Soviet fighters and 4.12

[IceFire]

I would have to agree. I've read a lot of battle reports and it seems a rare thing to me that a pilot would use full power continuously. In most of the cases I can remember they tend to be in fast engagements where they are in a high speed regime and may be pursuing or fleeing.

I did a little test. I like flying 8vs8 engagements in the QMB so that's what I did. La-7 versus Bf109K-4. I haven't flown the K-4 in a long time so I was a bit rusty but I did fairly well. I find the K-4 flies better these days... perhaps? It's really been a long time since I flew the late Bf109s (I did do a 50 mission DGEN over Berlin in the K-4 once). Anyways...

Full power 110% with MW50 engaged and rads on auto. Overheat around the 4.5-5 minute mark. Resisted the urge to drop back power so I let the overheat go. I got a oil leak at 7 minutes, engine started to chew metal at 8 minutes and at 12 minutes it died and I crashed into the ground after being chased by several La-7s. I managed two kills and my wingies got a few before I got separated.

I'd say that's a brutal test. None of the aircraft in IL-2 that I've tested have had much in the way of similar results. Dogfighting at full WEP isn't something I normally do so I had to resist the impulse to drop it back. I'll often run at 102% or thereabouts so as to maximize my time rather than going for the most amount of heat. But usually if you were to watch my throttle in a dogfight I'm all over the place... slowly up and down from 40% to 90%, a couple of minutes at WEP, then back down for cooling. I also usually run rads closed or at 2 and then open during slow speed fighting where the drag hurts me less and the heat hurts me more.

I've very much internalized this whole process so I do it without thinking.