the AI aircraft you are fighting don’t exhibit the sort of limitations that the aircraft that they are supposed to be modeled on had.

cheers

horseback