Yeah the p51 d has the fin. Not sure if ealier ones in the game do. And the fin didnt entirely fix the problem but I heard it helped to an extent.
Interesting stuff.

Nope, none of the early P51s in-game or in real life, have the vertical fin. But actually, I was looking, and the P51D-5 in the game does have it (at least looks like it does). I don't think it does much for the plane though in the game?

In realistic the P-51 D should hit a maximum level flight speed of 465 MPH with WEP applied, just like the real thing. However the peformance seems to be modelled on the Allison engined P-51 A version as it is nearly 100 MPH too slow in level flight.

As the war progressed, engines became larger and more powerful with bigger propellors. This gives a larger torque effect and thus the increased tendency to spin to the right, due to the clockwise rotation of the propellor.

Also I've noticed that most folks don't realise or know that a pilot applies negative (reverse) rudder when an aircraft is banked into aturn to prevent spinning. It is this balancing act of using the rudder to keep the nose up that stops aircraft spinning. It takes quick reactions and familiarity with the aircraft in question plus the the sensitivity on 100% but it is possible to push some fighters into the historically tight turns that some aces managed to pull.

In a test flight with a friend flying a Spitfire Mk.XVI, I managed to pull a tighter turn in a Fw.190-A5 by using the negative rudder technique than the Spitfire could follow.... it is very, very tricky though and takes hours of practice.

If you just turn on airelons and elevators alone you will spin out.

Panzer, realistically the P51 is great, but i think what he's saying is -


In this game its shit. :P



I spent a whole game earlier today with DAZZ1971 playing with the P51, trying different settings out, different things to make it actually stand half a chance. Nothing works, none of the above that you've stated.


Bottom line is... its crap

[QUOTE=FOZ_1983;
In this game its shit. :P
Bottom line is... its crap[/QUOTE]

Yes -- like the FW 190 Series of Planes in BOP -- the P-51 has been given crap modeling by the designers. If you want to experience the performance of a P-51 or any of the FW series planes -- just fly any of the Russian planes. This game is alot like history -- if you are the one writing it -- you can give it any spin you want.

New guy here. I have to agree with the concensus here. There is something wrong. A plane flying at 300+mph stalling out is not realistic.

In their defense, I have only played the demo, and if I read correctly, there are some physics issues. But it's not flyable in anything even remotely realistic in my opinion.

To say the P-51 is not a turnable fighter is not correct in my opinion. I was an excellent dogfighter. Watch the shows like Dogfights, and you will see what it was capable of. I also own a P-51 RC airplane with a OS .91 Four stroke and retractable landing gear. It's no slouch. And if it had the characteristics of the P-51 in this game, it would have been re-kitted a long time ago..

I really hope that the fix addresses this and other issues.

Opposite rudder in a steep high G turn to prevent from spinning? In a real airplane? You're joking right?

The 460mph occurs at 8,000m, or about 26,000ft. Are you testing it at 8,000? I ran that test a few weeks ago on the PC version. I saved tracks. They're long, and boring, with lots of trimming-tabbing.

On turns, I was strongly given to understand that pilots "kept the ball centered". In the instrument panel, there is this thing that looks sort of like a builder's level. The idea is, in the turn, you adjust the rudder to keep the G-force going down, rather than in some other funky direction. Real-world pilots do it by fell; we have to do it by eyeball.

The P-51 uses laminar flow wings. They are great for high speed, but they have some particularly nasty stall characteristics. Pull to hard and it'll snap at you. The Fw-190 has the same problem, btw.

The P-51 is also rather underpowered. Compared to the Spitfire, or the Bf-109, you have a plane that is about a tonn heavier, yet has 10L less engine. The Merlin is a 1,640cc (27L) engine, that produces around 1700hp with boost, while the Griffon that powered the Spitfire was a 2,240cc (36.7L) engine that produced 2000hp, and the DB605 was another 2,176cc (35.7L) engine that could produce 1800-2000+hp, depending on additives. It doesn't help that the supercharger on the Packard Merlin has a dead spot right around 5000m, right where the "happy spot" for most of the German engines are.

I was going to continue, but it's late, and I'm out of steam. Basically, get a lot of energy, and hoard it, and you can do pretty well in the P-51, but it's not a mixer the way a La-7 or clean 109 is. I forget who it was who said, that, the P-51 couldn't do what a Spitfire could, but it could do it over Berlin. People talk about how overrated it was, but they forget just how fantastic it was for a single engine fighter to have a 2,000 mile range, and what it costs to get that.

lets be serious here and extremely simple and short for the benefit of those who do not understand the in depth aspects etc.

Any fighter could of flown to berlin escorting the B17's. All they needed were drop tanks. BUT.. Why should the RAF use spitfires to escort american bombers in daylight all the way into germany? what would the american fighters be doing? they wanted to bomb in the day so they can escort them. It worked well between the UK and the US during WW2, relations were good. US fighters escort long distance, spitfires will RV sometimes mid way when they are coming home.

P51 - escort
Spitfire - fighter sweep/recon

i know both the above did more, but im keeping it simple. Basically....why change something that worked? if it isnt broke then dont fix it. Hence why the P51 did most of the escorts.

No denying the P51 is an icon. To the americans its what the spitfire is to the UK. the P51 is an incredible plane, it had a job escorting the bomber and it did it well, dogfighting and gunning down anything that got in its way.

in real life, its amazing. In this game suck terribly. Simple :)

the patch will sort it though dont worry

Foz, if any plane could have done it, then the first two Schweinfurt's would not have been unescorted raids.

In large part, the reason the British switched to night bombing was because they couldn't escort their bombers, and they weren't willing, or even able to take the sort of casualties that unescorted daylight bombing incurred. We really couldn't either, but we had just started and had more reserves to go through before we started to hit the wall.

The Mustang has three time the internal tankage of the Spitfire, and its wet hardpoints were stressed for 1000lbs, about 150 gallons, theoretically, if/when drop tanks that could hold that much were developed. I believe the Spitfire could carry a ~100 gallon conformal tank under the centerline, but it was nondroppable, contained more fuel than the plane's maximum internal load, and significantly degraded performance.

It's not as simple as add tanks until the wings fall off, and to pretend that it is, is roughly equal to saying any plane could turn in on a Zero; true only under such tightly limited conditions as to render the statement no better than false.