Quote:
Originally Posted by Herra Tohtori
[I]"...
I am reasonably certain that no FW-190 pilot would have wanted to enter into a sustained turn fight with any allied fighter aircraft if they had any other choice.
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Do you know of
any FW-190A pilot who actually said such a thing?
The only concrete thing in that direction I ever found, for all of WWII, is a ridiculous quote from a German La-5 Rechlin test center evaluation: It said that the La-5FN's sustained turn rate is slower than a Me-109G, but faster than a FW-190A's...
It positively reeks of ignorance and sillyness, and the Rechlin test center itself has said several times textually the opposite ("The FW-190A out-rolls and out-turns our Me-109F at any speed"), but it's there...
Another quote, in the same direction, is a comparison test between the Me-109G14AS and FW-190A-9s at 26-28 000 ft., which puts the Me-109G14AS as far faster turning at said altitude (where the FW-190A can barely fly), which is very plausible given the absurdly high and impractical altitude of the test, given the time period and the available roles for the Luftwaffe at the time (late '44)...
That's it for my fifteen years of research... British RAE tests unequivocally state the FW-190A turns far better than the Me-109G, which Me-109G is out-turned by a P-51B
with full drop tanks, while the same P-51 cannot out-turn the FW-190A even when clean... It seems the Me-109G is badly short-changed here (it has only a slight disadvantage to, occasionally, a perfect sustained turn parity to the P-51B in actual battles), and this, to my mind, just shows how unreliable these non-combat side-by-side tests can be...
Given what else I've been finding for fifteen years now, and posting for five, I'd say you'd be up the creek finding such a ridiculous agreeing statement (to what you said) from an actual FW-190A combat veteran.
Occasionally some FW-190A pilot
did believe this crap, judging from their continual use of diving and ailerons in combat, but judging from the outcomes of those tactics, these pilots typically didn't live long enough to voice their opinion about it...
Gaston