fw 190a5 flight model

[KG26_Alpha]

Originally Posted by 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..

I don't usually ........... but ............

+1

As a mission builder from v1.0 days watching the game change with the patches and new updates,
its clear "game balance" has been a factor in the strange FM's DM's in the present configuration of IL2 1946.

If the game is capable of running real world data if so then let it have it, will the game be fun anymore with this data, I doubt it.

The strange wing pylon loadings and other bomb mg/cannon data etc found in the past in the SFS files bemused many but made sense for "game balancing".

Lets just say the FW190 in IL2 has been the most "adjusted" for FM & DM over the years,



Butcher Bird or Butchered Bird ?





.

[K_Freddie]

Maybe someone would put the 'real' numbers into the FMs and bring reality to the benign term Full Real.

When IL2 came out the axis a/c were the underdogs and the allied superior. The challenge for me was to dedicate my time to the axis a/c an prove to myself that they can beat the allied ones - it was a challenge I enjoyed and for the most part, succeeded.

It the FM numbers were changed for the real, then it'll become a challenge for the Allied jockeys to enjoy. It will not make the game less attractive, but more so.

From most of my readings of WW2 DFs, all pilots crapped themselves on seeing opposition fighters, from then it was down to experience, tactics and FMs. Spitfires wear feared, FW190's simply made pilots sh1t themselves.
The distortion of allied superiority only occurred due to the greater numbers of a/c (and pilots) they had - as Stalin was noted for saying on the 'inferiority' of his a/c 'quantity has a quality of it's own'.

Here's one vote for a new game 'real' FM

[K_Freddie]

Just some online thoughts..

With current FMs I find the FWs best turning ability between 325-400kph.
When a spit, tempest.. etc uses the vertical I don't follow, but stay level/horizontal and build up my speed, then flip vertical for a quick burst, then down again for speed.

There are times I cut throttle back and play around at stall speed as the allied aircraft do have major difficulty in this area - But I've always said this... and like Gaston I've been 'shot down' verbally for 'heresy'... but many allied a/c have died at this point

you work it out

[Gaston]

Originally Posted by 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..

I do agree most WWII fighter pilots could probably use effectively a 5% advantage in turning performace. Maybe even a lot less, but certainly their flying skill would not erase more than about a 5% advantage.

An often forgotten fact is that all fighter pilots were the very best available among the whole pool of available pilots...

A race car driver probably routinely uses up to less than a fraction of 1% below the actual limit of the car in a turn, on a machine where the "stall" has virtually no warning or "rumble" other than a precise sensation of lateral load he learns to recognize.

If you accept that you take the wingloading of a Spitfire at 140 lbs/square feet, and that of a FW-190A at 215 lbs/sq ft. or even 230 lbs/sq ft. (similar power in the engine), then, for a fighter pilot to mishandle such an advantage to the point of losing a low-speed sustained horizontal turn contest, you would have to assume that a pilot of the caliber of Johnny Johnson is so incompetent that he can lose a competitive edge of over 60%: About 12 times the outer edge of what is even remotely possible...

That is 1200 % over anything plausible.

Yet not only are there several (if not numerous) disparate account of this impossible thing happening (with, additionally, one credible witness stating the FW-190A's superiority in low speed turns was an iron-clad rule vs the Spitfire: John Weir), but there are actually no first person examples anywhere of the "theoretically" more plausible outcome ever occurring...

I have been asking litterally for years now for a low-speed low-altitude turning battle where the Spitfire defeated the FW-190A in a series of sustained horizontal turns: In years nothing has surfaced...

A few examples were provided (by one of the more honest online detractors of mine, since all the others have always provided zip), but these examples where all at very high altitudes or preceded by a massive dive (suggesting high speed on the part of both the Spitfire and its target), and in fairness to him he did accept these objections as valid...

So this monstrous 60% advantage in wingloading somehow escaped all first person narration in actual low-speed combat...

And in the years of reading combat accounts since, only the strongest endorsement ever of my position has so far surfaced: John Weir's unequivoval statement that the Spitfire was out-turned easily by the Hurricane, and the Hurricane in turn was slightly out-turned by the FW-190A...

For the opposite view?: A whole lot of nothing.

The enormity of the Spitfire's 60% wingload advantage is only equalled by the utter discretion from witnesses: And after several years of searching, you have to wonder when something agreeing with current flight physics is ever going to come up...

The mistake is not small: I estimate up to 40% of the actual wing bending during a turn (dive pull-outs don't count) of some these machines (particularly the Spitfire) is not even acknowledged as happening, and the cause is completely unknown even if it was known to happen (which it isn't)...

And it would be very easy to blow my assertion out of the water: All you have to do is provide in-flight strain gauge wing bending data in level turns for WWII fighter types.

Guess what: There isn't any: The strain gauge values were done on the ground...

I would be delighted to be proven wrong by such in-flight WWII data, but my bet is the detractors will come up short on hard data, like they do on everything else...

Gaston

[lonewulf]

An often forgotten fact is that all fighter pilots were the very best available among the whole pool of available pilots...

Yes, yes, that makes sense doesn't it. I mean, what would be more difficult to manage, a large bomber with 4 engines and a crew or 7 or 10 men or a little single seat fighter. Hmmm ... umm ... hold on a minute ...

[Janosch]

Maybe this Johnnie Johnson dude actually did encounter a more maneuverable P-36. Or maybe the Spits that supposedly turned worse than Fws had manufacturing defects.

Anyway, Fw has tons of fuel, guns and ammunition and the said high wingloading... of course it's going to turn worse than its opponents. I trust what TD has in the game now. There's no need to change the flight models: Fw has advantage in firepower, roll rate and dive (usually), let the Spits have advantage in everything else.

[IceFire]

If you want to have a proper argument about FW190 performance levels it's probably best to dig up some materials.

So I've started...with this:
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.o...0/fw190a5.html

Appears to be based on original documents with the information translated on the page for easy reading. If the numbers in this example are correct then the speed of our FW190A-5 (standard boost) is dead on at sea level and at critical height. The climb rate as represented here is somewhat less than what the IL-2 version has in IL-2 compare suggesting it may infact be over modelled if this report is accurate. I think a closer look at the aircraft represented in the game and in the test are probably important too.

I also found this RAF report very interesting:
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.o...-47-1658-D.pdf

The notes remark about how excellent the FW190 manoeuvrability in the roll plane is but how the elevator tightens at speed (ours does not appear to) and how easy it is to stall the aircraft in tight turns and at stall speed. Interestingly they talk about 10 degrees of flaps to help tighten the turn. I've long since stopped using combat flaps on the FW190 in IL-2.. does anyone else?

You could argue that the RAF report is biased. It might be... is there a similar pilots notes comparison out there from a German source? I know the comments in my FW190A-5 Aces of the Eastern Front from Osprey have the same notes with one translation from somewhere (its not referenced which gives me pause) suggesting that FW190 pilots should employ the same tactics on the East Front as they are finding effective on the West Front - that is to say the high speed hit and zoom as a group tactic avoiding Spitfires or Yak's alike in the horizontal.

I took out a FW190A-5 and a A-8 online yesterday. It's good fun and with the improved turn rate in 4.11 it's even easier to draw a bead on a manoeuvring aircraft.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by Gaston

I have been asking litterally for years now for a low-speed low-altitude turning battle where the Spitfire defeated the FW-190A in a series of sustained horizontal turns: In years nothing has surfaced...

Try this one. It took a bit of looking but I found it again: http://books.google.ca/books?id=HofA...20turn&f=false

The action describes an early Typhoon Mark IB in a low level escort run with other Typhoons. In the battle a Typhoon and FW190 end up in a sea level turn fight and although descriptions of the battle is light... it illustrates that the FW190 and Typhoon had fairly similar turn rates. In this case the Typhoon pilot was still attempting to pull lead when the FW190 stalled with it's legendary wing drop and crashed in to the sea.

By all rights the RAF considers the Spitfire to be much more manoeuvrable in the horizontal than any model of Typhoon or Tempest. It's not a direct comparison (I'll have a look in some other books) but I remembered this story and I think it illustrates that the FW190s high wing loading, powerloading, and other aerodynamic features that make it such a great hunter do not provide for great turn rate at sea level. Particularly with an aircraft as heavy as the Typhoon was. So to lay it out. If a Spitfire is better in the horizontal than a Typhoon by a significant amount and the FW190 and Typhoon are roughly even (slight edge to the Typhoon?) then the Spitfire is going to be better in the horizontal. In my mind almost unquestioningly so given any number of battle accounts from either side on any front where the two clashed.

On a side note the FW190 is much more manoeuvrable than the Typhoon in all other regards. The Typhoon has a slight sea level edge in speed and a slightly better turn, however, it's roll response is one of the worst of the WWII fighters (note: The Tempest much improved on this with an excellent roll rate particularly in Series II models).

[Gaston]

Originally Posted by IceFire

I also found this RAF report very interesting:
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.o...-47-1658-D.pdf

The notes remark about how excellent the FW190 manoeuvrability in the roll plane is but how the elevator tightens at speed (ours does not appear to) and how easy it is to stall the aircraft in tight turns and at stall speed. Interestingly they talk about 10 degrees of flaps to help tighten the turn. I've long since stopped using combat flaps on the FW190 in IL-2.. does anyone else?

You could argue that the RAF report is biased. It might be... is there a similar pilots notes comparison out there from a German source? I know the comments in my FW190A-5 Aces of the Eastern Front from Osprey have the same notes with one translation from somewhere (its not referenced which gives me pause) suggesting that FW190 pilots should employ the same tactics on the East Front as they are finding effective on the West Front - that is to say the high speed hit and zoom as a group tactic avoiding Spitfires or Yak's alike in the horizontal.

From the German side there is no direct comparison with the Spitfire I am aware of, but the P-47D was recognized by KG 200, with a captured Razorback, as superior-turning to the Me-109G in low-speed sustained turns, while the same thing was not said of the FW-190A vs the P-47.

Also the P-51B was not described as out-turning the Me-109G by KG 200, while the P-47D definitely was. (source "On special missions" KG 200)

In combat the P-47D never took more than four-five 360° turns to gain the upper hand vs the Me-109G, while the FW-190A was always roughly equal to the P-47D, or slightly better, in early 1944, and for some reason the FW-190A grew much better in later 1944, the later Bubbletops P-47Ds being clearly inferior to the later FW-190As in sustained turns... All this agrees 100% with KG 200's evaluation.

Tests in Italy by the Allies show the FW-190A as slightly superior-turning to the Razorback P-47D below 250 MPH, and drastically inferior turning above 250 MPH.

FW-190A dive pull-out was also drastically inferior to the P-47D, the nose-up loss of altitude of the FW-190A ("mushing") on pull-out being described as a "tendency to black-out the pilot".:

http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/3950/pag20pl.jpg

The best FW-190A comparisons are all with the Me-109G or P-47D: Significant RAE comparisons with the Spitfire all refer to the Spitfire's tighter "radius", but to my mind, in those days, "radius" means an unsustained 6 G+ turn in which the Spitfire will undoubtedly be superior to the FW-190A: See the P-47 comparison which underlines the poor high speed turn performance of the FW-190A (confirmed by the abyssmal dive-pull-out "sinking" noted even by Eric Brown as well, making rather nonsensical his conclusion to use it in the vertical: Russian sources mention a 220 m (660 ft.) nose-up drop after levelling out from a 40° dive of 1200 m... One fifth of the short dive's momentum expended in brutal nose-up deceleration: Hence the "Tendency to black-out the pilot"...)

Note that the RAE found the P-51B with full drop tanks in place to vastly out-turn the Me-109G, while the same P-51B without drop tanks was considered only equal in turn rate to the FW-190A.

The RAE test thus make it abundantly clear the FW-190A was the better sustained turn fighter vs the Me-109G, but in my opinion the tests exaggerates the issue in disfavour of the Me-109G: This might have been due to a misunderstanding of the use of the leading edge slats, or of those slats being in poor condition.

Combat accounts show the Me-109G generally inferior to the P-51 in unsustained high G turns (5 G+), but the Me-109G is, despite this, more responsive initially when speed locks the controls in steep high speed dives (due to its advantage of a fully mobile tail trim which overcomes aerodynamic forces more efficiently for the initial pull-out in dives for instance)

In sustained turns, the P-51 is slightly better but they are fairly close. However sometimes on the deck, when they are forced into horizontal turns, they are very close to the point of a prolonged stalemate of 15-30 minutes (45 to 90 horizontal turns!). But this only before MW-50 was widely available, not so much after May of 1944.

The P-51 however will gain a marked sustained low-speed turn edge if it reduces its throttle, which has the -unrecognized by flight physics- effect of reducing its wingloading in low-speed sustained turns:

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/m...an-24may44.jpg

But then the Me-109G here might not have done the same throttle reduction, and could have gained as much... (This throttle reduction trick was not widely accepted by pilots)

The FW-190A (also by downthrottling) was better than either at low altitude and low speeds, while being very poor in high speed unsustained turns, especially to the right(!).

The Me-109G's inferiority in turns vs the FW-190A is recognized correctly by the RAE, but to an excessive extent.

After the first few months of the FW-190A's introduction, I think we can go with Russian pilot opinions on the way it was handled: "Experienced FW-190 pilots never use the vertical"...

In any case if you take comparative evaluations and "evaluate" them, the best are by the Germans, as are also front-line Russian observations, the worst are by the US (except that absolutely superb P-47D/FW-190A Italy front-line evaluation -linked above- made by Front-Line US pilots, not test pilots: A real masterpiece of its kind), with the UK being somewhere in the middle, and using these (the first two being perfectly consistent), a clear hierarchy becomes apparent if you correlate with thousands of combat accounts:

Best low speed sustained turn rate on the late-war Western European Front (P-38 excluded): FW-190A/P-47D Razorback (needle-tip prop) are both at the top (P-47D higher speed/FW-190A lower speed), then the Hurricane, then further out the Spitfire, then last the Me-109G and P-51 close to each other.

Later in the war the Bubbletop P-47D seems to drop back quite noticeably, as seem to do the later Spitfires.

Gaston

[Gaston]

Originally Posted by IceFire

Try this one. It took a bit of looking but I found it again: http://books.google.ca/books?id=HofA...20turn&f=false

The action describes an early Typhoon Mark IB in a low level escort run with other Typhoons. In the battle a Typhoon and FW190 end up in a sea level turn fight and although descriptions of the battle is light... it illustrates that the FW190 and Typhoon had fairly similar turn rates. In this case the Typhoon pilot was still attempting to pull lead when the FW190 stalled with it's legendary wing drop and crashed in to the sea.

By all rights the RAF considers the Spitfire to be much more manoeuvrable in the horizontal than any model of Typhoon or Tempest. It's not a direct comparison (I'll have a look in some other books) but I remembered this story and I think it illustrates that the FW190s high wing loading, powerloading, and other aerodynamic features that make it such a great hunter do not provide for great turn rate at sea level. Particularly with an aircraft as heavy as the Typhoon was. So to lay it out. If a Spitfire is better in the horizontal than a Typhoon by a significant amount and the FW190 and Typhoon are roughly even (slight edge to the Typhoon?) then the Spitfire is going to be better in the horizontal. In my mind almost unquestioningly so given any number of battle accounts from either side on any front where the two clashed.

On a side note the FW190 is much more manoeuvrable than the Typhoon in all other regards. The Typhoon has a slight sea level edge in speed and a slightly better turn, however, it's roll response is one of the worst of the WWII fighters (note: The Tempest much improved on this with an excellent roll rate particularly in Series II models).

This is a very interesting account, and I appreciate that this kind of comparison is sought and brought to light rather than the usual arguments.

Note I never said anything about the Typhoon: The Typhoon was the final development of the ... Hurricane(!) in the words of its designer.

I would not 100% assume the Typhoon is by necessity inferior in sustained turns to a Spitfire, given the clear superiority of the Hurricane to the Spitfire.

However in this account I would note two things: The FW-190As dived away from 10 000 ft. to sea level, and the Typhoon dived down in pursuit: They are above sustained turn speed throughout the turning engagement, and this is evidenced by the Typhoon pilot having "to lay off" because he was blacking out: Maximum sustained turn speed Gs are about 3.2/3.4 Gs in WWII, too low for the pilot to require a "relief" of this kind.

Another thing is that Eric Brown and many others have noted a "change in trim" on the FW-190A as speed decreased and the turn went from 230 knots to below 220 knots (or just around the 250 mph "change" in turn performance of the P-47D comparison): The change in trim is felt in the stick and can surprise the pilot (making him suddenly pull up into a stall as the stick "lightens") if he becomes nervous: Eric Brown even mentions this effect, but maybe, being a high hours test pilot, he underestimates its effect during the tension of a turning battle, saying it should not cause an accident).

I have read several Allied accounts of FW-190A pilots holding their own in a turn after a steep dive (vs P-47Ds), and then, as speed decreases below the 250 MPH treshold, suddenly nosing up and dropping a wing as the stick no longer requires as much pull-back to keep the turn, something which can be confusing (as noted by E. Brown).

For this and better turn performance reasons, one FW-190A ace describes dropping the throttle long before the merge (popping flaps as well), as a preparation for battle with P-51s, and never throttling back up, preferring always horizontal turning to go head-to head if the P-51s would (wisely) not turn with him...

Gaston