WWII FW190's, how good were they in dogfights?

Regnirps wrote:

snip

BTW, the Spitfires are nice till you get P51s but the Hurricanes have a turning
radius and roll rate that seems to be an advantage in some engagements. I
wonder if this reflects real conditions?

AFAIR it does, at least prior to the Spits getting metal ailerons (which boosted
their roll rate at high IAS). That came in starting as a retrofit on either Mk.
IIs or Mk. Vs, I forget which. IIRR, the Hurricane I could out-turn the Spit I at
low/medium altitudes, but the Spit had better speed up high so it had a more Ps
available up there, where the Hurricane was hanging on a stall while maxed out.

Guy

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
Subject: WWII FW190's, how good were they in dogfights?
From: "The Enlightenment"
Date: 5/22/04 12:50 AM Pacific Daylight Time

In a bad landing at night the pug nosed FW190A could over nose and
end
up on its back. As the pilot was in a bubble canopy he could
easily
be killed and frequently was.


Ol' Willie never could design a decent landing gear.

The gear was adaquete for the Emil and Fritz (109E and 109F) if a bit
cantankerous: however by the time the heavier Gustav (which replaced
the DB601 with the more powerfull and havier DB605 engine) the
problem got worse. It was basically a problem caused by gyroscopic
precesion (the takeoff swing only on landing) that was made worse by
the narrow track of the undercarriage. A contarotating propellor
would have solved it for instance.

The undercarriage had the advantage of being pined to the fueselage,
thus saving structural weight and allowing easy disassembly of the
wings for transport. (the aircraft could stand on its undercarriage
with its wings detached)

Towards the end of the war the synthetic fuel plants started producing
higher octane fuel. This might have delayed the the need to oversize
the German engines had it come as early as supplies of high octane
came to the Allies.

I don't believe the Me 110, Me 108 or any other Me had under-carriage
problems.

The Me 262 had nose wheel collapse problems but they were due to
faulty materials.

In article ,
(WaltBJ) wrote:

"John Waters" wrote in message
m...
wrote in message
...
Trying to fly these in the game IL2 is a waste of time, they are really
crap. I can't believe this was realistic in comparison to other fighters
of
the time. Anyone know how good the real planes were and/or what their
major
weaknesses were?

Biggest problem about computer games I have discovered so far is
Earth's G effect is ignored (the egg) along with no unloaded (zero-G)
accleration increase. The gun ranges far exceed actual effective
ranges in real life, as well as the lead requirements are way too
small.

Try WarBirds. It has all that right.

You can download it and fly offline for free.

--
Laurie Nyveen da
__________________________________________________ _____________________
Editor, Netsurfer Digest http://www.netsurf.com/nsd
Editor, WWII TechPubs http://www.wwiitechpubs.info
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"All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys."
- Grandma Woody (Northern Exposure)

(Remove nada from Canada to e-mail me. Sorry)

In article ,
Guy Alcala writes:
John Carrier wrote:

Excellent post. I particularly liked the link to the USN tests. As the
Corsair's opponent was almost exclusively Japanese, it must have been a
revelation to find there was an airplane it could outturn (okay, there was
the P-47).

The impact of a weapon system with an effective range of perhaps 1500 feet
skews the weighting of A/C performance characteristics quite a bit when
compared to modern machinery. But then as now, speed was life.

In fairness I should mention that Eric Brown, who'd flown all three
extensively, reached a different conclusion than this USN comparison. Re the
Corsair II (F4U-1A with clipped wingtips) vs. the FW-190A-4, he wrote:

"This would be a contest between a heavyweight and a lightweight fighter, with
virtually all the advantages on the side of the latter. Having flown both a/c
a lot, I have no doubt as to which I would rather fly. The FW-190A-4 could
not be bested by the Corsair.

"Verdict: The FW-190A-4 was arguably the best piston-engine fighter of World
War II [Note: he probably means the FW-190 series. Later in the book, when
rating the best performing piston-fighters of WW2 , he rates the Spit XIV
number one with the inline-engined FW-190D-9 just a nose behind, and the P-51D
(Mustang IV) a tad behind that, deliberately ignoring operational issues such
as range]. It is a clear winner in combat with the Corsair."

F6F-3 vs. FW-190A-4:

"This would be a showdown between two classic fighters. The German had a
speed advantage of 30 mph, the American a slight advantage in climb. Both
were very maneuverable* and both had heavy firepower. By 1944 the FW-190 was
a little long in the tooth, while the Hellcat was a relative newcomer; still,
the superb technology built into the German fighter by Kurt Tank was not
outmoded. The Hellcat had broken the iron grip of the Zeke in the Far East,
but the FW-190A-4 was a far tougher opponent.

"Verdict: This was a contest so finely balanced that the skill of the pilot
would probably be the deciding factor."

*A somewhat odd statement, as the Hellcat had the typically mushy Grumman
ailerons. But it could certainly out-turn the 190.

Some of that may, repeat _may_ be personal preference sneaking in.
Cdr Brown just plain didn't like the Corsair much at all, in any
version. Reading his reports, I get the feeling that the Spitfire fit
him just right, and that's what he was measuring against. (But not
teh Seafire, particularly, he rates it last in "Duels in the Sky" for
carrier-based fighters, due to its poor behavior around the boat.
It would be interesting to see what his opinion was of the P-47,
which was pretty similar to the Corsair in size & performance, albeit
with better control harmony.

While he certainly is Very British, he's not a blind chauvanist.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

Well, I dont know which flightsims you tried, but Il-2 surely can't be
blamed of having a simplyfied gunerry model. Every bullet is a vector
defined object, as well as aircraft, and collision between these objects is
what is used in IL-2 to detect hits being scored. In older sims the hit
bubble was used so it was rather easy to score hits. Now I haven't fired an
airborne weapon in my life, but IL-2 feels just about right. It also has a
state of the art flight model. I don't think you will be dissapointed if you
try it. It would also be very interesting to read what you think of it once
you've tried it.

As for jet sims, the latest thing is LOMAC which models modern jets
(F-15, A-10, Su-27, Mig-29). Jets of the '60s are soarly missed in todays
flightsim market... I'd really like a decent F-104 sim...


__/ G R E E T I N G S ! \__
\ /


"WaltBJ" wrote in message
om...
"John Waters" wrote in message
m...
wrote in message
...
Trying to fly these in the game IL2 is a waste of time, they are
really
crap. I can't believe this was realistic in comparison to other
fighters
of
the time. Anyone know how good the real planes were and/or what their
major
weaknesses were?

Biggest problem about computer games I have discovered so far is
Earth's G effect is ignored (the egg) along with no unloaded (zero-G)
accleration increase. The gun ranges far exceed actual effective
ranges in real life, as well as the lead requirements are way too
small. For example, co-speed 400KIAS, 1500 foot range, 5 G, the pipper
sags down below the nose in an F104A - your target's wings stick out
each side of the radome. Also, fuel consumption is also way too low,
at a guesstimate about 1/4 what it really is in combat.
Walt BJ

The Me 262 had nose wheel collapse problems but they were due to
faulty materials.


I disagree - in nearly every case, the failure of the nose gear on a 262 could
be traced back to incorrect towing procedures. Putting the entire weight of an
aircraft on the axel of the nose gear and yanking it around with a Krad is a
sure recipe for an accident. Pilots that mention the fragile nose gear were
usually talking about this type of accident, not failures during landing or
takeoff.

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR

An LZ is a place you want to land, not stay.

On Sun, 23 May 2004 05:21:00 GMT, Guy Alcala
wrote:

AFAIR it does, at least prior to the Spits getting metal ailerons (which boosted
their roll rate at high IAS). That came in starting as a retrofit on either Mk.
IIs or Mk. Vs, I forget which.

Officially, Mk Vs, but that didn't stop some unit commanders (e.g.
Bader at Tangmere) short-circuiting the procurement procedure to get
their Mk IIs fitted with them. They apparently weren't common on the
Mk V until late in 1941, as Neville Duke complained when his
metal-aileroned Mk V was lost on operations with another pilot that
summer. And that was when he was with 92 Squadron, the first to get
Spit Vs.

Gavin Bailey
--

Now see message: "Boot sector corrupt. System halted. All data lost."
Spend thousands of dollar on top grade windows system. Result better
than expected. What your problem? - Bart Kwan En

Has anyone seen a decent nightfighter sim? Something in a Mosquito or Beau..?

Nothing on that front, Gordon. There's been discussions about the
subject and while it would be quite easy to put the right planes into
night skies, everything else is way harder to make.

Radar, for example. It would be immensely hard to make a radar display
that works like the original. Having computer voice give you corrections
from "his" radar display could work, but that would lack the feeling.
Night war was so technical, that you know, it would be mostly flying in
dark sky and not seeing anything - and that would bore 99,5% of the players.

THOUGH...

We did run a three battle long night bombers campaign on WarBirds
simualtor a few years ago. It was fantastic, though very hard.

We managed to do it with a lot of tweaking. Many interesting things
"adjusted" to make a daylight air combat sim to work in a night bomber
scenario, but it worked surprisingly well. Skipping the details, the RAF
bombers did not have any radars, RAF night intruders had partial radar
picture, Luftwaffe night fighters had no radar and Luftwaffe ground
control had full radar picture. This worked in teh in flight map, little
dots moving in the map and we limited that each and every person could
see. Very rough, not like a real radar at all but best what we could do.

Most of the planes were almost correct, some changes with sub variants,
just that the Lancaster had to be replaced by B-24.

In the end, the scenarios were amazing. The pilots flying in almost
blind, relying largely on instruments, Luftwaffe interceptors listening
to ground radar comms and trying to find the bomber streams from
blackness, me as CO of one night fighter squadron plotting the map,
moving counters on tablemap, trying to guide the night fighters around
RAF intruders hunting near airfields and yelling to the guys on radio
(real time voice comms) when they were too late making a turn or druly
commenting "scharm 3, you're in middle of bomber stream". "Control, we
don't see anything..." "Scharm 3, watch again, I repeat you are in
middle of 12+ bombers, control out".

So night bombers can be simulated in some way, in at least correct
online environment, but I don't quite see much changes for a dedicated
simulator. One was in the works by hobbyists but I think that project
has died.

Here's some info/pictures on the night bombers battle:
http://vip.mikrobitti.fi/~jukkak/wb/...ns.htm#emc15.1

jok

Here's some info/pictures on the night bombers battle:
http://vip.mikrobitti.fi/~jukkak/wb/...ns.htm#emc15.1


Sure looks like fun! Those online battles can be a real cool way to waste a
couple hours. Thanks for the AARs.

v/r
Gordon

Walt I have no idea what sim you are refering to with F104s etc, IL-2 is an
WW2 FS, that is considered by many, to be the most realistic WW2 FS made..
As to gun ranges in IL-2 they are accurate from what I have read in WW2
pilot AARs etc.

As to gravity effects etc, thats a question better presented at:

http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/6/ubb.x?a=...102&f=63110913

Regards, John Waters


"WaltBJ" wrote in message

Biggest problem about computer games I have discovered so far is
Earth's G effect is ignored (the egg) along with no unloaded (zero-G)
accleration increase. The gun ranges far exceed actual effective
ranges in real life, as well as the lead requirements are way too
small. For example, co-speed 400KIAS, 1500 foot range, 5 G, the pipper
sags down below the nose in an F104A - your target's wings stick out
each side of the radome. Also, fuel consumption is also way too low,
at a guesstimate about 1/4 what it really is in combat.
Walt BJ