A comparison between the Spit V and the A6M3 at 15000 ft would be interesting.
The spit is faster, but the A6M3 should have better acceleration. I don't think it's that way in game.

http://www.darwinspitfires.com/artic...-the-zero.html

3050m should be very close to full throttle height of the P-39 -if the test were at 7000m results would be very different. The P-39 at 3k is able to run with the German fighters of 1943 in this sim. And if you can get Zeros to fight at your altitude its like driving a Ferrari vs. Fiats.

P-39 is not at all surprising. It has one of the lowest drag ratios for US fighters. In the same neighborhood as the P-51 and P-47.

I simply expected the P-40 to perform a bit closer to the P-39 at these alts; it is much more -respected- in the US, so one just thinks that the iconic early war fighter would do better than the 'ugly duckling' we so eagerly shunted off to the steppes. My education continues...

cheers

horseback

Interesting tests, thanks Horseback.

I'm a bit surprised at all the expressions of surprise here. Horseback's results are fairly consistent with the impressions I have of the planes he tested:

- The 1943 F4Us fly better than the 1943 190s. Faster, better acceleration, better low-speed turn, less twitchy and less nervous at high speeds. The 190 can "fool" you into thinking it should be a better plane because its firepower ends the fight as soon as its opponent makes one mistake, while the F4U needs to peck and peck and peck with its mg's, and also because the 190's quick roll and quick initial turn may leave you with the impression that it has quickness in acceleration too. Things get a bit better for the 190 with the A9, and a lot better with the Doras.

- The P39 is a monster between the deck and 4000m. Its softball lobbing cannon and its infamous stall discourages many players, and it's a lot harder to learn and fly to its limits unlike the Spit, or Zero, or 109. But if you fly with or against a rare P-39 expert, you can definitely see what a great plane it is at low altitudes. The P-40s, especially the M, do a lot better above 5000m.

- The Ki-43 is painfully slow, but only in a straight line. As soon as the US planes start turning, the Ki starts to catch up very quickly, it's almost like it loses no energy in turns at all. It also climbs better at any altitude; as soon as a US pilot starts pulling away the Ki pilot should start climbing steeply. If the US plane comes back, the Ki will be slower but will have an altitude advantage to trade for speed.

Of course, the Ki-43 is made of tinfoil and is armed with pop-guns, which puts it at a serious disadvantage against the better armed and armored U.S. planes. I can see why it was meat on the table for skilled P-38 pilots like Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire.

That said, it's one of my favorite aerobatic aircraft. I have to wonder why more online aerobatics squadrons don't use it.

This is a good point. The Ki-43-II is more difficult to handle but the Ki-43-I is very easy to whip into some amazing aerobatics and I am curious why I don't see it used more often. The thing it lacks is power... which might explain it.

You can get into trouble very fast if you're being too fancy :)

And that's with the N, which isn't nearly as hot as the D-2 (which also has the Hispano to boot). Once I'd gotten a knack for flying the P-39 it soon became one of my top favourites - pleasure to fly yet still very capable. Only thing I really don't like about them is the 37mm gun, so I stick to the early models where possible.

I learned my respect for it a few years back when one of the RAF662 guys stomped me with a P-400. I was pretty careful around P-39s after that :-P

Thing about the P-39 was that it was more experimental than something like the P-40 design.

The P-40 was based on the Hawk 75/P-36 which traces its lineage back to the early 1930s. The landing gear is not stored in the cleanest arrangement, the radiator systems are draggy (partly for looks apparently), the whole design is traditional.

The P-39 has a number of advanced features including a low drag coefficient, tricycle landing gear, car-door style canopy opening, and it was designed initially to have but never allowed to use the turbo supercharging gear.

I'm sure when the P-39 showed up at Port Moresby the USAAF personnel there... who were having difficulty with the traditional P-40 would have seen these as some sort of aberration. I've read something to that effect before anyways. So the poor frontline conditions, the need to fight high over the mountains, the much more difficult handling of the P-39 with the center of gravity pushed much further back... no wonder it was called the "Iron Dog" and disregarded as a poor fighter. Everything was working against it in early US service and that reputation killed it I think. But the plane itself, in the right hands and performing the kinds of tasks that its best suited for, is actually quite a good performer.

Especially if you have a hot rodded version like the D-2 that we have in-game with 1500hp on tap. Thats an incredible amount of power. Still don't understand why the D-2 has 1500hp and everything else has between 1100 and 1300hp.

One American fighter pilot who served in NG said that the main strike against the P-39 was lack of range, since the Allies had to cross the Owen Stanley Mountains in order to strike at the Japanese.

Additionally, by the time the P-39 got to NG, better fighters, such as the P-38 and P-47, were starting to become available. But, Army policy was that fighter squadrons didn't get newer fighters until the P-39s they had were unserviceable. Not surprisingly, U.S. pilots did everything they could to help that process along - such as bailing out of potentially salvageable aircraft.

I could also imagine that taking care of a relatively advanced plane like the P-39 in some of the most unforgiving terrain on earth was a nightmare for ground crews. Armchair historians tend to forget about boring logistical issues like maintenance intervals and serviceability rates.

Finally, the American pilots in NG in 1942/43 were still figuring out how to beat the Japanese, who were masters of the conventional turning dogfight. Part of the reason that they didn't have confidence in their planes is because they were blaming the planes for their own lack of tactical skill. It's telling that non-U.S. forces were able to take the same planes that the U.S. considered to be "dogs" and use them successfully. (Finns with the Buffalo, Soviets with the P-39, Australians with the Vengeance).