Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[horseback]

Originally Posted by Woke Up Dead

I hear you, but your reply, and most of your subsequent replies in this thread make good arguments about unrealistic accuracy of AI gunners, not about the unrealistic fragility of the American engines. If you try attacking the same bombers with the same tactics in a different planes, you might conclude the R-2800 is just as tough or tougher. That's certainly the impression I get.

I would rank the fragility of engines according to their aircraft roughly like this, from most delicate to toughest:

- Bf-109
- Ki-61
- P-40
- P-51
- Hurricane
- Tempest
- Italian liquid-cooled planes
- P-38
- Spitfire
- MiG
- P-47
- F4U
- Yak
- LaGG
- F4F
- FW-190
- La 5/7
- P-39
- Japanese radial-powered fighters

Part of my argument, probably obscured by the more obvious gunnery flaws, is that some aircraft are disproportionately hit even more than that their DMs are overstated/flawed. I've flown the 109 and 190 regularly since the first year the sim was sold, and while the 109 has an inline engine, I've never felt that it took a disproportionate number of engine losses, certainly nothing like the P-40. My immediate impression is that the 190 loses its engine or takes engine damage quite a bit more often than the 109. It also gets hit more often, even though it was a bit faster and capable of rapid change in direction and it needs considerably less firing time to obtain the destruction of its target. Once hit though, it usually gives you reduced power for a good while rather than packing it in immediately the way an R-2800 or the P-40's Allison often will.

Admittedly, by this point I have about 10-20 times as many 'hours' in the 109/190 over the P-40 in all their respective versions, but the P-40 hours are still pretty significant. I have less time in the Mustang than the P-40, but it seems far more likely to lose its prop pitch than other aircraft that have a DM that includes loss of PP (how about the Zero for a comparison? It's props were license built Hamilton Standard models, and I've never lost PP in the few combats I've tried in it, and that spinner is -or should be- like the Mustang's, a big target). I haven't flown the Ki-61, the Tempest or the Italians in any appreciable combat situations, so I cannot offer an opinion on them.

I tried one short campaign in the early Hurri, but it was enormously frustrating not least because the campaign was developed for an earlier patch of the game, and some things just weren't possible that had been before the notorious 4.0x patches. It did seem to me to be in much the same class as the P-40, as far as the glass jaw.

The Hellcat in my opinion is far more likely to get hit than either the P-47 or the Corsair; in ratio of hits to engine losses, they appear to me to be about even --much too much damage much too often. Similarly, the Mustang is far more likely to get hit than a Spitfire, although the Spit seems to lose control surfaces or take a PK more easily.

Of the five though, the Hellcat is easily the greatest bullet magnet; it's like that one kid in your group of friends who was always caught or recognized when all of you were doing something you shouldn't.

Yaks and LaGGs seem to me to be about right; I have more hours in them and P-39s than the P-40, and the constant concern in Soviet fighters was overheating; hits to the engine make it overheat or die fairly quickly; the engines were always very closely cowled, so any hit to the engine covers almost invariably led to hitting the engine (oddly enough, even though hits to the engine tend to take it out, it rarely damages the MGs mounted above it).

This is also true of the 190, the Lavotchkins, the P-38, and the Ki-43, but not nearly so much in the case of the P-47, Hellcat, Mustang, Spitfire, Hurricane or P-40; these aircraft look remarkably abbreviated when the engine covers or cowls are removed for maintenance, even more so than the 109. I am also aware that the P-40 and the Mustang had some armor plating behind their spinners to protect the engine and pilot in a headon fire situation (which doesn't seem to be very effective in-game...)

The Soviets also don't seem to get hit as easily overall as some western types; they and the Airacobra seem to benefit from some sort of 'grace' that doesn't extend to the P-40, the Spit and later American types, which a few passes against a flight of He-111s (armed with multiple low-tech single 7.9mm popgun positions) would quickly illustrate.

The F4F is actually safer than the F6F against the Betty in my experience, despite being slower and less armored (and the early war examples of the F4F-3 lacked self-sealing tanks and pilot armor; first clashes in the Pacific featured boilerplate literally being hand installed on the hanger deck the night before a mission).

Fragility seems to me to be at least partly as much of a function of how likely you are to be hit; it would be interesting to do a comparison of attacking passes at bombers generally acknowledged as particularly dangerous in spite of being lightly armed, like the He-111 or the Betty. If you made multiple passes in each aircraft at roughly the same angles and speeds, you can observe which aircraft take disproportionate hits and or damage, and draw your own conclusions.

cheers

horseback