Pony talk

[Tempest123]

Okay, I have avoided this topic until now because I know it’s been overdone, and that it evokes a lot of emotion and pointless “FM is porked!” threads, and that prior to TD coming on the scene there was no one looking at the official FM’s of Il2. I was hoping to have an educated debate, or maybe an official explanation about why the P-51D acts the way it does in Il2. Partly because, in my opinion, and I’m sure the opinion of many others, the P-51D model in Il2 that doesn't reflect its real life counterpart.

The P-51C, P-51B and Mustang III all have a FM that seems to represent the aircraft and its strengths well, and they do well for themselves in combat, I really enjoy these aircraft. They are fast, reasonably manoeuvrable for a heavy fighter, have an abrupt high speed stall as the real P-51 did, yet they are clearly better than most of the other aircraft in the sim at high altitude.
However, the D model is tricky aircraft that is very prone to stalling and spinning. Now the P-51 was created partly to prove that NA could design an aircraft better than the P-40, however the P-40 in Il2 (although slower), is much more stable than the P-51D, and much better in a dogfight, and I bet *most* Il2 pilots would feel more confident in a P-40M than a P-51D in most cases. I know a P-51D is not a superlight dogfighter, but the P-51B’s and C’s are much better at fighting than the D.

There are 2 issues with the P-51D compared to the B and C, that I think cause the majority of problems:

1: Yaw and directional instability: This is very present in the D model, and not so much with B and C models. This means partly that the aircraft is hard to put on target, and will spin more readily than a P-51B or C.
2: Pitch over sensitivity: This means that high speed stalls, spins and black outs occur very suddenly in the P-51D compared to nearly every other aircraft, including the B and C models.

Both of these seem to be related to a CoG that is too far aft, are these problems related to the fuselage fuel tank being the last tank to drain? I don't know if Il2 models CoG changes with fuel, but the B and C drain the same way and their FM appears to not be affected.

When an AI P-51D goes up against nearly any other AI plane of its class, it will usually end up in flames, I know part of this is due to poor AI tactics, but if this was what it was like in real life, it never would have replaced nearly every other USAAF fighter at the end of the war, including the earlier P-51 models, and remained in service long after other WWII types where discontinued. In Il2 I would say it’s one of the trickiest american aircraft to fly, the only aircraft that I find worse for unpredictable handling is the P-63, which was not accepted into USAAF service in wide numbers. In Il2 it seems the P-51D has become a specialist’s aircraft, with special tactics to overcome its problems. In real life it was fairly free of vices and possessed good handling qualities with long range, which was why it was so widely adopted. For myself I’ve had to avoid creating historical missions with the P-51D, because for the most part they all get shot down. These are just my observations and I would be interested if anyone else has noticed the same problems.