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IL-2 Sturmovik The famous combat flight simulator. |
View Poll Results: do you know flugwerk company a her real one fockewulf a8? | |||
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#11
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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 Last edited by Gaston; 10-01-2012 at 11:05 PM. |
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