Just curious about the P-51 FM

[Black_Sage29]

People are quick to discredit Vets on the history channel..but guess what...they were there, they experienced it..so they have way more credit than most. The History Channel just exaggerates the Vet's account

I fly P-51 all the time, as well as P-47 and get kills all the time without the spray and pray. You need to be confident and smooth in a P-51..most that talk bad about it would get killed fairly quickly in it lol, it's not for rookies


The History Channel is exaggerating an overly-aggressive snap-roll at 10:40. Listening to the Vet, he tried to snap-roll ( like what he did earlier in the video ) and stalled too much ( thats why he fell 2,000feet) and ruddered out safely

and though snap-stalling your plane would count as a desperate measure in my book, they got away. What this show makes from these pilots testimonies -verbally and visually - that's the real problem. Every 08/15 maneuvre is "daredevil death-defiyng whatnot" and every maneuvre the enemy does is a mistake or worse. And the visual representation is even worse - some of the moves they show would test the limits of a heli pilots skills....and of course anything hit by .50 cal fire insta-explodes in reality.

Your right, History Channel exaggerates. Snap-Stalling is not a desperate measure though. It's a smart maneuver especially when the enemy plane is more maneuverable and turning is out of the question.

When your flying fast in a P-51 and you snap-roll, you'll stall a little, but you still have a bit of control of the plane, you just rudder the other way and come out of the stall...now the bandit is out in front or about to overshoot. You have to be gentle with it though cause you could lose control and stall out all the way


Also I've had enemy bandit planes explode from .50 cal fire in game. Rare but possible. You pretty much have to be a marksmen with the .50cals in game. American planes are way different from Soviet/German/and Japanese planes in game..it's harder and thats for sure

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by Black_Sage29

People are quick to discredit Vets on the history channel..but guess what...they were there, they experienced it..so they have way more credit than most. The History Channel just exaggerates the Vet's account

I fly P-51 all the time, as well as P-47 and get kills all the time without the spray and pray. You need to be confident and smooth in a P-51..most that talk bad about it would get killed fairly quickly in it lol, it's not for rookies


The History Channel is exaggerating an overly-aggressive snap-roll at 10:40. Listening to the Vet, he tried to snap-roll ( like what he did earlier in the video ) and stalled too much ( thats why he fell 2,000feet) and ruddered out safely




Your right, History Channel exaggerates. Snap-Stalling is not a desperate measure though. It's a smart maneuver especially when the enemy plane is more maneuverable and turning is out of the question.

When your flying fast in a P-51 and you snap-roll, you'll stall a little, but you still have a bit of control of the plane, you just rudder the other way and come out of the stall...now the bandit is out in front or about to overshoot. You have to be gentle with it though cause you could lose control and stall out all the way


Also I've had enemy bandit planes explode from .50 cal fire in game. Rare but possible. You pretty much have to be a marksmen with the .50cals in game. American planes are way different from Soviet/German/and Japanese planes in game..it's harder and thats for sure

Vets are great resources for just about everything ... but we have to discount and be skeptical in appropriate places. One's recollection of events tends to be skewed without consciously realizing it. Detectives interviewing witnesses of crimes have to be very careful with witness testimony because even when they "were there", peoples memories are notoriously unreliable. Stress and adrenaline and all of that stuff interfere heavily... its amazing what we make up to make the whole situation make sense.

It still doesn't mean that we should discount or discredit witness testimony altogether but it should be taken in context in my opinion.

I'm sure what happened in the end is what happened... no question from me there, but the extent to which it happened is suspect. I, like others have already said, suspect that he snap stalled it and when he recovered was lucky enough to be in a quick firing position. It felt like what History Channel did there but it likely didn't look anywhere near as well coordinated as that!

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Black_Sage29

Your right, History Channel exaggerates. Snap-Stalling is not a desperate measure though. It's a smart maneuver especially when the enemy plane is more maneuverable and turning is out of the question.
When your flying fast in a P-51 and you snap-roll, you'll stall a little, but you still have a bit of control of the plane, you just rudder the other way and come out of the stall...now the bandit is out in front or about to overshoot. You have to be gentle with it though cause you could lose control and stall out all the way

And that's why I would rate it as desperate. The risk of totally losing control is there. And its desperate because in the faster less maneuverable plane you should not be in that pilots position.

[EJGr.Ost_Caspar]

The interesting question (and initial one) is, what happens, if you give too much ruder in direction of the turning - in Il-2?

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by EJGr.Ost_Caspar

The interesting question (and initial one) is, what happens, if you give too much ruder in direction of the turning - in Il-2?

In the direction of turn? Nothing much really. It kind of hits a likit and then the plane may, depend on the type, stall and sometimes flops out of a turn. The interesting bit is when you slam counter rudder while rolling into a skid. In many planes, P-51 included, you can get a negative torque roll that is very difficult to follow. I use it to evade attacks online. Only partially effective as it bleeds a tom of speed.

[MaxGunz]

Especially in a P-39.

[JtD]

I once saw a documentary on a WW2 battle and it started with the offical, documented weather reports from both sides on the day of the battle. Both were in agreement that it was overcast with occasional rain. Note that this was the report, not the forecast. They then asked all veterans interviewed for that show how they remembered the weather, they averaged out on sunny with some clouds, each being different from each other. Imho this was a perfect illustration how memory and facts can differ when it comes to detail.

I don't think that the documentaries are a bad thing. I like to listen to the people telling what they experienced, first had accounts are almost always worth the time spent listening. Also, for the casual viewer, it is this kind of show that generates interest in the WW2 flight sim genre. Better to have some facts wrong about the air war in WW2, then to not know that there was an air war at all.

[horseback]

The Il-2 Mustang is not all that comparable to the real thing in the context of the sim. I have to agree that it is very accurate on a one to one scale to the real Mustang, given the constraints of the game engine, but compared to the other aircraft depicted in the simulation, it is way too touchy to trim and control. If we were talking pictures, the Mustang is photo-real while the other (especially Axis) aircraft are done in a graphic novel style. Part of this may be due to what I perceive as the way the game was optimized for Force feedback sticks, but the Mustang's notoriously light stick forces should result in much less demand for re-trimming at the slightest change in airspeed or AOA, not more.

Compare it to the P-40, which is also in the game. The P-40 in real life is always referred to as a handful; the pilot has to be alert and ahead of the aircraft at all times and the rudder trim wheel is constantly in play. America's Hundred thousand devotes several paragraphs to the section about trimming the P-40, and makes it clear that trimming every other aircraft in the US inventory was quite easy (and predictable) by comparison.

Let's remember that the P-40 was basically a P-36 with an inline Allison crammed onto its nose. It was a compromise design. The Mustang, designed almost five years after the basic design for the P-36/40 series was completed, was a much more refined and tractable aircraft. It should have been, given that its design was targeted at out-performing the P-40 with the same basic engine. 'Bumping it up' to the (also) inline Merlin was a much less traumatic surgery than replacing a radial engine with a heavier inline powerplant; the Merlin powered Ponies needed more minding in some respects, but the consensus was that it was still much more easily trimmed than any model of the Hawk 81/87 series, and generally more ...predictable, if not quite as 'slam-bang' at low speed aerobatics.

The P-40 in the game is much easier to trim and fly accurately than the Mustang, which is simply turning the historical record on its head; most pilots who flew the Mustang in combat also flew either the P-39 or the P-40 in training or earlier combat tours, and all of them report that the Mustang was better in every way that mattered--it was easier to fly, not just faster, better at higher alts and longer ranged.

This is particularly egregious when we remember that the Soviets got a few thousand Lend-Lease Warhawks and thoroughly tested & documented examples of every sub-type at TsAGI, which Oleg and his team used as their primary source of flight data for most of the aircraft initially depicted in the sim. One can only assume that the P-39 and P-40 are accurately depicted compared to the other aircraft of that era modeled in the sim, that their faults and strengths are in proper proportion to those of the Bf 109F/G, the FW 190A and the Japanese fighters. The Mustang and most of the late-war US fighters are not. You can claim that they are more accurate in comparison to the real aircraft using recent data from actual flying examples, but it is a bit silly to claim that they are accurate in comparison to aircraft that have not been flown and measured in 70 years.

You can de-bunk and question the memories of an old man, but he was there, doing things that 99 out of a hundred of us could never do on the best days of our lives. Maybe, just maybe, there is a bit of truth in what he was saying.

cheers

horseback

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by horseback

You can de-bunk and question the memories of an old man, but he was there, doing things that 99 out of a hundred of us could never do on the best days of our lives. Maybe, just maybe, there is a bit of truth in what he was saying.

With respect... I don't think any of us are going to say that this was a fabrication or a lie or anything like that. But human memory is notoriously unreliable... I'd rather go with the test results and that type of more objective (it's not 100% here) than some crazy move that a veteran pulled, that worked (again, no denying that), as the basis for a FM change. There isn't anything to go on there anyways...

What you say about the P-40/P-51 trim thing is true. I've heard the P-40 required a lot of trim to get it right while the P-51 was easier in this regard. Test pilot and combat pilot reports corroborate that. So it's not 100% right in the sim... definitely not. But I've looked over data long and hard and I'm not sure what's wrong either. The other thing that you'll notice is that 4.12 features an updated FM for the P-40 and some of that trim stuff will probably come into play.

[MaxGunz]

Originally Posted by JtD

I once saw a documentary on a WW2 battle and it started with the offical, documented weather reports from both sides on the day of the battle. Both were in agreement that it was overcast with occasional rain. Note that this was the report, not the forecast.

Just a possibility; Rain has a ceiling, if the battle was above the clouds or was met in a place where it wasn't socked in? Even so, they should have started out in wet overcast conditions.