Acceleration comparisons

[horseback]

Originally Posted by IceFire

The interesting bit about all of this was the initial discussion was centered on the notion that the Corsair was a very slow accelerating aircraft... but the charts show that it's actually quite impressive.

What the charts don't show is how much trim adjustment the F4U needs; you spend a lot of time pounding away at the elevator trim for nose down AND at the same time the aircraft's attitude/AOA moves down quite a bit, so that flying level at 270kph your crosshairs are pointed quite a bit higher than they are at 450.

This became very obvious when I started doing my tests at 100m, where I had hoped to use the horizon line for a reference instead of staring at the climb or altitude indicators and slowly going cross-eyed. The P-47 and Hellcat are much worse than the Corsair, while the IJN and IJA fighters don't seem to have this problem at all. In comparison to the US inventory, the Japanese fighters, while a bit slow, can be whipped around with a great deal of precision and confidence without burning up a lot of energy. If you get your American birds out of trim, you can't be sure where you'll end up, but you can be sure that you will have bled off a lot of your E in the process.

cheers

horseback