4.11 F4U Performance

[MadBlaster]

Originally Posted by h0MbrE

The season they did the tests in is irrelevant. It was probably done in Hawaii or somewhere in the southern part of the US where there is no winter. Besides... as I pointed out in an earlier post, this test was done early in 1943 on the earlier 1942 F4U-1s. After which the improvements were made and the C and D models were produced. Once again, refer to THIS document for the relevant test results on the 1944, 1945 C and D models we use in the sim:


http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f4u/f4u-1d-acp.pdf

We need to stick to the facts here and not be assuming things that might or might not be a factor. These tests were conducted at different altitudes and weapon/fuel loadouts, but the planes were ALL loaded as the official documents clearly point out.

Actually, the rl report that you provided says it was -30/-32 degrees C for the runs. It does matter because temperature is modeled in the game on each map. That's why there are summer and winter versions, desert...etc. The airspeed are slower on the warm maps and faster on the cold ones. It has to do with density of the air. So if Ivank is test flying on a warm map he is going to get a slower non-comparable result. And if he is flying at a lower elevation than the real life (as he pointed out), he is going to get a slower result. Assuming everything was modeled in the ballpark. I would trust Ivank based on past experience.

[Pursuivant]

Ah, nothing like a chart war to go with the new patch.

It's nerfed! It's uber! Oleg's biased against Western Allies! Oleg's biased against the Axis!

re: Ship size. Other people have tried to claim that tanks and ships in the game are the wrong scale. It's not true. Just get the length of your favorite plane and measure it against the scale of whatever it is that you think is too big or too small. The comparative sizes will come out fairly close to reality.

Modelers bust their butts to make their models realistic. They're not going to screw up something as basic as length or width, since that will make the entire model look wrong.

re: F4U performance.

Originally Posted by IvanK

Also read the title of that report .. it refers to a test for max performance at War Emergency Power of a "Cleaned up version"

The words that jump out at me are "Cleaned Up Version." Operationally, the F4U-1 mostly operated from primitive airstrips carved out of some of the most unforgiving terrain on earth. They sure as hell weren't "cleaned up." They were constantly exposed to salt spray, mud, sand and tropical weather, maintained by overworked and relatively untrained mechanics, and regularly abused by their pilots.

Charts and tables showing prototype and test plane performance are ideals, as far removed from actual combat performance as "miles per gallon" figures in car advertisements.

That's why I'd love to see a feature within IL2 which allows users, or server hosts, to tweak aircraft performance slightly. That way you can nerf or uber your own plane as you wish.

[h0MbrE]

"They were constantly exposed to salt spray, mud, sand and tropical weather, maintained by overworked and relatively untrained mechanics, and regularly abused by their pilots."

Ahhh I get it now... that's why the F4U is too weak to even make it off the deck now. Well that makes it okay then. LOL

[mmaruda]

It's not to weak to take off, you can take off from large carriers that are moving with a load of bombs and go straight up from the deck, takes some skill, but it's possible. Static small carriers are impossible though, but I'm not sure the Corsair operated from those.

Still, for a 2300HP engine, acceleration is a bit poor, but maybe that's the way it was.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by mmaruda

It's not to weak to take off, you can take off from large carriers that are moving with a load of bombs and go straight up from the deck, takes some skill, but it's possible. Static small carriers are impossible though, but I'm not sure the Corsair operated from those.

Still, for a 2300HP engine, acceleration is a bit poor, but maybe that's the way it was.

Absolutely. All of this discussion has made me go back and replay an old campaign I did (called Facing The Wind) which follows VF-84 and VF-85 during the Okinawa campaign. I haven't finished the campaign but so far every mission works just as it did before... and the first couple of missions including some fairly normal and realistic loadouts that were used during attack missions.

Taking off from a stationary deck right now does appear impossible... but with a ship underway at normal speeds everything appears to be working quite well. That includes the AI. I've had zero mishaps on takeoff (and I've been watching!).

So far the only issue I see is that takeoff distance is a bit long. Maybe something to do with low speed acceleration. Everything else seems to be fine... and working as normal. To be honest, I'm not even sure what a couple of people are up in arms about. We hear that TD broke it so they should fix it but I'm not sure what they broke or what they should fix. I'll get onboard that bandwagon as soon as someone makes sense!

[dpeters95]

Hey all,
Here is a fun fact. Not sure I understand why but...

Since I have multiple installations of each version on my computer, I thought I would go back to V4.07m and check the F4U-1A's ability to take off from the CVE-55 escort carrier using the AI in the "Carrier Take-Off 1" mission. Well, to make a long story short in the 6 different versions, (4.07m, 4.08m, 4.09m, 4.10m, 4.10.1m, and 4.11m) it doesn't.

Here is the item of note, by accident I was fooling around with some difficulty settings and found that I can get it to take off in EVERY version, if I turn off the "Realistic Gunnery" and "Limited Ammo" settings! Now, we don't want that obviously, at least for those of us playing with realistic settings. I just thought I would pass along the info to those who know more about the programming end of it than I do to try and resolve this Take-Off issue in case they didn't already know, which they may.

I am assuming by turning these settings off that it removes the "weight of the ammo" from the plane's overall weight since you don't know what an unlimited amount of ammo weight would be???

[Shaker]

Originally Posted by IceFire

Absolutely. All of this discussion has made me go back and replay an old campaign I did (called Facing The Wind) which follows VF-84 and VF-85 during the Okinawa campaign. I haven't finished the campaign but so far every mission works just as it did before... and the first couple of missions including some fairly normal and realistic loadouts that were used during attack missions.

Taking off from a stationary deck right now does appear impossible... but with a ship underway at normal speeds everything appears to be working quite well. That includes the AI. I've had zero mishaps on takeoff (and I've been watching!).

So far the only issue I see is that takeoff distance is a bit long. Maybe something to do with low speed acceleration. Everything else seems to be fine... and working as normal. To be honest, I'm not even sure what a couple of people are up in arms about. We hear that TD broke it so they should fix it but I'm not sure what they broke or what they should fix. I'll get onboard that bandwagon as soon as someone makes sense!

Sawyer presented quite a convincing case and did hours of testing and posting only to be met with general skepticism. I have yet to see any data from DT supporting the changes to the flight model.

The Corsair took a huge performance hit and we haven't even gotten to the Hellcat yet.

I realize that endless hours have been spent on creating this patch and for the most part it's pretty cool.

What you guys have to realize is that those of us who fly the Navy planes exclusively, we have noticed a huge difference. And there is nothing wrong with stating the "feel" of a plane isn't quite right. We aren't all modders or airplane mechanics. Not to mention some of us have families and careers so we don't have time to test out the differences between patches.

Besides I think no matter what evidence is presented here, DT will shoot it down. I've seen declassified documents which matched my so-called fan base site stats and they have been met with cynical skepticism.

Further more DT has not provided any data or reasoning as to why the Corsair has been remodelled.

I have found this whole discussion to be highly biased and unprofessional.

[dpeters95]

Originally Posted by IceFire

Absolutely. All of this discussion has made me go back and replay an old campaign I did (called Facing The Wind) which follows VF-84 and VF-85 during the Okinawa campaign. I haven't finished the campaign but so far every mission works just as it did before... and the first couple of missions including some fairly normal and realistic loadouts that were used during attack missions.

Taking off from a stationary deck right now does appear impossible... but with a ship underway at normal speeds everything appears to be working quite well. That includes the AI. I've had zero mishaps on takeoff (and I've been watching!).

So far the only issue I see is that takeoff distance is a bit long. Maybe something to do with low speed acceleration. Everything else seems to be fine... and working as normal. To be honest, I'm not even sure what a couple of people are up in arms about. We hear that TD broke it so they should fix it but I'm not sure what they broke or what they should fix. I'll get onboard that bandwagon as soon as someone makes sense!

OK, well how about this making sense... The following is a list of British Pacific Fleet ESCORT CARRIERS that all contained F4u-1a squadrons:

HMS Slinger
HMS Arbiter
HMS Speaker
HMS Fencer
HMS Chaser
HMS Reaper
HMS Striker
HMS Ruler

They were all the same "class" of ship and their overall length was 492 feet 3 inches (150.04 m), pretty much the identical length (150 m) as the US Escort Carriers. I used the British carriers because the US carrier list was so long that it would have taken forever to trace down all the on board squadrons and their airplane compliment.

So that should make sense. I don't have all the spec sheets, etc., and I don't know what loads they carried, but those F4u-1A's could at a minimum fly off the Escort Carriers deck, ours currently can not...

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by h0MbrE

"They were constantly exposed to salt spray, mud, sand and tropical weather, maintained by overworked and relatively untrained mechanics, and regularly abused by their pilots."

Ahhh I get it now... that's why the F4U is too weak to even make it off the deck now. Well that makes it okay then. LOL

Not sure what the issue is... it's already been stated that the takeoff distance is wrong but pretty much been proven otherwise that the new performance levels match the documents that you previously provided.