fw 190a5 flight model

[Herra Tohtori]

I have yet to understand why wing bending would significantly affect the turn capabilities of these aircraft. It's like saying you can't measure a flag pole's height by putting it flat on the ground, because then you're measuring its length instead...

Logical parse-errors aside, what I can glean from the thread is as follows:

Apparently, Gaston's claim is that since no wing bending tests have been done to measure dynamic wing loading on these aircraft, we can't make accurate predictions about their turn performance.

However, the fact of the matter is this:

-Wing bending can not decrease the aircraft's mass.
-Wing bending can not increase the maximum lift produced by the wing.

Latter point can be proven by

a) assuming that the wings do not deform significantly when aircraft is flown within the flight envelope (and over-g tends to permanently deform the airframe, often fatally)

and

b) in a dihedral setup of wings, when the wings bend upwards under load, the lift can only decrease as the total wing span decreases.


Since the aircraft's weight is not affected by any wing deformations (how could it?) and the wing deformations cannot significantly alter the lift capabilities of the wing to positive direction, it naturally follows that wing bending does not have significant effect on the aircraft's lift to weight ratio at different angles of attack.

A simple fact of rotational physics is that for an object to stay on a circular path, a centripetal force (lift) is required to accelerate (g-forces) the object's mass towards the centre of the circular path.

The equation for this force is simply F = ma and no nonsense about wing bending will change the fact that you need certain amount of LIFT to turn an aircraft of certain MASS at a certain rate and turn radius.

You can increase turn rate and decrease turn radius by either increasing lift, or decreasing mass. I think we can all agree that the weights of WW2 aircraft are fairly well documented, so this entire argument can be condensed to the following statement:

Gaston's claim is that the FW-190 Anton models produced significantly more lift than aerodynamical models and testing suggest, especially on low speeds (which, incidentally, is where any wing provides the least lift, if you know anything about aerodynamics).

What this magic mechanism would be, he neglects to comment on. The problem, here, is that aerodynamics is a very well documented science and going against it would require a bit more than cherry-picked pilot reports interpreted with a hefty bit of bias.

Additionally - and even more confusingly - since Gaston's claim is that this magical increase in lift at low speeds would have made the FW-190 a better low speed turn fighter than Spitfires and Bf-109's, it logically follows that this magic lift increase would not appear on other contemporary aircraft which the FW-190 is compared to.

Which, I need to impress, were not fundamentally different from the FW-190 regarding their wing profile. In fact majority of the WW2 fighter aircraft used vastly similar wing chord profiles, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who is familiar with the term "convergent evolution" - there were certain key designs that were used by almost everyone because they were the best, and most successful. The FW-190 was an advanced design, but it did not include Haunebu technology or any other occult magic to match it to anyone's interpretation of what its capabilities were.

It was a machine of finite, and variable capabilities, and the pilots who flew it and survived were capable of making it perform to its best. At certain flight envelopes, at certain times of the war, it would definitely outperform, outfly, even out-turn its adversaries. But a blanket statement that FW-190 Anton series were better at sustained low speed turns than Spitfires defies any logic and the combined might of applied sciences.

But if there's something I've learned in my time on the Internet, it is that you cannot change the mind of a true believer. The best you can hope for is to prevent them from converting others, and the way you do this is to expose their claims for the baloney they are.


Overall, this conversation should be analyzed with the help of this little video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUB4j0n2UDU