fw 190a5 flight model

[theOden]

Love your post Gaston, made my sunday breakfast haha

[JG301_HaJa]

+1 on that

[lonewulf]

Gaston, while I admire your revisionist zeal, your conclusions about the 190 are simply wrong.

Your analysis of the Al Deere incident is a case in point. There is no doubt that Al Deere was caught out by the 190s that day and in the resulting bloodbath lost a number of his squadron mates. However, it had nothing to do with 'turning circle'. On this occasion the 190s bounced his Mk Vs and then used their superior speed and climb to decimate the hapless formation. It is true that the attack was sustained in nature and that the pilots in the 190s demonstrated great confidence in their aircraft; but that was more to do with their ability to outperform the Spitfires (in everything BUT sustained turn) and to enter or break off the combat at will. The 109 Fs in use at this time were not in a position to do this, of course, as they had little or no performance margin over the Mk 5 and typically did not linger in combats with Spitfires for any longer than necessary. At this point is the war most of Germany's fighter force had been moved to the Eastern Front. With relatively few fighters left in France, the LW tried to offset their numerical inferiority in the west by strictly limiting the engagements between its fighter force and Fighter Command.

The advantage that the 190 had over the Spit soon to evaporate away with the introduction of the Mk 9.

[CWMV]

Ya I'm calling you info BS.
What the pilots say about their own and enemy aircraft ate of NO VALUE when discussing FM's.
Combat is a very emotionally charged event, and what you remember and what actually happened are two very, very different things. The fact that the body and mind are experiencing stressors unlike anything else in the annals of human experience make any recollection of combat events suspect from the get go.

Then there is the comparison to soviet fighters. You mean the same soviet fighters that are overmodeled in nearly every aspect? This has been accepted by a large percentage of the community since day 1. No point in the comparison.

Now compare them in a standardized test environment, against well known and documented competitors, and you get the best data. Hence the navy tests.
If it couldn't out turn a Corsair or Hellcat then it isn't much of a turn fighter.

So if you have something other than tests against air raft that we know are porked, or the recollections of old men, post it.

[Gaston]

Originally Posted by lonewulf

Gaston, while I admire your revisionist zeal, your conclusions about the 190 are simply wrong.

Your analysis of the Al Deere incident is a case in point. There is no doubt that Al Deere was caught out by the 190s that day and in the resulting bloodbath lost a number of his squadron mates. However, it had nothing to do with 'turning circle'. On this occasion the 190s bounced his Mk Vs and then used their superior speed and climb to decimate the hapless formation. It is true that the attack was sustained in nature and that the pilots in the 190s demonstrated great confidence in their aircraft; but that was more to do with their ability to outperform the Spitfires (in everything BUT sustained turn) and to enter or break off the combat at will..

No doubt?

Where's your evidence that the battle that day happened the way you claim? Do you have other accounts of that particular day?

My bet is that you don't, and that you simply placate a meaning that is not present in a single word in there...

The fact that he contrasts "a quick pass and away" 109 tactics with "never before did the Hun stay and fight it out as these Focke-Wulf pilots were doing" illustrates clearly what he meant: STAYING means you don't build up speed but fight at low speeds. And that means mostly staying on the horizontal.

If you want to ignore that, then you are just reading what you want into it: He clearly states the Me-109 tactics were a contrast to the FWs, in perfect concordance with the Russian observation of how they always interacted in 1943 (up to Boddenplatte in January 1945: Read any of the "Boddenplatte" accounts as well)...

Remember Rall's quote: "The Me-109 a floret (straight and edgeless), the FW-190 a sabre (curved and used in curved motion)"

He also said: "Rechlin told us the FW-190A out-turned the Me-109F, however, I could out-turn it":

Like many Eastern Front Me-109 pilots, he was clinging to a false concept of how they compared: By dropping the throttle it was probably true he could reverse the tables... But then the 190 could do it also, if the pilot knew about the counter-intuitive "trick" of downthrottling permanently in sustained low speed turns...

Another 109 pilot thought the same wrongheaded thing, just like simmers today...:

Quote from an Oseau demise witness (Jagdwaffe, "Defence of the Reich 1944-45" Eric Forsyth, p.202): "Many times I told Oseau the FW-190A was better than the Bf-109G........ Each turn became tighter and his Bf-109 (Me-109G-6AS) lost speed, more so than his (P-51D) adversaries. He was probably shot down near the ground"

(Implying this would not have happened with the FW-190A. BTW, period tests have show the D-9 was a much inferior fighter in horizontal turns to the A, and indeed the D was not used in the same way)

Rechlin quote: "The FW-190A out-turns and out-rolls the Me-109 at any speed"

General US 8th Air Force fighter pilot opinion was that the FW-190A turned tighter than the Me-109. Just ask any veteran P-51 pilot the next time you see one...

Osprey "Duel" #39 "La-5/7 vs FW-190", Eastern Front 1942-45:

P.69 "Enemy FW-190A pilots never fight on the vertical plane.---The Messerschmitt posessed a greater speed and better maneuverability in a vertical fight"

P.65 Vladimir Orekov: "An experienced Fw-190A pilot practically never fights in the vertical plane"

Weirner Steiz: "The 190 was a much better aircraft than the 109: You could curve it"

I don't know, is there something like a trend here?

Originally Posted by lonewulf

The advantage that the 190 had over the Spit soon to evaporate away with the introduction of the Mk 9.

You want side-by-side comparisons by pilot opinion of their own aircrafts?:

AFDU

Air Fighting Development Unit, R.A.F. Station DUXFORD

Report No 46 on Tactical Trials -SPITFIRE IX



From 26 April 1942

Manoeuvrability

20......... The Spitfire IX was compared with a Spitfire VC for turning circles and dog-fighting at heights between 15,000 and 30,000 feet. At 15,000 feet there was little to choose between the two aircraft although the superior speed and climb of the Spitfire IX enabled it to break off its attack by climbing away and then attacking in a dive. This manoeuvre was assisted by the negative 'G' carburettor, as it was possible to change rapidly from climb to dive without the engine cutting. At 30,000 feet there is still little to choose between the two aircraft in manoeurvrability, but the superiority in speed and climb of the Spitfire IX becomes outstanding."

--------------------------

So the Spit Mk IX doesn't out-turn the Spit Mk V, by the reckoning of its own pilots....

Furthermore, I have it directly from a mechanic at the "Planes of Fame" flying museum that the Spitfire Mk V they have been flying for decades always turns faster than the best the Spitfire Mk IX can do: Exactly what I would expect...

Despite those contradicting Russian turn times (17.5 to 18.8 sec, but all of these Russian figures don't seem very indicative of anything to me), there is no evidence the Spit Mk IX turns any faster than the Mk V, and considerable evidence to the contrary...

In the above AFDU quote, the emphasis is on Mk IX vertical performance, diving and zooming, and in actual combat the Spitfire Mk IX could do sharp high speed turns, but could not survive in close-in slow speed dogfighting, just as John Weir says, and if you've read actual combat accounts you will see the Spitfire IX always use dive and zoom, while the FW-190 always used horizontal turns...

The Mk V was such a poor turn-fighter in Russian hands they removed the outer guns to try to lighten it, but it had little effect:

Russian opinion of the Spitfire (Mk V): It is unsuitable for prolonged horizontal combat (meaning short unsustained horizontal combat is probably better), and it is excellent at combat on the vertical plane... In "Le Fana de l'Aviation" #496 p. 40: " Les premiers jours furent marqués par des échecs dus à une tactique de combat périmée dans le plan horizontal, alors que le Spitfire était particulièrement adapté au combat dans le plan vertical."

Translation: "The Spitfire failed in horizontal fighting, but was particularly adapted to vertical fighting"

In that same article, the Soviets even tried to remove the outer guns to improve the Spitfire's turn performance, to no avail...

Even the Spitfire Mk V was completely hopeless in prolonged low-speed turns against the FW-190A (just like John Weir says), and bear in mind it DOES turn faster than the Mk IX (same thing or even worse vs the Mk XIIs and XIVs):



Quote: "Opposite sides of an ever diminishing circle... I asked the Spitfire for all she had... It was just a matter of time and he would have me in his sights..."

Also, Johnny Johnson opines here the FW-190A turned better than the Me-109... Hey, this article was just after the war, and I wasn't there to wisper in his ear you know!

Gray Stenborg, 23 September 1944 (Spitfire Mk XII): "On looking behind I saw a FW-190 coming up unto me. I went into a terribly steep turn to the left, but the FW-190 seemed quite able to stay behind me. He was firing at 150 yards-I thought "this was it"-when all of a sudden I saw an explosion near the cockpit of the FW-190, upon which it turned on its back."

S/L J. B. Prendergast of 414 Squadron recorded in his Combat Report for 2 May 1945 (Mk XIV vs FW-190A): "I saw my No. 2’s burst hitting the water--------The E/A being attacked by my No. 2 did a steep orbit and my No. 2 being unable to overtake it broke away."




Just for laugh, try finding ONE counter-example without steep high speed dives just before a single harsh 360° turn, or not above 20 000 ft....: Try counter-examples with multiple turns down low... Good luck!

And there is a very easy way to prove me (and almost all WWII pilots) wrong: Show me in-flight wing-flexing strain gauge data that shows the wingloading really does match the "calculated" values... So far I have found only wing bending tests on the ground...

The reality is that for these old machines it was never done in-flight...

You guys are simply incapable of seeing there is virtually no first hand combat experience that things work the way theory (and thus simulations)says they do: I have hundreds of P-47 combat accounts where the P-47 at low altitude and low speeds reverses in horizontal turns a tailing Me-109 in 3-4 360°turns or less: A big fat ZERO the other way around: Just how many to ZERO would it take?

Can you find ONE example here of a Me-109 out-turning a P-47?:

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.o...r-reports.html

In right side turns they were more equal: One account does show some P-47/Me-109 parity in late 1943 against probably a sleeker G-2 in a prolonged right hand diving spiral. The P-47 then wins in a left hand diving spiral...

I defy anyone to find in this link above (600+ P-47 combat accounts) a single 1944 account of a P-47 having the slightest trouble beating in any kind of sustained multiple 360 turns the Me-109G, or even taking more than five 360° turns to reverse a tailing 109...

Yes at very high speed there is one Me-109 that briefly beats the P-47 in turns at very high speeds: The Me-109's wings then immediately break off... Not low-speed I would think....

Read these accounts, and see the obvious nothing you are clinging to... I think a six year old could see the light...

Gaston

[lonewulf]

My information about the fight between No 403 Canadian Squadron and I and II/JG 26 on 2 June 1942 comes from Mick Spick's 1996 book entitled, Luftwaffe Fighter Aces

If that account is correct, Al Deere's squadron (he was a NZer of course, not a Canadian) was first attacked from the rear at high speed by a single staffel and, as the Canadians turned to engage, they were then attacked from above and through cloud by two more staffeln, and then again from above by the whole gruppe. In essence Al Deere was compelled to engage the first attack which was about to overtake his formation, and then when he turned, he was flattened by the 190's waiting above. Tactics, and the speed advantage of the 190, won the day for the Germans.

I used to be a bit like you in that I was always trying to reconcile the IL-2 190 with the historical record. The IL-2 190 just never seemed to be as good as I expected. In truth I think the 190 enjoyed a brief window of superiority in 1942 when it was fast enough to dominate the Mk5. I also think that in part, this happy time' has quite a bit to do with the German's ability to fight the war over France on their terms, and to engage Fighter Command when and if the circumstances were favourable. Once the speed and climb advantage of the 190 was equaled or exceeded by the Mk 9, the contest between the two aircraft was much more equal.

[Gaston]

Originally Posted by lonewulf

My information about the fight between No 403 Canadian Squadron and I and II/JG 26 on 2 June 1942 comes from Mick Spick's 1996 book entitled, Luftwaffe Fighter Aces

If that account is correct, Al Deere's squadron (he was a NZer of course, not a Canadian) was first attacked from the rear at high speed by a single staffel and, as the Canadians turned to engage, they were then attacked from above and through cloud by two more staffeln, and then again from above by the whole gruppe. In essence Al Deere was compelled to engage the first attack which was about to overtake his formation, and then when he turned, he was flattened by the 190's waiting above. Tactics, and the speed advantage of the 190, won the day for the Germans.

I used to be a bit like you in that I was always trying to reconcile the IL-2 190 with the historical record.

Simply consider that the gross mistmatch of all flight sims with the historical record is [B]not[/] the result of ignoring flight physics theory...

The mismatch comes from precisely the fact that they all followed current flight physics to the letter (not a hard thing to do), and it simply illustrates perfectly how wrong our basic flight physics assumptions are for these types of aircrafts (which I believe have specific characteristics compared to jet fighters)...


Your account is very fragmentary for a fight that involved 8 British losses (which is quite a big fight, even in those days).

There is no difference in the tactics in your quote with what he describes being the tactics of the Me-109s (the whole point of my quote).

The whole point he makes is that he observed something different from the FW-190s that day, specifying that the difference was related to the fact that Me-109s usually feared the Spitfire's turning circle, and this is not apparent from the brief description you have: Ie, it is not the same aircrafts that hit them twice, but another group of FW-190s.

There is really not much of an element of "staying" in the fight in the more detailed account you have... In addition, the FW-190 didn't outclimb the Spitfire V by much, especially with its engine de-rated by the Luftwaffe at the time...

As an interesting side note, the same Al Deere reacted in this way when he was told the Spitfire had a superior turning radius to the FW-190A (from a captured example):

"Well turning doesn't win battles."

This is a rather cryptic statement which is commonly interpreted as meaning most "real world" fights involved diving and zooming, not turning...

However, contrary to the received wisdom, the reality of much WWII combat, if you read a large number of accounts, is that the wing-mounted guns have a convergence point, and thus are not even designed for dive and zoom attacks: They are designed for firing for some time at a target that is at a fixed distance: Wing guns are really optimized for turn fighting, because the location and convergence of the guns means you will have trouble placing enough rounds on a slower target if you are closing fast on it...

The only routine exception to this was the Pacific Theater where the Japanese fighters were fragile enough to make diving at them pay off, even with converging wing guns. With most other fighters, you had to pepper them a while to get them to go down (a fact poorly represented in sims I think), so turnfighting was the predominant rule, not the exception... Turnfighting was far more predominant in Western Europe, and grew more prominent still as the end of the war approached: This was because the opponents were similar in performance: For P-47s and P-51s the predominace of turn-fighting is on the order of 90%+ of all combats, this increasing towards the end...

Even the Eastern Front was mostly turn fighting, but more flexible in tactics, with many types having centralized armaments (Yaks, La-5s, P-39s, Me-109s), and the climbing performance being more unequal in favour of the Germans until mid-44.

The P-38 also had a centralized armament, and thus tried to use dive and zoom tactics as well, but the dominance of horizontal turnfighting in Western Europe, from late 1943 onwards, is generally a little appreciated fact of late WWII warfare...

The late war Spitfire, by the time the Mk IX came around, was by contrast almost exclusively used in dive and zoom attacks (in combat accounts): Its wing armament was not well-suited for that, but the velocity and destructiveness of the Hispano 20 mm seemed to obtain a lot instant explosions even on FW-190As, so it seemed to have compensated for the use of dive and zoom tactics.

Such tactics were helped on the Spitfire Mk IX by its world-beating climb rate (the +25 lb/80" Mk IX was the best piston-engined climber of WWII below 20 000 ft.), and its poor sustained low-speed turning performance (which still allowed a better unsustained speed radius at high speed after a dive)...

Consider that when Eric Brown reported he engaged a FW-190A by turning, while the FW dived and zoomed, and claimed this practice remained the war-wide character of both aircrafts for years, it is hardly an impressive account that either pilots were flying their machines at their best: They failed to even get a bead on each other...

A lot of early FW-190A combat accounts show the use of dive and zoom by the FW-190 (precisely in the period of supposed greatest FW-190 superiority): By late 1943 such accounts mostly disppear, because the more intuitively correct way to use the FW-190A (dive and zoom) turned out to be poorer despite the more favourable 1942 circumstances...

Osprey "Duel" #39 "La-5/7 vs FW-190", Eastern Front 1942-45:

P.69 "Enemy FW-190A pilots never fight on the vertical plane.---The Messerschmitt posessed a greater speed and better maneuverability in a vertical fight"

P.65 Vladimir Orekov: "An experienced Fw-190A pilot practically never fights in the vertical plane"


What is intuitively correct and self-evident rarely turns out that way in real life: That is why many WWII pilots will swear by things that are entirely false.

Yes the Spitfire could carve A- a tighter radius at high speeds than a FW-190A: But B- it never gained gradually on it in a slow turning fight: Not one instance of this I have unearthed so far...

There is physical reason why it happens in this counter-intuitive way, and I think it does relate to prop load leverages on the CL and whatnot: Things that have yet to be examined (I actually hope to do so one day). But the basic issue is that counter-intuitive complicated things do happen, and the easy-to-grasp intuitive stuff often turns out to have been sadly mistaken, no matter how widely believed it is or for how long.

Gaston

[lonewulf]

Odd, if Al Deere believed the 190 could stay with, or even out turn the Spit V, isn't it strange that he didn't tell his colleague so when the bloke tried to convince him that the Spit still had a few tricks up its sleeve. Fact is he didn't, did he. He didn't for instance say "Hey, hang on a minute there chum, actually the Spit won't out turn a 190". He just said "turning doesn't win battles". Now of course, that isn't strictly true in any case. If you're engaged by another fighter with less climb, dive and turn than you, chances are, he will be forced eventually to try and out-turn you and die in the process.

You mention Eric Brown. I've read his book Wings of the Luftwaffe several times and I don't remember him ever suggesting that the 190 was a 'turner' (I'm not suggesting you said he did by the way). He loved the aircraft as I recall but regarded it as an energy-fighter pure and simple. Don't you think it strange that if the 190 could out-perform the Spit in sustained turns that Eric Brown would have mentioned it? After all, the Spit was known for its ability to turn. If the 190 out-turned it, surely he would have mentioned it. After all, he flew examples of both aircraft many times.

Maybe I'm missing something here but as we both know, the 190 was evaluated by the RAF and other allied air forces on numerous occasions. The whole purpose of those evaluations was to test the capabilities of enemy aircraft against allied fighters so appropriate measures could be taken to counter their strengths. In all those reports, is there one that suggests the 190 could outperform the Spitfire in sustained turn? If there is, I certainly haven't seen it. However, those reports do mention the 190s advantages in speed and roll etc. Why would they remain silent on any turn advantage it might have if they happily identify its other advantages? These were secret reports after all so what was the problem? Why wouldn't this be mentioned? Or are we to believe these test pilots weren't very bright?

[JtD]

lonewulf, from experience I can tell you it is best to ignore Gaston. The forum has an ignore function, so you can let it ignore him for you.

[K_Freddie]

There's no smoke without a fire.
Gaston has some good points that a lot around here wish to ignore, as his hypothesis doesn't agree with the theorists (we were not there), or the indoctrinated (the P51 won the war) so therefore he's 'shot down'.


The obvious point he's making is that while the theoretical aeronautical formulae and calculations do play a role in the FMs, it's not the final say in the matter and there is a small percentage of unknown flight characteristics that are only known by the pilots themselves - some errant observations like canned flight tests, and others real. A trend is what one should look for, to get a fair idea.

an experienced pilot uses this small percentage to his advantage..