Why do Spitfires turn better than Hurricanes?!

[Viper2000]

Originally Posted by timej31

I am sure if we could go back in time and we were actually there and were all part of this, and we each had our plane we'd know what's up. What turns better and what is faster. What to do in a given situation. Because we have it at our disposal at any time we wanted to see and test.

Not really. You'd get to fly the type of aeroplane you were given and for most people that would be it. So you might know quite a lot about for example the performance of the Hurricanes your squadron flew, but you wouldn't know very much about the performance of the Bf-109.

People would hear things on the grapevine. Some bits would be closer to the truth than others. Obviously a significant proportion of people who discovered the enemy's performance advantages didn't live to tell anybody about it...

During the Battle, quite a lot of RAF pilots said in their combat reports that they were fighting the He-113 rather than the Bf-109. So much for "knowing" about the enemy's performance...

In fact, it was quite possible to fly a whole tour without seeing an enemy aeroplane at all, especially for Allied pilots later in the war. It's also worth observing that pilots who were trained during the war didn't necessarily get an awful lot of hours in which to experiment with the limits of aircraft performance, because the priority was operations rather than training. And the priority of operations was to attack ground targets and conduct reconnaissance. Fighters only exist to interfere with, or prevent interference with, the aeroplanes attempting to perform this useful work. AFAIK the average pilot in a WWII airforce was not a fighter pilot, though he might have told the girls otherwise.

Later in the war, more concerted efforts were made to convey the strengths & weaknesses of enemy aircraft to pilots, though of course this intelligence information was imperfect.

Since the best tactic to employ against an uncooperative enemy aircraft is entirely a question of relative performance, it follows that aerial combat was mostly a game of extremely high stakes poker.

For this reason, it was an extremely bad career move to actually get into the sort of fight whose outcome depended upon aircraft performance; the vast majority of aces scored their kills by exploiting their opponent's lack of SA and shooting them in the back rather than by getting into aerobatics contests with them.

Of course, if you score most of your kills by bouncing the enemy then you don't know or much care about the turn performance of his aeroplane; you care more about the operational habits of enemy pilots, such as the speeds, altitudes and types of formation in which they are inclined to cruise.

So even the best WWII fighter pilots probably knew considerably less about his opponents than the average sim pilot does.

A consequence of this is that sim pilots tend to make a bigger deal out of small performance differences.

If I feel inclined, I can spend a week or two testing the performance of all of the flyable aeroplanes in the sim. I can discover the 5% performance difference between aircraft x and aircraft y, and I can exploit that performance difference in combat with considerable confidence, leading to many forum posts about aircraft x's performance advantage over aircraft y.

IRL, production tolerances and pilot skill would render this sort of 5% performance difference entirely irrelevant; the absence of a refly button means that winning "most of the time" just doesn't cut it. Mixed reports of the outcome of turn fights would filter back to the squadrons, and the consensus would probably be that turn fighting was a bad idea in general, and an especially bad idea against aircraft y, because the success rate wasn't great.

It's very hard to get away from the fact that the massive psychological differences between fighting in a real war and playing with a flight simulator have a correspondingly massive impact upon the way that people fly, fight, and even think about their aeroplanes.

[bw_wolverine]

Very nice and thoughtful postings, Viper.

I find much more enjoyment with a combat flight sim playing it in the style of the real life encounters and events than trying to push the supposed accuracy of the simulation in general to my advantage or someone else's advantage. Because of that, minor differences or inaccuracies in aircraft performance tuning generally don't bother me, because you're right about the situations being about the pilot, his training, and what has happened in the past being much more an influence than his specific knowledge of just how far he can push his crate. (That said, I do like realism, and I wouldn't MIND if they tried to get it as accurate as possible, It's just not that big a factor in how much I enjoy the game itself).

I think we like to romanticize the actions of pilots a lot, and that's fine (we wouldn't be playing flight sims if we didn't!) but I think there's a reason that most war heroes and such say "I just did what I'm trained to do" etc. Circumstances beyond their control push their abilities, rather than them consciously trying to ride the bleeding edge.

[reflected]

I checked my books:

The Hurrican should have about the same turn time as the Spitfire, the 109 is worse.
However, the Hurricane should have a lot tighter turning circle than the Spitfire, the difference should be larger in this aspect than the one between the 109 and the Spit.

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by reflected

I checked my books:

The Hurrican should have about the same turn time as the Spitfire, the 109 is worse.
However, the Hurricane should have a lot tighter turning circle than the Spitfire, the difference should be larger in this aspect than the one between the 109 and the Spit.

reflected, sorry but your absolute statements come out as somehow puerile..

you can't expect people to take you seriously if you say "I checked my books" without saying:
1) what books
2) the conditions of the turning tests (planes, conditions, altitudes etc..)

the whole matter of people coming on the forum saying "I've read it in a book" (and believe it or not, even books, which are written by men, can contain mistakes) and then wanting the developers to change the FM based on their personal preferences is just going to cause damage. It's not a personal attack, since you're not the only one that made such statements, but it's really annoying to read posts similar to yours on the long run.

In a nutshell, my suggestion is that people should get their facts right before making any statements or assumptions, if anything for the sake of the sim's accuracy.

[steppie]

first thing you have to remember they are different aircraft so don't think they have the same perform because the have the same power plant.(good example the spitfire and mustang had he same engine and propeller).

the Hurricane had a better rate of turn at a slower speeds than the spitfire but the faster the spitfire went the better it turn rate got over the hurricane.

But what is a fact they both out turned the bf109.

[6S.Manu]

Originally Posted by steppie

But what is a fact they both out turned the bf109.

Yes but is it a fact that their turn times were more than 6 seconds better?

This is the real problem.

And anyway could really the Spit outturn the 109 at stall speed? (slats)

[reflected]

OK, I'm out of this discussion. I have many books, and all of them say the same thing, consistently. If I list them it won't change the facts. This is not the case in CoD. However, since I can't state that the sky is blue without reference I'll let you prove the opposite, I don't think 1C is gonna touch the FMs anyway.

No offense, but I'm not gonna write an essay, post charts and stuff jsut to convince you or prove that I'm right, because it will have no effect on the game (unless you're a dev, but you're not), so it would be a waste of time.

[ZaltysZ]

And it does not matter much what books say (and there is no need to list them), until some one does the flight tests in game. Sustained turn time at various speeds, that is. Until then, comparison of turns will be very subjective.

[Kwiatek]

Well after reading many books, real life test by RAF and LW also looking in technical data of both planes i think that the difference between both planes sustained turn rate wasnt such huge. Still Spitfire should have the edge both in slow and higher speed turn rate. Of course im sure that some more experience pilots in 109 could turn with Spitfires with unexperience pilot - it confirmed some German aces.

Slats in 109 help a lot in the egde of stall but we should note that slats in 109 not cover all leading edge area but mostly airleons area - which mean that you have more control when you are close to stall ( when your wing rot are actually in stall). Other hand Spitfire had washed wingtips which had similar effect - when your wing rots were in stall your wing tips are not and you have still control on airleons. Both planes had similar stall speeds but Spitfire had clearly lower wingloading.

Slats in 109 give it better stall characteristic so pilots could feel more safe in stall fights then unexperience pilots in Spitfires but other hand good pilot in SPitfire could quite easy fell incoming stall beacuse Spitfire wings give him plenty of warning.

So i think the difference wasnt such huge but still Spitfire should be better in turn.


BTW

Looking in 109 COD slats working i see that they open very late - at very low speeds and i think they should work much earlier.

I checked RAF 109 E test and slats should be open in level flight at 180-190 km/h. In COD they start to open at speeds below 150 km/h.

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by reflected

OK, I'm out of this discussion. I have many books, and all of them say the same thing, consistently. If I list them it won't change the facts. This is not the case in CoD. However, since I can't state that the sky is blue without reference I'll let you prove the opposite, I don't think 1C is gonna touch the FMs anyway.

I have many books too, but it's not absolute academia that will give us answers. The turning performance of an aircraft is affected by many things:

1)aeroplane related: wing design, wing load, aeroplane weight, power plant, propeller, aerodynamic features.

2)environment related: mainly altitude (air humidity and temperature are negligible)

3)piloting related: pilot's general skill, pilot's specific skills on the machine, testing skills.

an aeroplane is like a short blanket: you can have an edge on something but it will affect something else.

The Spit had the edge in maneuverability because of the fantastic elliptical wing design, but it was an extremely flimsy and delicate wing structure which couldn't take much damage.

No offense, but I'm not gonna write an essay, post charts and stuff jsut to convince you or prove that I'm right, because it will have no effect on the game (unless you're a dev, but you're not), so it would be a waste of time.

..then what's the point of your original message?
I am ready to hear any opinion and vouch for it or not, but it will need a thing called reliable evidences to support it.