# Manoeuvre rating for WW2 aircraft



## Garyt (Jan 3, 2014)

Hi, New to the forum.

I've been looking at playing a pacific theatre naval/aviation game, looking at possibly Seekrieg, Command at Sea or Seas of War.

I usually apply some houserules to most games I play , and was not quite happy with how these games represent aircraft.

For Instance, Seekrieg uses a multiple of the planes weight for damage resistance, and a rather undetailed method of maneuverability, basically the speed at which a plane can make a 2g turn.

I've looked at some different ways of rating the planes.

Now the weight = damage resistance seemed a bit overly simplistic to me, but looking at it, most things that added weight on a plane improved damage resistance, such as armour and self sealing fuel tanks. I've thought of making a slight change, basing it more on the square root of weight, but also applying an adjustment, probably for self sealing fuel tanks, armor, and other important factors (maybe +/-10-20%). This adjustment would be applied prior to taking the square root.

The maneuver issue is a far tougher one. I look at as ww2 planes both performed in a dogfight capacity, also in a "zoom and boom" one. I take the average of their capacity in both, as the important thing is which plane will win out and force the other to fight to their own strengths.

I took the scores of planes in a few areas and set up the base, and increased or decreased the base score by one per half step of standard deviation from the norm. After 2 half step deviations in either direction, I went to full step deviations. 

The attributes I used were as follows:

Dogfight: 3x 360 degree turn time + 1x 200-250 mph acceleration + 2x roll speed at 150mph + 1x roll speed at 250 + 2x acceleration 150-250

Boom and Zoom: 1x Max speed + 1x 200-250 acceleration + 1x 1-5k climb time + 1x 5-10k climb time + 1x Roll at 250 mph + 2x roll at 350 mph + 3x average dive speed 10-5k and 5-1k + 1x acceleration 150-250 mph

Averages of both were used, then the dogfight and boom and zoom scores were averaged.

Here are some results:

P38L-	8.6
Fw190D9-	8.4
P38J-	8.3
SpitIX-	8.2
Fw190D9-	8.1
F4U Corsair-8.0
Bf 109K4	7.9
SpitV	-7.9
Ki84 Frank-	7.9
Bf 109F4-	7.8
Fw190A8-	7.8
P51D- 7.7
Bf 109G6-	7.7
Fw190A4	7.6
F6F Hellcat-7.5
SpitIa	- 7.4
P39D-	7.2
Bf 109E4-	7.0
A6M5 Zero-	6.9
A6M3 Zero-	6.8
Ki43 Oscar-	6.8
Bf 109G6R6-6.8
P38F TBolt-	6.8
FM2 Wildcat-6.5
P40E-	6.3
P47D-6.0
HurriIIc-	5.9
A6M2 Zero-	5.7
Bf 110C4-	5.7
Bf 110G2R3-5.7
HurriI-	5.4
F4F Wildcat	5.1

What really suprised me - the P-38. The late model P-38 seems a very fine plane. My guess it had fallen a bit out of favor do to the problems the earlier modles had, and the US was more geared towards the P51 by this point.

The ME 109 also suprised me a lot, I guess it should not have, this plane registered I think more Ww2 killls than any other. It's a great climber, a strong vertical/energy fighter, and actually turns well for a plane that fights as well as it does in the vertical, probably due to small size. It's only real drawbacks I know of - it's a bit small, which will hurt it for damage taken, and apparently while it could dive fast, it was not as maneuverable in the dive as others. This is somewhat represented by bad roll speeds at 350k+, I'm not sure if it truly shows the drawbacks though.

The Wildcat F4 also suprised be in a bad way. But it turns and dives OK, and is below average to terrible on everything else, seems like it was way underpowered. I guess it's durability which is not represented here was it's greatest feature.

Bear in mind also that this is only maneuver (I use the term broadly as it represents both turning and vertical/energy maneuverability), two other separate areas are damage resistance and firepower.

BTW - Firepower as done in Seekrieg uses this formula -
.30 calibre- 1.25
.50 calibre- 2.50
20mm - 8.5
(it does not address the 30mm weapon)

A bit simplistic too I think, the rate of fire while similar on many of the various types of weapons could vary as well as muzzle velocity. The 20mm used by early Zero's had a lower muzzle velocity than the later ones, which also gave it different ballisitcs then the 7.7mm used by the Zero's.

But I alwys thought as a real rough way of thinking that the 2-20mm + 2 -.30 cal was roughly similar in firepower to the 6- 50's used by US planes. According to the above, 19.5 is the rating for the twin 20's, 15 for the 6 50's.

I'm curious as to thoughts on the maneuver formula, personally I think I may have made roll rate a bit too important, and any other thoughts on this.


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## davebender (Jan 3, 2014)

Roll becomes more important as speed increases. At speeds greater then 400 mph roll rate is probably more important then banked turn ability. So the importance of this characteristic is directly related to aircraft max speed.


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## GregP (Jan 3, 2014)

Where did you get the turn time and acceleration data for all these planes? Just curious.

The P-38 was the fastest-accelerating plane in US service.


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## tomo pauk (Jan 4, 2014)

Hello, Garyt,
Congratulations for your effort. I have some questions:
Maybe you would like also to post a table with roll rates, speeds, dive speeds etc? Are the max speeds the absolute maximums, or they hold true for single altitude? Stating the sources should help, too. When you say "1-5k", is the "k" a kilometer, or a thousand feet?
BTW, the "P38F TBolt" is a typo?


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## Garyt (Jan 4, 2014)

Well, I thought the source was real good initially. It turns out it comes from one of the programmers for Warbirds and represents the performance of planes in the warbirds simulator. Information is here:

Home Page

So I can't say the is a result of exhaustive testing of ww2 planes - it's more a copy of someone else's research. It does however seem rather accurate, I'm just wondering if there is perhaps some bias one way or the other.

I must say though it seems to be very rooted in factual information, so it's probably very accurate.

"Where did you get the turn time and acceleration data for all these planes? Just curious.

The P-38 was the fastest-accelerating plane in US service."

There are a lot of factors in calculating the best accelerator with the above stats, altitude is an issue, accelerating from what speed to what speed is another. The Hellcat wins accelerating from 150-250, and the Corsair and Mustang are right behind the P-38 at this lower speed. On Higher end acceleration, the P-38 wins, the Mustang not too far behind. These are the two later model P-38's though, the P38F is unremarkable in this regard.

I'm suprised we did not see more of the late model P-38's, though if this is accurate Price of WW2 Aircraft | C Strohmeyer's Weblog; Life, Business it would seem that you could build about 2 P-51's for the price of a P-38.

For other competitors, the KI-84 (Frank) is one of the best at accelerating, the up-engined ME109's are very good. The FW's are got, not great at accelerating until you get to the Dora. The Me109K4 was a pretty amazing plane considering it's frame was in service at the start of the war, it was the best climber and had great acceleration, better than the Allied planes. I guess that's what happens when you put 2000 horsepower on a small airframe. Apparently they had a lot of internal changes and aerodynamic improvements on this model as well. 

"Maybe you would like also to post a table with roll rates, speeds, dive speeds etc? Are the max speeds the absolute maximums, or they hold true for single altitude? Stating the sources should help, too. When you say "1-5k", is the "k" a kilometer, or a thousand feet?
BTW, the "P38F TBolt" is a typo?"

Yeah, P-38F Thunderbolt should be "P38-F Lightning". 1-5K means 1-5 thousand feet. For the scope of what I am doing for a game, it does not make sense to break apart the stats as to what plane is better at what altitude, but to use more of an average instead. I've posted a link to the table.

And I also must say be careful looking at some testing by the US of non allied planes. I know some of the testing was done with Japanese planes that had not been maintained and probably suffered from some "dealer rot". Also, many of these Japanese planes had been run on whatever possibly low octane fuel they could find that had some semblance of AVGAS. Probably fouled these engines some and lowered their overall performance unless they were given rather extensive tune-ups.

One thing I noticed as well - Initially, the P-51 ranked middle of the road even though many of it's numbers were similar to the Dora (even turns a bit better than the Dora). I looked at the P51 to check my math, and found out the math was correct, but the P-51 seemed to be at just the wrong end of the standard deviation breakdown most of the time. I.E. if a 360 turn rating was 20.1-22.1 for a score of 5, the P-51 would be a 22.2 for a score of 4. I gave it "half points" when re-doing it's ratings, but what I really need to do is to come up with a system with less break points, and instead of using 1/2 standard deviation steps make it more in the range of 1/10 steps of a standard deviation. 


Overall I must say though that the table looks very similar to anything I have seen from true testing. I think there might be a discrepancy in the P-47's dive time, that's all I really see. The maximum speeds may not match exactly with absolute top tested speeds, they are a hair slower, but they seem to be accurate from a relativity standpoint. And these lower speeds may be more relevant for field performance. Whoever came up with these tables did their research well, even though they may have fudged a few numbers due to lack of data.


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## tomo pauk (Jan 4, 2014)

My 2 cents worth (while acknowledging the work behind the data at the Hoof's site):
-the maneuverability posted, both here and at Hoof's site, is derived from in-game fight models - sort of such a disclaimer should've been posted 1st
-some of the data is questionable (WER for F4F and Ju-88, dive speeds of 460 mph for Zero, Hayabusa, Wildcat, zoom climbs starting from 400 mph for those 3 fighters) 
-it is too bad only the data for altitudes under 10000 ft is taken into account
-there is no distinction between different engine regimes (how good/bad the engine power is modeled in the sim, is the engine power listed as take-off power, or WER, or military, what power levels are used in acquiring the data)


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## davebender (Jan 4, 2014)

> P-51 ranked middle of the road even though many of it's numbers were similar to the Dora (even turns a bit better than the Dora).


P-51 and Fw-190D9 are late war aircraft with speeds in excess of 400mph. Roll is what counts most for high speed maneuverability and Fw-190D9 was a roll champion.


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## GregP (Jan 5, 2014)

Part of the problem with things like this is primary, accurate data. Many times you'll see something like a P-51 and a SPitfire compared ... but if you read the test conditions, one or the other is limited to some arbitrary manifold pressure or RPM while the other is free to use 20 inches more. Naturally, the one with the higher limit climbs better and is faster. So you HAVE to pay attention to the test conditions.

In the CBI the AVG flew some P-40's that were limited to 59 inches of MAP by the book, but we have had several former AVG pilots including General Davey Allison (no relation to the engine people) say he frequently flew them at 75 inches of MAP to get an advantage or make a sale. The devil is in the details.

I've been trying very hard to compile such a chart for more than 10 years and have a pretty decent start at it, but getting the data on the major types from around the globe is very difficult.


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## wmaxt (Jan 5, 2014)

Greg,

I found a page from CC Jordon that placed the P-38 at 2.8 mph/second, F4U4 at 2.4 mph/sec, and the P-51 at 2.2mph/sec.
I've seen other data that also confirms the assessment by gregt as the fastest fighter acceleration wise.

Bill.


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## Garyt (Jan 5, 2014)

"-the maneuverability posted, both here and at Hoof's site, is derived from in-game fight models - sort of such a disclaimer should've been posted 1st"

Was initially unaware that this was not primary source data. Came to the realization when it seemed to good to be true that ALL that data was right there on all the planes - and all other research I've done you get a smattering of info on a few planes. I did however in a later post state that it appeared the data was from a game.

"some of the data is questionable (WER for F4F and Ju-88, dive speeds of 460 mph for Zero, Hayabusa, Wildcat, zoom climbs starting from 400 mph for those 3 fighters)"

I've heard of but have seen no specs on the zero's limited diving ability - a "not to exceed" speed due to it's fragile construction.



"I've been trying very hard to compile such a chart for more than 10 years and have a pretty decent start at it, but getting the data on the major types from around the globe is very difficult."

Would be very interested in what you have, Greg.


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## Jabberwocky (Jan 5, 2014)

Garyt said:


> "-the maneuverability posted, both here and at Hoof's site, is derived from in-game fight models - sort of such a disclaimer should've been posted 1st"
> 
> Was initially unaware that this was not primary source data. Came to the realization when it seemed to good to be true that ALL that data was right there on all the planes - and all other research I've done you get a smattering of info on a few planes. I did however in a later post state that it appeared the data was from a game.
> 
> ...



The Zero did not have a "fragile construction". Dive limits were imposed due to stressed skin weakness, not structural weakness. Without significant structural change to the wing, the limiting dive speed went from 390 mph in the A6M2 to 410 mph in the A6M3 to 450 mph in the A6M5. G limit was around 8.8 g.


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## Francis marliere (Jan 6, 2014)

Gary,

as a player of Seekrieg and Command at Sea, I understand that you are not happy with the air-to-air combat rules of these games and try to make out your own model. However, I fear that you open a can of worms and suggest that you look after rules that are "good enough" rather than "good". These games, especially SK are naval wargames and will not simulate accurately air combat. CaS can work fine for large operations in which some aircraft are involved (such as carrier battles) but I am afraid that SK is not designed for this kind of scenarios (SK5 is perfect however for small scale surface battles). Moreover, air combat is complex and almost impossible to simulate. As the proverb says "what can be counted does not always count and what counts cannot always be counted". The most important parameters (pilot quality, tactics, tactical situation, etc.) are difficult to count, and the things that are easier to count (aircraft speed, climb rate, etc.) are not the most important.

IMHO it is usually easier to keep the existing rules and make them better by changing a few things rather than to change the whole rules. Sometimes the game system is coherent and a change in an area has a impact in other fields. A game such as CaS has a strong support (websites, discussion group and official review) and if you use completly different rules, you won't be able to profit from the advices, rules improvements, game aids provided by the authors of the game or the community. In the other hand, if you only change what you don't like in the official rules, you may benefit from this stuff.

As far as I renember CaS, there were two things wrong with the air-to-air rules. The maneuver rating lacks (in 0.5 increment) and should be more precise to make the difference between planes (ie Hurricane I II have a maneuver rating of 2.5 despite the mk.II being better in real word). Moreover some ratings are sometimes discutable and may be changed (3.5 may be a bit strong for the Zero for exemple).

More important, the model that calculates if a plane is destroyed when he is hit, is IMHO inaccurate. Damage value has very little impact in the game and the chances of destruction depend only of gun power. If hit by the same gun battery, a Zero and a Corsair have almost the same chances to go down.

I will finish by pointing out that your sources are very accurate but not very reliable : it's data from a game not historical data. A while ago, I tried to use this website as a source while working on my own air-to-air rules for CaS. I found some big differences with historical data. I now rather use other sources, such as :
WWII Aircraft Performance
Standard Aircraft Characteristics Arcive
Historical Information
Note that, as good as this sites are, they don't provide all the stuff that you would like to have. Some data such as acceleration, dive speed, roll rate is very difficult to find and I am afraid you won't find them for all the planes that interest you. Unfortunately, you have to work with what you have at hand.

Best regards,

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## tomo pauk (Jan 6, 2014)

Hello, Garyt,



Garyt said:


> Was initially unaware that this was not primary source data. Came to the realization when it seemed to good to be true that ALL that data was right there on all the planes - and all other research I've done you get a smattering of info on a few planes. I did however in a later post state that it appeared the data was from a game.



Please do not feel offended in any way. I've already congratulated you on your work, and acknowledged the effort both from you and Hoof.
However: I'm not aware of your _independent_ research (ie. other than it uses Hoof's data), quality of it, nor of the results of it. The source of yours has two major shortcomings: it's data comes from a person doing measures in a simulation, and any simulation is, at the best, a tertiary source. I did not "get a smattering info on a few planes", but simply pointed out that your source got several things wrong, without any deeper look at all of the other data. The another thing with Hoof's data is that it uses/relies on data available almost 20 years ago (the page was last updated on October 1997), ie. it does not take into account all the research done in last 2 decades.



> I've heard of but have seen no specs on the zero's limited diving ability - a "not to exceed" speed due to it's fragile construction.



Jabberwocky's replied to this - the dive abilities between different marks of Zero were much more different historically, than at Warbirds. And the in-game models do dive much better than it was historically so.


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## GregP (Jan 6, 2014)

Hi Wmaxt!

I've seen those acceleration ratings, too, but have not come across the flight reports with primary data in them.

The P-38 went from the non-combat ready models before the F model to the F model and beyond with G, J, and L. I can't believe they all accelerate the same and I especially don't believe they accelerate at a constant rate. Perhaps the ratings above are an average from cruise speed until some arbitrary speed, say ... 350 mph, is reached. Without the data I don't know what models were being flown, the rpm and manifold pressure they were using, the weight of the aircraft during the flight, or anything else. They went from early Allisons to the late-war -100 series units that were different animals from the early units.

The Corsair went from types very similar to one another (F4U, F4U-1A, F4U-1D) to types well in advance of them (F4U-4 and later) and from less than 2,000 HP to 2,250 HP and more later. Speed went from just over 400 mph to about 470 mph in the Corsair.

The P-51 went from the Allison-powered early models to the 2-stage Merlin units and even better in the P-51H.

So the real questions would indlude which models were test at what weight, altitudes, and power settings, and how exactly the quoted numbers were derived since I find it unbelievcable taht the acceleration was a constant regardless of starting speed or altitude. The P-38 had Allisons, the F4U had an R-2800, and the P-51 had both the Allison and the Merlin.

It is quite possible the numbers are at the particular type's best altitude and are averages from lo, say,w cruise to some combat speed of choice that may well vary with the type. I know you have thought of most of this and my text above is nothign new, but getting accurate primary data is , as I said, yough since it is time-sensitive data. As we all know, a Bf 109D is quite a different animal from a Bf 109K. The same can be said for MOST of the fighters of WWII. Even the Grumman Bearcat, which DID make WWII but didn't make combat has different performance in its very low number of variants.

Getting these data for US types is difficult but some can be found. Getting these data for British types can also be done for at least some of the fighters. Getting these data for German types is fraught with danger since so many people claim to have the flight test reports and so many of them disagree with one another. 

Finding primary source data on Japanese types is almost impossible, though you CAN find some. I happen to have a rather pritine copy of the 2-book set entitled ""General View of Japanese Military Aircraft in the Pacific War" compiled by the staff of "Airview" by Kanto--Sha Co, Limited in Tokyo in 1953 (English text in 1955). The entire staff was Japanese and the editor in chief was Kazuo Baba. The cutaways draings were by Kikuo Hashimoto. The preface staes that they used only authentic Japanese records and were as accurate as they could be in the 1953 timeframe. The primary intent was to produce a factual reference, not a political text.

It has a fairly comprehensive table with data on 54 Japanese Army types and 68 Navy types as documented in Japanese service or flight test. But making coparisons is almost impossible since the data are simple data points. There is nothing like a chart by altitude for various performance numbers duch as top speed, climb rate, and rate of turn. The primary performance data points are Vmax, Vland, Climb (time to height), range, and celiling with no reference to Vmax at sea level plus Vmax at best height.

To date, I have found no better reference for Japanese types, and that makes a flight model very difficult and meaningful comparisons pretty tough.


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## Garyt (Jan 6, 2014)

"as a player of Seekrieg and Command at Sea, I understand that you are not happy with the air-to-air combat rules of these games and try to make out your own model. However, I fear that you open a can of worms and suggest that you look after rules that are "good enough" rather than "good"."

Well, in actuality that's pretty much what I am doing, looking for the "good enough". Some times the games seem biased in one way or another - such as the 3.5 for the Zero. While it's turning abilities merit this, there are other aspects of it's overall performance that do not. But I'm not looking to do a complete re-write - more of changing the rules a bit for accuracy. Maybe going to a D20 vs a D10 for maneuver rolls, etc.

Francis - Have you had a chance to look at Seas of War? Seas of War

It's a bit more Seekrieg than Command at Sea. Looking at that as a possibility as well. I'm looking to play a Flat-Top ruled game for strategic purposes, but tactical using one of the above mentioned games.

What's neat about Seekrieg regarding Naval aviation - they have rules for planes returning early from a sortie without accomplishing a strike, being miles off target, etc. etc. Real life things that prevent a strike of say 40 planes really indeed striking as 40 planes.

Regarding your thoughts about being careful with changing rules - I get that. For instance, with seakrieg depending upon weather you could have easily 20%+ of a strike force not make it to the target. In many boardgames, this is abstracted into a lower effectiveness from the whole strike. To accurately represent this in something modeled more specifically like a miniature game, you have to account for those planes that do not make the strike, as individual planes will be more effective.


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## drgondog (Jan 7, 2014)

The P-51B would out perform the D in every category except firepower and visibility.


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## Garyt (Jan 7, 2014)

"The P-51B would out perform the D in every category except firepower and visibility."

Not from what I have seen. In about any source they seem to be very similar with a few differences. seems the Dora was a better roller, not from hoof's data but from other data, even posts on this site. P51 was better at turning.


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## fastmongrel (Jan 7, 2014)

Garyt said:


> "The P-51B would out perform the D in every category except firepower and visibility."
> 
> Not from what I have seen. In about any source they seem to be very similar with a few differences. seems the Dora was a better roller, not from hoof's data but from other data, even posts on this site. P51 was better at turning.



I think dragondog is comparing the Mustang P51B against the later P51D model. When you say Dora do you mean the Fw190D.


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## drgondog (Jan 7, 2014)

Garyt said:


> "The P-51B would out perform the D in every category except firepower and visibility."
> 
> Not from what I have seen. In about any source they seem to be very similar with a few differences. seems the Dora was a better roller, not from hoof's data but from other data, even posts on this site. P51 was better at turning.



I was referring to the P-51B vs P-51D

The P-51B-7 (mid block) and beyond had Exactly the same engine as the P-51D _____> 1650-7. At most altitudes the P-51B-1, -5 and early -7 had the 1650-3 engine with better performance at high altitude than with the 1650-7. Last and most important the P-51B/C with 4x.50 cal versus 6x .50 cal was ` 275 pounds lighter than any version of the P-51D.

Same wing, same ailerons ------------> roll slightly better, turn slightly tighter, accelerate slightly better, and climb slightly better with same fuel and throttle settings.

Versus the FW 190D-9 the D-9 could out roll any Allied fighter and was otherwise evenly matched in most cases against the P-51. Perhaps the 51 could out turn the FW 190 slightly and with 150 Octane fuel probably out climb the 190D..


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## Garyt (Jan 7, 2014)

> I was referring to the P-51B vs P-51D



Gotcha.



> Versus the FW 190D-9 the D-9 could out roll any Allied fighter and was otherwise evenly matched in most cases against the P-51. Perhaps the 51 could out turn the FW 190 slightly and with 150 Octane fuel probably out climb the 190D..



Pretty much what I have read as well.

A little bit Ironic to me that the Mustang, which is best at high altitudes rolls worse but turns a bit better than the Dora. You'd think this would be reversed, as the high altitude plane would lend itself more to boom and zoom tactics.

Neither though seem to have been very efficient turners.


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## fastmongrel (Jan 7, 2014)

drgondog said:


> The P-51B would out perform the D in every category except firepower and visibility.



B/C models with the Malcolm hood were supposed to have better visibility in certain areas than D/K models with the teardrop canopy. Been looking but cant find the source for this claim but I believe the Malcolm hood had more room for the pilot to twist and look downwards/rearwards.


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## parsifal (Jan 7, 2014)

I have a bit of a problem with just one manouver rating....it doesnt take into acount the different performance arcs at different altitudes or weather conditions. Furtherm, it doesnt compensate for different manouverability coefficients at different speeds. A Zero at low speed is much more dangerous than a zero attempting to manouver at high speed. 

Its a game, and a game by definition is about compromises. All games try to strike a balance between complexity and playability. In many ways this system sounds very similar to the old WITP air combat ratings, and that needed a lot of changes to fix it.

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## Jabberwocky (Jan 7, 2014)

What sort of power ratings are the P-47D and Spitfire V at? Both types had significant growth in engine power through their service lives. 

The P-47D went from 2000 hp in early production blocs to 2600 hp in late production blocks with water injection, an increase of 30%. 
The Spitfire V went from 1100 hp at +12 lbs in early production aircraft to 1440 hp at +16 lbs within about 18 months, again an increase of about 30% (not to mention the low alt Mk Vs with Merlin 50/55s at +18 lbs producing about 1545 hp).

Does the manuever rating include clipped wings for the Spitfires, or is it for full-span wings??


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## Garyt (Jan 7, 2014)

> Furtherm, it doesnt compensate for different manouverability coefficients at different speeds. A Zero at low speed is much more dangerous than a zero attempting to manouver at high speed.



There are too many variables to use seperate ratings for. I guess it would be possible to due the ratings for different altitudes, but planes themselves will change altitudes in the course of a fight. As far as different styles of maneuver, I've rated planes for both the standard dogfight and the high speed more vertical style of combat.

Well, it does in a way take into account different maneuverability at different speeds. The "Dogfight" Score is based on how quick a 360 turn can be made, it also uses the low speed roll rates. The more high speed factors the vertical elements of the plane, as well as it's roll at high speeds. But both the ability of a Zeke t corner well and roll well at low speeds and it's lack of maneuver at high speeds are factored in.

Now, it combines the two as opposed to having two separate ratings. But I'm not trying to make an air combat game but a naval one, and whether the combat is at high or low speed is what I am abstracting. I took the average of the two - what might make more sense is two times the planes best aspect and one times it's worst, as the plane will seek to fight in it's best aspect if possible, though it likely will come down to the pilot(s) as to which aspect it is using.

As far as altitude, I'm looking in a naval game with most of the combat taking place not much higher than 15,000 or so feet. While this won't represent the carrier based fighters going after the high level B-17's as well, that's ok, as that was more the the exception than the rule.



> Jabberwocky
> What sort of power ratings are the P-47D and Spitfire V at? Both types had significant growth in engine power through their service lives.
> 
> The P-47D went from 2000 hp in early production blocs to 2600 hp in late production blocks with water injection, an increase of 30%.
> ...



Unfortunately I do not know on that one, Jabberwocky. The data does not specify.


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## Jabberwocky (Jan 8, 2014)

Personally, I feel that reducing the manuverability of something as complicated as a WW2 fighter to a single number is a folly.

As already noted, the relative performance between fighters differs markedly across altitude and speed ranges. A P-47 was vastly more competitive against a FW 190A at 25,000 ft and 350 mph than it was at 2500 ft and 250 mph.

The numbers also give nothing of the control, pilot feel and feedback of an aircraft. There is no indication when comparing roll-rates, acceleration and turn times of how harsh or gentle the stall was, how well the controlls were harmonised, how much confidence pilots had in pushing their aircraft up to the stall or dive limits, whether the aircraft was nervous in turbulent air, or at low altitudes or in the dirty air of an opponents wake, or how long the aircraft oscilated after a control movement.

Other stuff isn't included, like the lag between control stick input and the beginning of a maneuver. With a P-47, the lag between a sideways control input for a roll and the actual beginning of the roll maneuver could be up to 1.3 seconds in a high speed dive. At low speeds, it was more like 0.1 to 0.2 seconds.

All of these little things add up to give a much better picture of how manuverable an aircraft was, rather than just turn, roll, climb, acceleration.

If a pilot is afraid of an aircraft's stall or dive characteristics, or recieves little to no feedback from it during manuvering, is it more or less manuverable than an aircraft that rolls a little slower, turns a little wider and doesn't fly quite as quickly, but allows the pilot to reach 99% or 100% of its capabilities, because he has more confidence in it.

An example would be a comparison between the Spitfire Mk XIV and Mk 21. On paper, the Mk 21 is a better aircraft. Its faster and it rolls, dives and climbs better than the Mk XIV. However, due to the new wing, it lacked the early stall warning and gentle stall of earlier Spitfires, had very poor directional characteristics, suffered from elevator 'hunting' (affecting shooting accuracy), didn't turn as well and had a nasty tendency to tighten up turns (spoiling a pilot's aim). A new tail and some other changes eventually sorted most of the problems, but the Mk 21 and subsequent aircraft were never the dogfighters that previous Spitfires were.


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## Garyt (Jan 8, 2014)

> Personally, I feel that reducing the manuverability of something as complicated as a WW2 fighter to a single number is a folly.



Glad to see you are not mincing words 

But while of course reducing it to a single number does not do the maneuverability of a craft full justice, it's really needed in a game and to represent different abilities for different speeds, altitudes, etc., while accurate would be far to complicated, well beyond the scope of a game I am looking at.

And really, while certain planes may be better at different altitudes and speeds, the real issue is how what speeds/altitudes and other specifics an aircraft battle will be at are determined.

For example, a flight of Corsairs dives on a flight of Zero's. The Zero's begin turning to avoid being hit. Do the Corsairs turn with them and fight to the Zero's strength? Perhaps. Do the Corsairs keep on diving past the formation to regroup for another attack? Do some of the Zero's dive with the Corsairs to try to follow? It's all things like this that are determined by situation and pilot (and tactics/doctrine). Too abstract this to the point of using different ratings at different times would not make sense.

I look at it as both will try to make the fight play to their planes strengths - which is why both of the combat aspects are used (slow-turning and energy/vertical fighting). Thinking about it, it makes more sense perhaps to use two times their strong point and one time the weak and average - after all, if a mission allows and a pilot decides, a plane can forego attacking the other, in essence breaking off contact if each are trying to fight their own style, i.e the Zeke starts turning and the Corsair does not follow suit but moves on.

One of the games I am looking at uses the following procedure - as a plane comes in contact with another each rolls a D10. Their maneuver score is added (8-14 from a Brewster Buffalo to a Corsair), as well as pilot and other mods (+/-2 For Vets/rookies, +2 if one altitude level higher, etc.) If a plane wins by 2 or better, it gets a shot at the other, comparing it's own firepower (based on armnament) vs the other planes durability to see if one is destroyed or damaged.



> The numbers also give nothing of the control, pilot feel and feedback of an aircraft. There is no indication when comparing roll-rates, acceleration and turn times of how harsh or gentle the stall was, how well the controlls were harmonised, how much confidence pilots had in pushing their aircraft up to the stall or dive limits, whether the aircraft was nervous in turbulent air, or at low altitudes or in the dirty air of an opponents wake, or how long the aircraft oscilated after a control movement.
> 
> Other stuff isn't included, like the lag between control stick input and the beginning of a maneuver. With a P-47, the lag between a sideways control input for a roll and the actual beginning of the roll maneuver could be up to 1.3 seconds in a high speed dive. At low speeds, it was more like 0.1 to 0.2 seconds.
> 
> ...



These aspects would be interesting to include, though exhaustive research would have to be done, and likely could not be done on all the planes, at least with primary sources. And some of these are a real grey area, based more upon subjectivity than data.

Hoof's work has other details to it as well, things like visibility, how the controls "feel", etc. I've thought about including them - I've hesitated as again it is largely subjective. What I've also noticed is some of this is overkill - For instance, a plane who's controls feel real rough at high speeds also almost always has a bad roll at high speeds, so the effects of roll are in essence being duplicated and perhaps been given too much weight.


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## Garyt (Jan 8, 2014)

Just thought I'd add - One of my least favorite ways of rating planes is combat record.

This does not at all take into account many issues more important than the ability of the plane. Things such as pilot quality, tactics/doctrine, outnumbering, and the same issues for the opposition are not taken into account. Even little things like quality of fuel can be an issue.


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## bobbysocks (Jan 8, 2014)

i have played some of the video/pc games and found a good bit of bias and huge discrepencies. one has the p 51 flight model with full wing tanks so the plane flies like a brick....another has all the us ac grossly underpowered...lacking maneuverability and firepower. you might want to take a step back to the pre-CG computer days and look at some of the old bookshelf games made by avalon hill. these were extremely complicated and i believe gave closer comparisons ( although i hadnt played one in over 40 years...). a guy on another forum i belong to just posted a couple images from his "Mustangs" game and those reminded me of your post. i had the Luftwaffe game....anyways here are a few images. you might be able to dig around and find a cheap game or even just the plane ratings online ( or in a forum for those games if there is one )

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## drgondog (Jan 9, 2014)

The guys at AcesHigh have done the best job of simulation for all altitudes, power ratings, weight that I have seen so far..


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## Garyt (Jan 9, 2014)

> The guys at AcesHigh have done the best job of simulation for all altitudes, power ratings, weight that I have seen so far



Meaning the card based game?

Interesting on the "Mustang" game, it's OOP but you can still find rules on line.

One thing about looking at the performances of the various planes though - everything may not be 100% accurate, but it helps debunk some myths for me. I always thought the ME109 was a very outdated plane, did not know that with the later variants it was a very competent plane even late war. Maybe not the top dog of late war fighters, but not far off the trail.


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## bobbysocks (Jan 14, 2014)

no i think drgondog is talking about this:

Aces High - WW1 WW2 Online Combat Gaming | HiTech Creations - Aces High

its a ww2 aircombat sim you can download on PC. there is also IL2....IL2 1946....A2A...Rise of Flight ( more ww1 )....war thunder (which i know isnt accruare at this time ) ....world of warplanes....and coming is IL2 Battle of Stalingrad. there are forums for just about all of these you can dig around and check out.


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## GregP (Jan 14, 2014)

So Garyt,

You're taking the word of an out-of-production BOARD GAME as to the combat qualities of the WWII fighters and don't like using the combat record?

When planes go into combat, the combat record is all that counts in the end. It is what wins or looses the fight. Winning is the reason the assets were built and deployed.

And you think the makers of a board game played with cards did absolutely accurate research into the combat qualities of each aircraft? Exactly where do you think they got their data? If they could find it, why can't we? Except by going thorugh combat reports and flight reports of captured enemy equipment, one at a time?

I submit combat record is the ONLY thing that matters in end. It encompasses the aircraft, the training and performance of the flight crews, the training and performance pf the maintenance crews, and the training and performance of the weather and intel sections that brief the crews. If you have the greatest aircraft in the world and if it manned by incompetents, then you have a losing force. If you have a substandard aircraft manned by people motivated and able to take advantage of its strengths, you can win the war.

In the end, the winner did better than the loser did and his planes performed better in the crucible of combat, no matter what their potential was.


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## Francis marliere (Jan 15, 2014)

Hello Gary,

sorry for answering so late. I know SoW but don't like it. Does not mean that the game is bad but it's not what I am looking for.

I agree that SK has interesting stuff such as computing the number of planes that abort a mission, but I am inclined to think that this game is designed for surface combat with a small number of warships and won't work fine for other kinds of battles. The heart of the system is very accurate rules for command communications (flag bridge rating), gunnery and damages. In a carrier battle, you don't use the first two rules and the third one does not work well for air attacks.

I am, like you, still trying to make out some rules for air combat and undesrtand how difficult it is. The biggest difficulty is IMHO to set the good scale of details. How do you track the position and movements of planes ? What do you mean by an air combat (5 mn or 30 secondes of combat) ?

The less you will go in the details, the less the game will be interesting and realistic. If a lone dice roll determines the outcome of detection, interception and air combat, the players won't have many decisions to take and the game will not be great.

In the other hand, the more you go in details, the more difficult it will be to elaborate use the rules. Tracking accurately the position and movements of dozens of planes every game turn is very time consuming, and to say the least almost impossible. Going too much in the details of air combat will prove to be very difficult also. You will never be able to model accurately neither the caracteristics of planes (for which data is either missing or conflicting) nor the dynamic of air combat.

Keep in mind that in such games, players are in the role of an admiral commanding a Task Force, not the role of fighter pilots or the leader of a fighter squadron. The air combat rules should IMHO be built from the point of view of an admiral and focus more on the conditions of the combat (how many planes involved ? How long ? in good or bad tactical conditions) than on the details of the combat and the planes. Hence, what matters is the number, position and altitude of planes on CAP (ie the decisions of the admiral), not the exact roll rate or wing loading of the planes.

I hope it will be of interest. Best regards and good luck,

Francis Marliere

PS : hope you will understand me, it's dofficult to explain that in English


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## bobbysocks (Jan 15, 2014)

GregP said:


> So Garyt,
> 
> You're taking the word of an out-of-production BOARD GAME as to the combat qualities of the WWII fighters and don't like using the combat record?



because somehow that out of production board game has the flight characteristics closer to real life than the vast majority of the cutting edge air combat sims ( that have all of the rescources available to them ). when i am in a 51D and cant hold a complete 360 degree with a 109...with flaps dropped....something is wrong. when i am flying a F4, G2, or yak3 at 500 feet and do a split "S" to get someone off of my tail and am able to pull out before hitting the gound...something is wrong. when you have to use boom and zoom tactics only in planes that were able to dogfight....something is wrong. so with all the info gathered, recorded...test flights...comparisons...available on the net....and the flight models are this far off....and an old antique board game has the planes equal where they should be...i would go with that. everyone gets bedazzled that the cockpits are amazing and that the planes are exact down to the last rivet and that the landscape is true to life....all that doesnt mean jack if the plane flies like a brick.


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## parsifal (Jan 15, 2014)

Modern computer based flight sims are notorious for their innaccuracy, and i believe that has arisen for a number of reasons. i dont play them, so I am at a disadvantage, but i do know a number of guys that do. most of these guys opinions i trust. essntially the main criticism of them is that they are combat oriented, not worrying too much about the flying part of sim. some have inbuilt biases in the flying component to minimise out of control spins and stalls and the like. And the worst have what i refer to as the 'the german disease". this has a lot to do with the target audience foir these games, people who have been brought up in the environment of the myth of german invincibility, and to carry that into the arena of a flight sim, they have to make changes to the flight characteristics of the aircraft concerned. Forget historical accuracy, if it looks good and keeps the customer happy then you have a winner.

Games from 30 years ago are of course still just a simulation, and also suffer from a technological handicap....there just isnt the computing power there is now, but neither did they usually attempt to show in detail the flying secrets of the aircraft. they were results driven, and the designers far more concerned with getting the results historically accurate than designers of today. I would claim that the designers of 1950-80 were far less affected by post war german apologism and far more dedicated to historical accuracy than the commerially driven affairs of today.

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## Garyt (Jan 15, 2014)

> You're taking the word of an out-of-production BOARD GAME as to the combat qualities of the WWII fighters and don't like using the combat record?
> 
> When planes go into combat, the combat record is all that counts in the end. It is what wins or looses the fight. Winning is the reason the assets were built and deployed.



Well, first of all, I am not using the card game. Some one else mentioned that. However, I AM using the stats from apparently a flight simulation/WW2 Combat game, that from what I can see seems to be very well researched for the most part. The only real faults I have seen so far is the Zero Models and perhaps Wildcat have to high of dive speeds, and perhaps the P47 does not dive well enough. Everything else seems to be fairly accurate, though there is an incredible amount of data to verify to indeed see if this is true.

I would far original sources, and perhaps will be able to verify more of the data.



> I submit combat record is the ONLY thing that matters in end. It encompasses the aircraft, the training and performance of the flight crews, the training and performance pf the maintenance crews, and the training and performance of the weather and intel sections that brief the crews. If you have the greatest aircraft in the world and if it manned by incompetents, then you have a losing force. If you have a substandard aircraft manned by people motivated and able to take advantage of its strengths, you can win the war.



Well, this is wrong in so many ways, because it fails to take into account many very important factors.

Training/Competence of crew - Big Advantage for US planes in the later stages of the war vs Germany and Japan. Does not matter how good your plane is if you only have 20-40 hours of flight time and no combat experience.

Outnumbering - An ME262 was far ahead of other planes of it's time. But vs 10 P51's it should not win. May be able to get away, but should not win.

Another issue - How many planes (the ME262 comes to mind) were "air kills" when they were shot down attempting to land? Or trying to take off? This reflects little of the planes combat capability.

Tactics/Doctrine - Better tactics can make a plane better (or vice versa). The German tanks at the start of Ww2 were inferior in most aspects other than mobility to the French ones. But the Germans were ahead in tactics/Doctrine, such as use of mass armor formations, good use of radio, etc. The German tanks did far better than the French ones that opposed them, even though the standard German tank might have a 20mm gun and very little armour. If the French made proper use of 2 way radio and massed their tanks together, they would have done far better even given the questionable morale of the French at that time.

And the Army that wins will of course fare better in these numbers. Qualitative superiority does not factor into the equation as much as which army wins, which could well be quantitative superiority. And only the operational units available matter, as a great airforce can be grounded by a lack of fuel. 

Basically, what you are saying is lets say Germany lost more tanks than the US on the Western Front from 6/44-5/45. And this is likely very true. The most common tank for the US - The Sherman. For Germany, Either the most recent Panzer 4 variant or the Panther, about 50/50. So what you would be saying is that the Sherman is superior to the Panzer 4 and Panther, which is silly to say the very least.



> In the end, the winner did better than the loser did and his planes performed better in the crucible of combat, no matter what their potential was.



Well, this is not accurate, but at least it's simpler to figure out.



> Games from 30 years ago are of course still just a simulation, and also suffer from a technological handicap....there just isnt the computing power there is now, but neither did they usually attempt to show in detail the flying secrets of the aircraft. they were results driven, and the designers far more concerned with getting the results historically accurate than designers of today. I would claim that the designers of 1950-80 were far less affected by post war german apologism and far more dedicated to historical accuracy than the commerially driven affairs of today.



I agree with much of what you are saying, Parsifal. However, I must say that I took a detailed look at Mustangs, and their numbers are very off. In their game, P47 turns as well as a P-38, a ME109 and similar planes. A mustang is one of the best at turning of any plane in the game, also not very accurate, the Mustang was a rather poor turner. The P-38 is a very bad turner in the game, where in actuality it maneuvered well.

I think what the designer did was get the speeds mostly right, and then just throw in whatever he thought was right for maneuvering ( along the lines of "The P51 was a good plane, so it must have been a good turner". Or maybe he based the P51's turning radius on it's combat record, LOL)

I do think the older boardgames were in general more historically accurate and less commercially driven than the more recent computer games, but the information from Hoof's site seems to jive with most everything I know and have read about the various planes, with a few exceptions. I've put a bit of work into re designing "Mustangs" based on more accurate data. Apparently this was done in the "General" Magazine, as well as on a miniature gamers site, using revised rules. They same a bit more accurate, but I think it would make more sense for a re-design and truly basing things on turning radii, roll rates, true rate of climbs, etc. Even the gun rules need to be redone, all 20mm are not the same, something that takes into account their Rate of Fire, muzzle velocity, etc., would be more accurate.

Francis, if you have some time, I'd be interested in Pmessaging or emailing about some ideas regarding a WW2 carrier based game. 

Right now I'm thinking about avoiding any true air to air combat, and have the results of CAP determined by how well or soon the incoming planes are detected, how quickly and accurately CAP is routed there, and how many and what quality of planes/pilots in the opposing forces. There are some rules in Seekrieg for this, as well as some rules from the old "Flat Top" board game that would seem to work pretty well.

I would however like the Bombers that get through to attack and resolve their strikes (seems in the miniature games I have looked at, every 3 planes is manueuvered and subject to AA , which makes it manageable I think. Assuming 20 bombers get through its resolving about 7 planes or so. Work well in the more even based combat from Coral Seas to the End of the Solomons, though the Marianas or Leyte would be too much to handle I think.


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## GregP (Jan 15, 2014)

Any of the WWII simns are just games, with flight models usually tweaked from some earlier sim. I seriously doubt if an average person with no flight training could get a P-51D off the ground. But EVERYONE can do it in a PC sim. What does that say for accuracy? People with no tailwheel training would also very likely never get one down and stopped without a groundloop but, again, everyone in a PC simulator can do it.

Get a WWII fighter at 250 mph, bank to ... say ...75°, and pull has hard as you can. Think you'll get a turn or a whip-stall / spin after a wind-up? The sims all get a pretty decent turn from that maneuver.

I have yet to see a good WWII sim that flies like a real WWII fighter, and I've asked more than 20 warbird pilot who tried them and agree they are fun, but have little to do with reallity. I HAVE flown a military T-38 sim and they tell me it flies like the real plane (I can't say since I have flown the sim but not a T-38 ), but is defiitely not affordable to the average PC owner. Considering the fact that a real T-38 cockpit was part of the sim, it's easy to understand why.

This drives home the world we live in. I was watching a silly movie about a female gunfighter once and some young girls were saying after the movie they hadn't realized there were any female gunfighter in the old west. I said to them, "There weren't any in real life." They said, "Didn't you see the movie?" I said, "Sure, it's a movie, not real life facts." ... and they didn't get it! These people think if it shows up in a movie, it must be real!

The sims are just like the movie. It's a game that is made easy enough to fly so it will sell a bunch of copies, not an attempt to make it realistic. If they did that, the market would be small and they basically want sales volume, not realism.

I would not have any idea how reaisic a board game on WWII aircraft is since I've only flown a Stearman, a T-6 (about 20 hours), flown in a P-51D and played with the controls for maybe 5 minutes over the owner's shoulder (the stick ... he flew the rudder), ridden in a P-40, a B-25, and a Douglas Dauntless. For the rest, I can't say ... never experienced them at all.

According to the real-life fighter pilots I know, the least important flight variable is top speed. They think PC sims are good fun, but have nothing to do with flying a fighter.


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## parsifal (Jan 15, 2014)

Board games are not real time for a start, a few are tactical in their composition, meaning you are not manouvering the aircraft. Some sims are tactical, and you are using a set of numbers meant to reflect the characteristics of the aircraft. i cant really comment on those, too much as my exposure is a bit limited. Examples of that sort of sim might be Foxbat and Phantom or ROTLW (rise of the LW) 

Then there are what might be termed simulations at an operational level. These are results driven simulations that give varying amounts of control over formations....anything from a flight to an airforce in size, but with some form of historical basis. These i know are handled pretty well, but like all these sorts of sims they are a compromise between playability and accuracy. So what if the computer, or the game, takes care of the housekeeping, like the landing or maintenance of the aircraft. To understand the combat capabilities of an aircraft, you dont need to know how to change the tailwheel.

For me, i frequently had to "know" the flight characteristics of an aircraft, so that i could extract the best out of the formation at an operational level. I couldnt fly a skyhawk, any more than I could fly to the moon. Doesnt mean i couldnt learn to get the most out of the aircraft. Sims ARE the way that PWOs learn how to use their assets properly. So in that regard I have no problem with a sim that does some of the routine stuff that I dont really need to know about. that, frankly, is not the problem with the computer sims. the problem is that they tend to skew historical facts to suit a particular agenda, and discard historical accuracy in the name of commerciality. that then gives the 15 yos playing these things a warped sense of the history and the capabilities of the aircraft they "fly". That sort of biasing is just less prevalent in the old boardgames. those boardgames are derived directly from the German "Kriegspiel", literally "wargame" that was used as a basis for the germans plans to overrun most of Europe. and it is a measure of the systems accuracy that they damn near succeeded. so we should be careful in rubbishing this system. our guys tended not to use these "sandtable" analytical tools, and our military planning suffered as a result.


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## GregP (Jan 15, 2014)

They suffered so hard they won the war?


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## Garyt (Jan 15, 2014)

> Doesnt mean i couldnt learn to get the most out of the aircraft. Sims ARE the way that PWOs learn how to use their assets properly. So in that regard I have no problem with a sim that does some of the routine stuff that I dont really need to know about. that, frankly, is not the problem with the computer sims. the problem is that they tend to skew historical facts to suit a particular agenda, and discard historical accuracy in the name of commerciality. that then gives the 15 yos playing these things a warped sense of the history and the capabilities of the aircraft they "fly".



I agree as far as exact flight characterisitics. The sim planes will not exhibit some of the problems their real life ones did. But it seems for things like Turn Radius, Climb rates, dive speeds (in most cases), performance at altitude, max speeds, etc. etc. seems to coincide pretty well with historical facts. Seems like the research was done rather well, only things it seems is that the Zero Class has too high of a top dive speed.

There are some flight characteristics that are hard to replicate though. The P51 is a decent plane it seems, but some of it's attributes are hard to replicate. Comfortable cocpit, reliability, etc. It's hard to have a virtual pilot feel fear when performing maneuvers that his plane may or may not handle well.

As far as tactical flight games though, many of the boardgames seem to suffer a bit. One of the biggest problems I see that is also a problem in Mustangs - it's hard to differentiate the planes much with limited numbers. Meaning a fast plane in Mustangs is a 4, a slow one is a 3 (P51 is a 4, Zeke is a 3, corresponds roughly to top speed in 100's of miles per hour). Same thing goes for a lot of other plane stats. And in Mustangs, any 20mm is the same as any other 20mm, likewise for .50 cals or 30mm. Which means the early model Zeke does not suffer from low velocity on it's 20mm, which do not at all match the ballistics of its 7.7mm. They "fixed" this in later models with a higher velocity 20mm. Plus all Zekes have a rather low rate of fire on their 20mm, nothing like a Hispano for instance. Again in the game it's not replicated.


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## parsifal (Jan 15, 2014)

yes they won, and not just because of numbers. numbers were a part of it, but that advantage didnt just happen. it was an advantage the allies had to plan for.

Warmaing military problems doesnt deal with grand strategy. and in terms of grand strategy, the germans really sucked. our system would forego short term military benefits in the interest of a wider objective. 

but even with all of thet, it doesnt explain the decisive allied victory that was eventually achieved. however the allies changed, learned and adpated as the war progressed. the military of 1939 9or in your country's case, 19410 were in no position to win. even if they had multiplied but not changed, they would have lost. The allied militaries changed, learned and adapted. and guess what, that included adopting a systems approach to military problems....which included wargaming military problems. 

It remains an integral part to this day, although since 1980 computers have been used to an increasing degree to terst out military theories. gone are the days of the general or admiral walking the bridge, or pacing at his HQ, pondering and inuitively working out his next move. the military more and more is a machine, analysing, and weighing up the best options to a military problem. That means, to avery great extent that they "game" out a given military situation, if time and resources permit.


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## GregP (Jan 16, 2014)

Right. We won because of wargaming. Are you sure that is military fact? I hope that's not an Australian general opinion. Becasue if it is, there are some serious misconceptions down under.

We're pretty far apart here (shock), but that's OK. It all happened a long time ago.

Throw some shrimp on the barbie, relax, and watch some tennis. Sure, it's hot, but the Open is going well.


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## Francis marliere (Jan 16, 2014)

Gary,

You can contact me at francismarliereXyahoo.com

Best,

Francis


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## parsifal (Jan 16, 2014)

GregP said:


> Right. We won because of wargaming. Are you sure that is military fact? I hope that's not an Australian general opinion. Becasue if it is, there are some serious misconceptions down under.
> 
> We're pretty far apart here (shock), but that's OK. It all happened a long time ago.
> 
> Throw some shrimp on the barbie, relax, and watch some tennis. Sure, it's hot, but the Open is going well.



no, but it became part of the overall package for allied victory. We actually got better than the germans at something called validation simulation. This helped to make our military planning more thorough and accurate than they did, though the Germans retained a very high standard of staff work until the end.

im surpised that you dismiss gaming (or more correctly simulation) as not relevant, or nonexistent. It remains an integral part of the US military system to this day. how do i know that? because once a upon a time a long time agao I was one of those geeks that actually participated in thgose studies and tried to use simulations to get the most out of people and systems. in case youve never heard of it it comes under the general name of staff work, and its a big part of officer training these days. how do i know that? i helped design and teach the courses that trains both australians and American officers for that very purpose, and I can tell you, without any hesitation, that simulating or validating what your weapons and people can do is a big part of learning to be an officer.

During WWII, allied military simulations were confined to military operations.

The term military simulation can cover a wide spectrum of activities, ranging from full-scale field-exercises, to abstract computerized models that can proceed with little or no human involvement - such as the Rand Strategy Assessment Center (RSAC).

As a general scientific principle, the most reliable data comes from actual observation and the most reliable theories depend on it. This also holds true in military analysis, where analysts look towards live field-exercises and trials as providing data likely to be realistic (depending on the realism of the exercise) and verifiable (it has been gathered by actual observation). One can readily discover, for example, how long it takes to construct a pontoon bridge under given conditions with given manpower, and this data can then generate norms for expected performance under similar conditions in the future, or serve to refine the bridge-building process. Any form of training can be regarded as a "simulation" in the strictest sense of the word (inasmuch as it simulates an operational environment and allows officers to observe the effectiveness of a new strategy or technique as close to reality as is possible. Without this sort of testing actual military operations are usually failures, and usually costly, as the expereiences of the western front clearly show); however, many if not most exercises take place not to test new ideas or models, but to provide the participants with the skills to operate within existing ones.

Full-scale military exercises, or even smaller-scale ones, are not always feasible or even desirable because observing the results can be difficult. Availability of resources, including money, is a significant factor — it costs a lot to release troops and materiel from any standing commitments, to transport them to a suitable location, and then to cover additional expenses such as petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) usage, equipment maintenance, supplies and consumables replenishment and other items. It is often far cheaper to test new ideas or prospective equipment using simulation technologies In addition, certain warfare models do not lend themselves to verification using this realistic method. It might, for example, prove counter-productive to accurately test an attrition scenario by killing one's own troops.

Moving away from the field exercise, it is often more convenient to test a theory by reducing the level of personnel involvement. Map exercises can be conducted involving senior officers and planners, but without the need to physically move around any troops. These retain some human input, and thus can still reflect to some extent the human imponderables that make warfare so challenging to model, with the advantage of reduced costs and increased accessibility. A map exercise can also be conducted with far less forward planning than a full-scale deployment, making it an attractive option for more minor simulations that would not merit anything larger, as well as for very major operations where cost, or secrecy, is an issue. 

Increasing the level of abstraction still further, simulation moves towards an environment readily recognised by civilian wargamers. This type of simulation can be manual, implying no (or very little) computer involvement, computer-assisted, or fully computerised.

These are all tools in use and of great assistance to all western military establishments including the US and Australian militaries.

Graf Helmuth von Moltke is nowadays regarded as the grandfather of modern military simulation. Although not the inventor of Kriegsspiel, he was greatly impressed by it as a young officer, and as Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army promoted its use as a training aid.Manual simulations have probably been in use in some form since mankind first went to war. moltke has influendced both the real military planning establishments and the more commercial areas of the "boardganers". Having been exposed in both professional planning excercises and commercial gaming, there are many commercial games that can be regarded as simplified versions of the real military simulation.

Military simulation, at all its levels (from full scale military excercises to map reading excercises) reamins a powerful tool and still cogent in the modern, computer-heavy military simulation environment. There remains a recognised place for umpires as arbiters of a simulation, hence the persistence of manual simulations in war colleges throughout the world. Both computer-assisted and entirely computerised simulations are common as well, with each being used as required by circumstances. The Rand Corporation is one of the best known designers of Military Simulations for the US Government and Air Force, and one of the pioneers of the Political-Military simulation.Their SAFE (Strategic And Force Evaluation) simulation is an example of a manual simulation, with one or more teams of up to ten participants being sequestered in separate rooms and their moves being overseen by an independent director and his staff. SAFE was used in the planning for both Iraqi operations in recent history, with very high levels of accuracy achieved. 

Computer-assisted simulations are really just a development of the manual simulation, and again there are different variants on the theme. Sometimes the computer assistance will be nothing more than a database to help umpires keep track of information during a manual simulation. At other times one or other of the teams might be replaced by a computer-simulated opponent (known as an agent or automaton). This can reduce the umpires' role to interpreter of the data produced by the agent, or obviate the need for an umpire altogether. Most commercial wargames designed to run on computers (such as Blitzkrieg, the Total War series and even the Civilization games) fall into this category.


Another method of categorising military simulations is to divide them into two broad areas.

Heuristic simulations are those that are run with the intention of stimulating research and problem solving; they are not necessarily expected to provide empirical solutions.

Stochastic simulations are those that involve, at least to some extent, an element of chance.

Most military simulations fall somewhere in between these two definitions, although manual simulations lend themselves more to the heuristic approach and computerised ones to the stochastic.

Manual simulations, as described above, are often run to explore a 'what if?' scenario and take place as much to provide the participants with some insight into decision-making processes and crisis management as to provide concrete conclusions. Indeed, such simulations do not even require a conclusion; once a set number of moves has been made and the time allotted has run out, the scenario will finish regardless of whether the original situation has been resolved or not.

Computerised simulations can readily incorporate chance in the form of some sort of randomised element, and can be run many times to provide outcomes in terms of probabilities.


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## parsifal (Jan 16, 2014)

Since WWII, a new arm in simulation has developed and become a powerful element of the US planning arsenal known as the political-military simulation the US has used these to a vastly increasing extent since 1954. Simulations of this nature include the aforementioned SAFE, STRAW (Strategic Air War) and COW (Cold War). The typical political-military simulation is a manual or computer-assisted heuristic-type model, and many research organizations and think-tanks throughout the world are involved in providing this service to governments. During the Cold War, the Rand Corporation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, amongst others, ran simulations for the Pentagon that included modeling the Vietnam War, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the rise of pro-communist regimes in South America, tensions between India, Pakistan and China, and various potential flashpoints in Africa and South-East Asia. Both MIT and Rand remain heavily involved in US military simulation, along with institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, and the National Defense University. Other nations have their equivalent organizations, such as Cranfield Institute's Defense Academy (formerly the Royal Military College of Science) in the United Kingdom. To try and argue that these efforts are pointless or somehow absurd, is itself absurd, and whilst during WWII there were no political military simulations, there were mountains of mil sims conducted by all parties, but at the outbreak of the war, the US forces were hopelessly unprofessional and didnt really know about this stuff. their orange war plans were exceptions but they were fatally unrealistic, mostly because the people devising them had no real experience or depth to draw on.....simulations were not all that big an issue before the war for the US. guess they were too busy putiing shellfish on the barbies and watching the tennis. 

Why is military simulation of thius scale an magnitude not better known. It is a tradition in US simulations (and those run by many other nations) that participants are guaranteed anonymity. The main reason for this is that occasionally they may take on a role or express an opinion that is at odds with their professional or public stance (for example portraying a fundamentalist terrorist or advocating hawkish military action), and thus could harm their reputation or career if their in-game persona became widely known. It is also traditional that in-game roles are played by participants of an equivalent rank in real life, although this is not a hard-and-fast rule and often disregarded. Whilst the major purpose of a political-military simulation is to provide insights that can be applied to real-world situations, it is very difficult to point to a particular decision as arising from a certain simulation — especially as the simulations themselves are usually classified for years, and even when released into the public domain are usually heavily censored. This is not only due to the unwritten policy of non-attribution, but to avoid disclosing sensitive information to a potential adversary. This has been true within the simulation environment itself as well — former US president Ronald Reagan was a keen visitor to simulations conducted in the 1980s, but as an observer only. An official explained: "No president should ever disclose his hand, not even in a war game".

In the context of simulation, validation is the process of testing a model by supplying it with historical data and comparing its output to the known historical result. If a model can reliably reproduce known results, it is considered to be validated and assumed to be capable of providing predictive outputs (within a reasonable degree of uncertainty).


HMS Exeter at the Battle of the River Plate in 1939. As predicted by Pratt's naval warfare model, despite taking heavy damage the lighter British cruisers were able to defeat their much larger opponent, the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee.Developing realistic models has proven to be somewhat easier in naval simulations than on land.One of the pioneers of naval simulations, Fletcher Pratt, designed his "Naval War Game" in the late 1930s, and was able to validate his model almost immediately by applying it to the encounter between the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee and three British cruisers in the Battle of the River Plate off Montevideo in 1939. Rated on thickness of armour and gun power, Graf Spee should have been more than a match for the lighter cruisers, but Pratt's formula correctly predicted the ensuing British victory. Pratts modelling took hold slowly but it was an invaluable admiralty tool neverthelss

Historically, there have even been a few rare occasions where a simulation was validated as it was being carried out. One notable such occurrence was just before the Ardennes offensive in World War II, when the Germans attacked allied forces during a period of bad weather in the winter of 1944, hoping to reach the port of Antwerp and force the Allies to sue for peace. According to German General Friedrich J Fangor, the staff of Fifth Panzerarmee had met in November to game defensive strategies against a simulated American attack. They had no sooner begun the exercise than reports began arriving of a strong American attack in the Hűrtgen area — exactly the area they were gaming on their map table. Generalfeldmarschall Walther Model ordered the participants (apart from those commanders whose units were actually under attack) to continue playing, using the messages they were receiving from the front as game moves. For the next few hours simulation and reality ran hand-in-hand: when the officers at the game table decided that the situation warranted commitment of reserves, the commander of the 116th Panzer Division was able to turn from the table and issue as operational orders those moves they had just been gaming. The division was mobilised in the shortest possible time, and the American attack was repulsed.

Many of the criticisms directed towards military simulations derive from an incorrect application of them as a predictive and analytical tool. The outcome supplied by a model relies to a greater or lesser extent on human interpretation and therefore should not be regarded as providing a 'gospel' truth. However, whilst this is generally understood by most game theorists and analysts, it can be tempting for a layman — for example, a politician (or indeed a red necked one eyed would be wanna be flyer) who needs to present a 'black and white' situation to his electorate — to settle on an interpretation that supports his preconceived position. Tom Clancy, in his novel Red Storm Rising, illustrated this problem when one of his characters, attempting to persuade the Soviet Politburo that the political risks were acceptable as NATO would not be in a position to react in the face of political uncertainty caused by a division of opinion between the Allies. Such a political wargame result was used as evidence the results of a simulation carried out to model just such an event. It is revealed in the text that there were in fact three sets of results from the simulation; a best-, intermediate- and worst-case outcome. The advocate of war chose to present only the best-case outcome, thus distorting the results to support his case. This fictional scenario is rumoured to be lossely based on facts

The Japanese extensively wargamed their planned expansion during World War II, but map exercises conducted before the Pacific War were frequently stopped short of a conclusion where Japan was defeated. One often-cited example prior to Midway had the umpires magically resurrecting a Japanese carrier sunk during a map exercise, although Professor Robert Rubel argues in the Naval War College Review their decision was justified in this case given improbable rolls of the dice. Given the historical outcome, it is evident the dice rolls were not so improbable, after all. There were however equally illustrative fundamental problems with other areas of the simulation, mainly relating to a Japanese unwillingness to consider their position should the element of surprise, on which the operation depended, be lost.


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## Garyt (Jan 16, 2014)

> Warmaing military problems doesnt deal with grand strategy. and in terms of grand strategy, the germans really sucked. our system would forego short term military benefits in the interest of a wider objective.



Parsifal, I guess my question here is how did the Germans "grand strategy" suck? I do think there were some problems in their command structure, most notably IMO Hitler's thoughts of himself as a great military commander/planner. Had he left the operational strategy to his generals, Germany would have done much better. 

But mostly I think, the Allies, most importantly the US out produced the Axis. Look at crude oil produced in millions of tons in WW2 per nation:

Country	
United States 833.2
United Kingdom 90.8
Soviet Union 110.6
Canada 8.4
Germany 33.4 
Japan 5.2
Italy 4.4	
Hungary 3.1
Romania 25.0


The US produced 60 times as much crude as Japan. It's obvious why the Japanese had limited fuel to train pilots, and why it's fleet had to conserve it's oil, while the US could pretty well use it's fuel at will.

And this same disparity was evident in all facets of the war.

The Germans has a qualitative superiority through much of the war in it's armour over the US (though Russia was a bit more even footing), and has better tactical leadership than most throughout much of the war.

The Japanese initially had a better trained fleet air arm initially. The US however almost built a new fleet from scratch, meaning it had state of the art ships in it's navy while Japan was fighting with a fleet constructed mostly in the 30's or older, if looking at it's battleships. The US had not only numerical superiority but qualitative superiority in the Pacific.

Given the huge discrepancies in production it would be difficult to lose the war as the Allies - one would have to do a pretty bad job.

The one thing I will say however for the US - With it's AFV's at least, it seemed to be able to produce them faster. In other words, given the same amount of time and material resources, the US could turn more AFV's out and quicker than the Germans. This is one of the few times I agree that quantity has a quality of it's own. The US practiced standardization well. The .50 caliber may not have been the best armnament for a plane, but all planes were armed with it and it alone, which made logistics including service easier.


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## GregP (Jan 16, 2014)

I don't dismiss realistic training, but erecting a bridge is training, not simulation. The thing training cannot do is to predict what the enemy will do. All it does is give the troops some training on what you THINK the enemy will do.

It is vital that your troops know how to use their equipment, make rapid field repairs as possible, and have a coordinated plan.

Sure, war games happen once in awhile.

But realistic training (real, not simulation) is vital if you are going to field an effective force. During WWII, George Patton trained his tank units out in the California desert about 100 miles east of where I live. It wasn't simulation, it was desert operations training in tanks.

If you choose to think of all training as simulation, that is you perogative. I choose to think if it as keeping the troops familiar enough with the equipment to use it when needed. 

Pilots require recurrent training, and some can make that happen in simulators where the instruments are well-modeled and the flight dynamics at cruise are simple. That type of training in sims is useful to someone who needs to learn to use the avionics and stay current on it. I call putting up a bridge over a small river training, not "simulation" since they are really doing it, not pressing a button and watch softwate soldiers do it.

Perhaps we aren't so very far apart after all.

I still like the idea of shrimp on the barbie and am still watching the Australian Open.


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## OldSkeptic (Jan 25, 2014)

Garyt said:


> Hi, New to the forum.
> 
> What really suprised me - the P-38. The late model P-38 seems a very fine plane. My guess it had fallen a bit out of favor do to the problems the earlier modles had, and the US was more geared towards the P51 by this point.



You need to add in mach limit too. The P-38's was miserable (abut 0.65-0.68), so much so that the late models' max speed was very close to their mach limit at altitude and they had severe altitude dive restrictions put on them (ie 10 degrees, you could dive a Lancaster more than that...).

The boom and zoom for them was more of just a boom ... as they hit the ground.

The P-47s was better but still poor at 0.7 to 0.72. To be competitive you had to have at least 0.75-0.8 in the ETO. 

They later added dive recovery flaps to both, note the word 'recovery', they were not a fix, just gave the pilot a chance to recover from loss of control in a dive (not always though, if you got too fast you'd still run out of room).


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## Garyt (Jan 25, 2014)

> You need to add in mach limit too. The P-38's was miserable (abut 0.65-0.6, so much so that the late models' max speed was very close to their mach limit at altitude and they had severe altitude dive restrictions put on them (ie 10 degrees, you could dive a Lancaster more than that...).



Interesting. Is this the compression issue I have read about? I have read that they put the powered control surfaces on the L version of the P38 to help cope with this.

Sounds like it is in a way similar to the dive restrictions on Zeroes, but for different reasons. I guess the M-109's and FW190's did not share this problem?

Information like this though is the stuff that is not readily available from just the base specs on a vehicle.

Seems like the P-38 struggled perhaps a bit. While it had good speed and acceleration, it's compressibility issues limited it's effectiveness as a boom and zoomer, and while it could turn reasonably well, it could not turn as well as a true dedicated turner.

I guess it could out boom and zoom a zeke and out turn a FW190 

I have heard though again that the powered control surfaces prevented some of the "controls frozen in concrete" that the P38 experienced in Hi-speed dives.


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## OldSkeptic (Jan 25, 2014)

Garyt said:


> Interesting. Is this the compression issue I have read about? I have read that they put the powered control surfaces on the L version of the P38 to help cope with this.
> 
> Sounds like it is in a way similar to the dive restrictions on Zeroes, but for different reasons. I guess the M-109's and FW190's did not share this problem?
> 
> ...





Garyt said:


> Interesting. Is this the compression issue I have read about? I have read that they put the powered control surfaces on the L version of the P38 to help cope with this.
> 
> Sounds like it is in a way similar to the dive restrictions on Zeroes, but for different reasons. I guess the M-109's and FW190's did not share this problem?
> 
> ...





Nope the hydraulic controls didn't help its mach limit. Here's the limits for the H,J L models




:




And from the manual:

"DIVE RECOVERY FLAPS.—P-38L and Later P38J
airplanes are provided with dive recovery flaps to improve
the dive recovery characteristics of the
As described above, the airplane without these flaps becomes
very nose heavy and starts to buffet above placard
dive speeds. This condition is caused by a high speed
stall and a consequent decrease in lift in the wing producing
the nose heavy condition. The dive recovery flaps
which are installed under the wings between the booms
an d the ailerons, restore the lif t to this portion of the
wing and thus cause the uncontrollable nose heaviness
to occur at a higher speed. The flaps also add some drag
to the airplane, which in conjunction with the higher
allowable dive speed, permit s saf e dives at a much steeper
diving angle. The dive recovery flaps should be extended
before starting the dive or immediately after the dive
has started before a buffeting speed has been reached. If
the airplane is buffeting before the dive recovery flaps
are extended, the buffetin g will momentarily increase
an d then diminish. With these flaps extended, the nose
heaviness is definitely reduced but the diving speed
should never be allowed to exceed the placard by more
than 15 or 20 mph. With the dive recovery flaps extended
before enterin g th e dive, angles of dive up to 45° may
be safely accomplished. Without dive recovery extended,
the maximum angle for extended dives is 15°.
Diving characteristics are better with power off than
with power on.
WARNING
Although the dive recovery flaps greatly improve
the diving characteristics of the. airplane,
dangerous buffetin g and nose heaviness will
still be encountered at diving angles above 45°
if the diving speed is allowed to exceed the
placard limits by more than 15 to 20 mph."


The 109,190 and Mustang were ok up to the ultimate 0.8 range, with the Spit being the king in 0.85+ range. 

One thing that it is important to remember is that compressibility effects may start to be noticeable earlier but it is still possible to control (and even fight) the aircraft up to the ultimate limit. The Mustang was a good example, you could start to notice effects (in its case porpoising) before its maximum allowable limit, but it was still controllable (interestingly in certain flight regimes the Mustang could nose up, rather than the usual nose down). So there was a large margin for the pilot to work with.

One of the problems with the P-38 was that the margin between noticing effects and being totally out of control were very small.


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## OldSkeptic (Jan 25, 2014)

Here's another one which shows the small margin for error the P-38 had:


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## GregP (Jan 25, 2014)

The dive limits are vastly over-rated as a combat variable. The P-38's were fixed when the intake manifold was corrected and the electric heater was installed. The pilots finally got training on the P-38 by dint of flying them enough to be familiar with them.

When the P-38 was "fixed," the P-51 had begun to appear in the ETO and there was no reason to continue two supply lines for fighters to do the same job. So the P-38's were largely released to the MTO and PTO.

It might be worth remembering that the top TWO US aces both flew the P-38 and not the P-51.

The generally-quoted tally for the P-51 usually includes about 50% or so ground kills. The P-38 was no slouch at ANY time during the war and really didn't need to dive at very high speed all that often, especially if they were staying with the bombers as escort. That from some pilots who flew it in the war and have spoken at the Planes of Fame Museum.

We tend to speak in absoultes in here and the war wasn't very absolute. Many times an older, slower aircraft flown by a good pilot fought quite well against a newer, supposdely better-performing aircraft flown by an average pilot.


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## Milosh (Jan 26, 2014)

GregP said:


> It might be worth remembering that the top TWO US aces both flew the P-38 and not the P-51.



It is also worth remembering that those 2 US aces flew against the Japanese.


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## OldSkeptic (Jan 26, 2014)

Milosh said:


> It is also worth remembering that those 2 US aces flew against the Japanese.



Correct. And in that environment (as in the Med) the P-38 was a much happier plane. Lower altitudes therefore less mach issues, less over cooling issues, etc.

More ever in the PTO there was less need to go absolutely flat out to be competitive, the P-38 having a very significant speed advantage over nearly all the planes it went up against there.

Bit different to being at 30,000ft+ going against late model 109s.


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## drgondog (Jan 26, 2014)

OldSkeptic said:


> You need to add in mach limit too. The P-38's was miserable (abut 0.65-0.68), so much so that the late models' max speed was very close to their mach limit at altitude and they had severe altitude dive restrictions put on them (ie 10 degrees, you could dive a Lancaster more than that...).
> 
> The boom and zoom for them was more of just a boom ... as they hit the ground.
> 
> ...



The P-47D and P-51D and P-63 were all placard limited to 500-505 mph TAS. All were more than 'competitive' in a dive against the Bf 109, FW 190.

The one advantage to both the P-51 and P-63 was the delay to MCr due to laminar flow airfoils, as well as mitigated pitch down CM
that both the P-38 and P-47 experienced.


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## drgondog (Jan 26, 2014)

Duplicate


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## GregP (Jan 26, 2014)

I only have the USAAF Statistical Digest numbers for the ETO for the P-51 and the USAAF acknowledged 4,950 air kills and 4,131 ground kills for a total of 9,081. That is from the USAAF itself, not my opinion. I have absolutely no stake in the numbers whether they be larger or smaller. I have 5,163 for the F6F. When I entered the data from US Navy Opnav-P-23V No. A129, dated 17 June 1946 into Excel, I found after many checks that the Navy had made a slight math error in the table, Excel doesn't usually come up with an error when adding numbers.

For the P-47 in the ETO the USAAF has 3,082 air kills and 3,202 ground kills. For the P-38 in the ETO the USAAF has 1,771 air kills and 749 ground kills. Given the fact that it wasn't operating in the ETO for half of the US involvement, that isn't too bad.

And as far as the dive limits are concerned, I believe the number of times a fighter wound up in a near vertical dive up to or near the critical Mach number was VERY low, whether or not they were fightiing a Bf 109 or Fw 190 of any sort. If you dive away, you exit the fight in pursuit of your target, leave your assigned unit, and take yourself out of the action by separation from the rest. I'm sure it happened, but am just as sure it was reasonably infrequent. If I were flying a plane with known issues in steep dives, I might just decide to let the diving bugger go and pursue other targets that were sticking around to fight my unit.

I've been listening to fighter pilots give talks once a month at the Planes of Fame for more than 8 years, usually 2 - 3 per event, and the number of times they describe vertical dives in combat has been 2 - 3 in all that time. Each one talks for anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour and describes many aspects of WWII air combat. Dives just aren't mentioned much. So, you might be right when saying the dive limits were a severe handicap in WWII combat, but I wouldn't know it to listen to the guys who were there and did it.

Anyone who thinks the Japanese were less combat worthy than the German might remember that when Spitfires came up against Zeros, they didn't fare too well. Like all air forces (and Navy air arms), the Japanese had their expert pilots along with average pilots and raw recruits just out of flight school. Right to the end of the war the experts were a significant threat to anyone they encountered. There seems to a feeling in here that the Japanese pilots were meat on the table for the last two years of the war, but the guys who were there aren't the people saying it. To a man they respected the Japanese pilots and considered them worthy foes.

Like you, Bill, I'd LOVE to come across Soviet combat data for anything including P-39 / P-63's. If anyone knows where it can be found, please sing out.


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## Jabberwocky (Jan 27, 2014)

GregP said:


> I only have the USAAF Statistical Digest numbers for the ETO for the P-51 and the USAAF acknowledged 4,950 air kills and 4,131 ground kills for a total of 9,081. That is from the USAAF itself, not my opinion. I have absolutely no stake in the numbers whether they be larger or smaller. I have 5,163 for the F6F. When I entered the data from US Navy Opnav-P-23V No. A129, dated 17 June 1946 into Excel, I found after many checks that the Navy had made a slight math error in the table, Excel doesn't usually come up with an error when adding numbers.
> 
> For the P-47 in the ETO the USAAF has 3,082 air kills and 3,202 ground kills. For the P-38 in the ETO the USAAF has 1,771 air kills and 749 ground kills. Given the fact that it wasn't operating in the ETO for half of the US involvement, that isn't too bad.



Greg, those numbers for ETO fighter claims (17,885 air and ground) don't jive with USAAF Statistical Digest Table 167, which gives a total of 14,218 credits (air and ground) to all USAAF fighters in the ETO. 

I don't know if the Table 167 numbers are post war revised or not, but 3,550 odd claims is a pretty significant difference.

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## Milosh (Jan 27, 2014)

To the European total should be added 4,664	(3,300 - air, 1,364 - ground) from the MTO.


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## GregP (Jan 27, 2014)

You know it's funny. A couple of years ago I got the data by type (P-51, P-38. etc) from a website that went to Maxwell AFB USAFHS (US Air Force Historical Society). Now that site gives me an "unavailable" error when I try to access it from favorites. I erased the link in anger.

But the site I just looked at using "USAAF Statistical Digest" as a search criteria sends me to a pdf that lists totally different data broken out differently. The new file says things like, "Enemy Aircraft Destroyed in the ETO" and is listed by heavy bomber. medium bomber, fighters, etc ... and never mentions the type (P-51. P-38. etc.).

Curious and frustrating, to say the least. Perhaps Drgondog is correct.

It needs further digging, which I stopped doing after inputting it all into Excel ... and now can't find that same file even though I am using the same search terms and same link. So ... maybe my data are at odds with the new files. Seems so and I really wonder why. The file I used a few years back was dated 1946, but I didn't record the doc number since it was a US government site I expected to continue in being. Stupid error in retrospect.

So, Bill, perhaps you are correct. At this time, I simply am confused since I can't seem to find the same document at the same site.

I'll continue digging and back out of claiming things about victories at this time until I get it researched AGAiN. When I do, every document number, date, and website will be saved! Bill's numbers are OK unless proven wrong by an authority other than me.

Cheers to all ... except Maxwell AFB.

Please continue the thread ...


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## eWildcat (Jan 27, 2014)

GregP said:


> Any of the WWII simns are just games, with flight models usually tweaked from some earlier sim. I seriously doubt if an average person with no flight training could get a P-51D off the ground. But EVERYONE can do it in a PC sim. What does that say for accuracy? People with no tailwheel training would also very likely never get one down and stopped without a groundloop but, again, everyone in a PC simulator can do it.
> Get a WWII fighter at 250 mph, bank to ... say ...75°, and pull has hard as you can. Think you'll get a turn or a whip-stall / spin after a wind-up? The sims all get a pretty decent turn from that maneuver.



"Any of the WWII sims" is now a little exaggerated. Though what you describe certainly stands true for most "older" sims, if you play, say, DCS-51 you'll certainly find that landing is no longer an easy task, and you will stall and spin as soon as you try to pull the stick with no regard to basic airmanship. Though sims still have innate limits (fied of view and no G-load, for example) the "hardcore" ones have improved a lot in the last years.


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## Gixxerman (Jan 27, 2014)

I'm gently dipping my toe into the Il 2 world with the PS3 game....just wondering if I should buy the flight-stick for it or go the whole hog get the PC version stick etc.
Great game tho


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## Garyt (Jan 28, 2014)

> The 109,190 and Mustang were ok up to the ultimate 0.8 range, with the Spit being the king in 0.85+ range.
> 
> One thing that it is important to remember is that compressibility effects may start to be noticeable earlier but it is still possible to control (and even fight) the aircraft up to the ultimate limit. The Mustang was a good example, you could start to notice effects (in its case porpoising) before its maximum allowable limit, but it was still controllable (interestingly in certain flight regimes the Mustang could nose up, rather than the usual nose down). So there was a large margin for the pilot to work with.



So these effects are seperate from compression?

This "not excede speed", is this when the plane cannot handle effectively anymore, or is it only an issue for diving?

And any idea what the Japanese planes mach limits were?


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## bobbysocks (Jan 28, 2014)

Gixxerman said:


> I'm gently dipping my toe into the Il 2 world with the PS3 game....just wondering if I should buy the flight-stick for it or go the whole hog get the PC version stick etc.
> Great game tho



i gather you are playing birds of steel on your ps3? you are way better off with PC and a stick ( and rudder pedals). you will have way more options...diffferent games...you can create games....etc. i played BoS on xbox and its predecessor birds of prey. flight models for us planes are horrible.

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## drgondog (Jan 29, 2014)

GregP said:


> When the P-38 was "fixed," the P-51 had begun to appear in the ETO and there was no reason to continue two supply lines for fighters to do the same job. So the P-38's were largely released to the MTO and PTO.
> 
> The generally-quoted tally for the P-51 usually includes about 50% or so ground kills. The P-38 was no slouch at ANY time during the war and really didn't need to dive at very high speed all that often, especially if they were staying with the bombers as escort. That from some pilots who flew it in the war and have spoken at the Planes of Fame Museum.
> 
> ...



Greg - if you haven't already taken the time to research a.) the conversion dates from P-38 to P-51 (ETO), P-47 to P-51 (ETO/MTO) as well as 31st FG Spitfire to P-51 it will be hard for you to extract much from the Study 73 and 85 official VC's into the desired stacks. I'm still working on MTO but nearly finished cross checking. PTO a little more sketchy so I depend on USAFHRC and assume correct.


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## drgondog (Jan 29, 2014)

GregP said:


> I only have the USAAF Statistical Digest numbers for the ETO for the P-51 and the USAAF acknowledged 4,950 air kills and 4,131 ground kills for a total of 9,081. That is from the USAAF itself, not my opinion. I have absolutely no stake in the numbers whether they be larger or smaller. I have 5,163 for the F6F. When I entered the data from US Navy Opnav-P-23V No. A129, dated 17 June 1946 into Excel, I found after many checks that the Navy had made a slight math error in the table, Excel doesn't usually come up with an error when adding numbers.
> 
> *The USAAF Statistical Digest was superseded by the much more thorough USAF Victory Credits studies and published results*
> 
> ...



Haven't seen any Soviet individual breakouts in form of Encounter reports. Someone a lot more knowledgeable than me will have to raise their hand and direct us.


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## GregP (Jan 29, 2014)

Hi Bill,

When I try to access the Maxwell AFB files, I get an error that the Air University is down and they are working on it. The message has been the same for more than 6 months. I wish I had saved the raw data when I accessed it a couple of years back, but I expected it to continue to be available.

I'm working on getting USAF Victory Credits data into Excel and am about 50% through it. I saved the pdf, unlocked it, and put the text into Excel. I then used Excel formulas to break it out, but you have to go through it and ensure the records are consistent before you do any analysis. For instance, some records do not show a rank for the person, so the data moves one column to the left since the rank is missing. There are also a few mis-scanned lines ... enough to require pretty thorough checking.

When I am done, you are welcome to a copy if you want one. I have not researched the ETO units to seen when they converted between combat mounts, but that information would come in very handy. I want the information, but many of the scanned documents are just scans and cannot be converted into text. I decline to hand enter tens of thousands of records myself. As you know, I am not the world's best typist.

Want to share any data files? I can email up to several Gb.

When I went back and checked, my kills numbers seem to have come from "America's Hundred Thousand" by Francis Dean, which I picked up actually upon your recommendation. Good book, but the numbers are somewhat at odds with other respected numbers. I am almost at a loss when there are three or more sets of numbers, all of whom come from respected sources, and none agree with one another. It's tough for me to decide which source to pick as the best.

Perhaps we could share data source recommendations.

For the US Navy I lean toward OPNAV-P-23V NO. A129, dated 17 June 1946. The title is "Naval Aviation Combat Statistics, World War II." It is available in pdf format online or I can send a copy to anyone who wants it. It is 2.6 Mb in size, so I can email it as an attachment. It is scanned and not text, but the individual tables of interest aren't too big to enter by hand most of the time.

If this forum had a place to store data files, I'd put it there for anyone to download.

Right now I am at odds with myself over which USAAF source to use, but would love to see the USAF Victory Credits file. Maybe then we'd have some apples-to-apples conversations. I have a feeling that many of our exchanges are due to using numbers from different sources. You throw around numbers for air and ground kills for the P-51 (and others) ... and I can't seem to find a single good sopurce that breaks it out. The Statistical Digest only breaks out general types (fighters, heavy bomber, etc.) and does not have anything for P-51. P-47. etc. I am not in the habit of posting numbers from thin air (and I know you aren't, either) ... they come from somewhere, but maybe not from the same place as you get them. Common sources might help everyone in here.


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## Gixxerman (Jan 29, 2014)

bobbysocks said:


> i gather you are playing birds of steel on your ps3? you are way better off with PC and a stick ( and rudder pedals). you will have way more options...diffferent games...you can create games....etc.



Yes, that's the one.
I'm really just starting off on it (haven't tried on-line or anything outside of 'arcade' mode.
It's a fun game but being arcade mode means it is pretty far from any kind of accuracy/reality.

I had a look at pedals (my initial thought was a flight stick but saw people saying your really want the pedals), then I looked at the prices, phew!
Another expensive hobby lol


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## OldSkeptic (Jan 30, 2014)

Garyt said:


> So these effects are seperate from compression?
> 
> This "not excede speed", is this when the plane cannot handle effectively anymore, or is it only an issue for diving?
> 
> And any idea what the Japanese planes mach limits were?



'Compression' is what used to be called mach limit. Compression was an early term because they really had no idea what was going on. As the impacts of close to mach 1 effects became more understood then they changed terms.


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## bobbysocks (Feb 2, 2014)

Gixxerman said:


> Yes, that's the one.
> I'm really just starting off on it (haven't tried on-line or anything outside of 'arcade' mode.
> It's a fun game but being arcade mode means it is pretty far from any kind of accuracy/reality.
> 
> ...



sent you a PM. you will only be able to unlock skins for your planes in versus matches...and you earn more points that way too to buy planes. if you get shot up you can pay to fix your plane or let it sit overnight ( 7 hours and the magic ground crew fixes it ). make the leap to both online play because that is where it gets fun. the kills are harder to get even against AI.... also go to realistic or sim...or custom. it places more limitations on the planes...in arcade they fly like jets. there is a good group of guys who play regularly and can help you out. german planes fly like a dream...same with the most of the russian. us planes fly like bricks....p40 and p39 are ok. p51 and p47 are huge dissapointments.

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## Kryten (Feb 8, 2014)

I would recommend IL2 Cliffs of Dover on a PC, the original game was diabolical with glitches galore, but since it being dropped by the producer, a group of talented programmers have been working on it and have rectified the glitches, they have spent hours working on flight models and game physics to bring them in line with published documentation and have improved the graphic quality and stability, it really is a night and day transformation!

It's also a work in progress as they are introducing more and more adjustments which improve graphics and effects, terrain is being improved (originally very good anyway, now stunning) and all the little bits of code that slowed the game up and ruined it is re written , end result is it now works, very well, without doubt the most detailed ww2 flight sim available, and to boot cheap as chips right now as it's no longer supported by the producers (hurrah for that)

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## GregP (Feb 10, 2014)

Exactly how did they find the flight models?

That is an intersting question because various flight test reports wildly disagree with one another depending on manifold pressure used, fuel used, rpm used, and whether or not the aircraft used for the test was typical of combat planes in the theater of operations being looked at. A p-40 with tropical filters was not going to fly like an ETO P-40 with no air filter. The same can be said for various types and various conditions including finish, cleanlinesss, prop condition, mud on the airframe, bugs, dun port covers, etc.

Guys in China used 75 inches of MAP on some of their P-40's (that from General John R. "Davey" Allison) ... not related to the Allison engine company. The Air Corps approved 57 inches. The difference in performance was astounding. That also from Allison, in person in 2010 . He passed away in 2011.

The usual sims don't tell you how they got their data ... it is just a game that must be dumb enough for most players to be able to win, or it doesn't sell very well. And that is the end objective ... to sell games.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with realism. It is all marketing and the playability. They KNOW which fighters should win, and allow for player ability, not for realistic responses. 

Get real. 

Commerecial WWII sims are games, not representative of flight characteristics of WWII aircraft or people would crash often. Name ONE sim where they do. You can't. All sims available in the gaming world are very flyable by people who have never flown anything.

How real can that BE?

Answer ... go put a non-pilot into a Cessna or Piper, let him or her take off and then try to land. 97% would be dead or injured.

The percent in sims is WAY less, and the "skill" to survive is EASY to acquire within the games.

Not so in real Cessnas or Pipers, which are EASY to fly in real life. P-51's are NOT easy to fly unless you have proper training in a suitable aircraft. Mostly the AT-6. Find a sim where the AT-6 is well modeled and tell us.

If you have 250 hours in an AT-6 in the front seat, you can probably fly a Mustang without killing yourself.

Anyone can fly a typical WWII combat sim, wheter or not they can really fly anything.

Realistic? I think not. I have NEVER taken a SINGLE passenger aloft who could trim the plane on his or her first flight, much less find an airport and land without crashing. EVERYBODY can in a WWII combat sim.


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## eWildcat (Feb 10, 2014)

GregP said:


> The usual sims don't tell you how they got their data ... it is just a game that must be dumb enough for most players to be able to win, or it doesn't sell very well. And that is the end objective ... to sell games.



I'm sorry to insist, but you generalize a bit too much again. Some flight simulations are not that easy, though most are indeed, for the obvious reasons you quoted. I agree that the difficult simulations don't sell much however, compared to the easier ones, be they jet or prop sims btw.


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## drgondog (Feb 10, 2014)

OldSkeptic said:


> 'Compression' is what used to be called mach limit. Compression was an early term because they really had no idea what was going on. As the impacts of close to mach 1 effects became more understood then they changed terms.



Strictly speaking there are perhaps three distinct discussions:
Compressible - air is treated as incompressible fluid up to ~ M=.30 at which point the change in density with respect to increased velocity is > 0.

Compressible flow below Mcr is the region between .3 and approximately .6-.65 Mach (for WWII fighters) in which the local density at these velocity ranges approach critical Mach, particularly between leading edge and the region on the airfoil which is greatest thickness to Chord ratio. Except for P-51 and P-63 with laminar flow airfoils and T/Cmax ~ .45 all other airfoils were t
'thickest' at .24 to .26 Chord. This is pre shock wave formation but transient 'burbles' begin to form at which local velocity approaches M=1

Mach Critical is the point where the local flow has attained M=1 and formed a shock wave at that point, but beyond the shock wave the flow subsides below M=1 until the flow over the entire airfoil has attained the local speed of sound (varies with free stream temperature which is a function of altitude). Additionally, in the Mcrit speed region the shock wave usually causes severe wake turbulence downstream.

In the case of most aircraft with t/C at 25% chord, the nose down pitching moment increases - which cause greater stick forces on the elevator to offset the pitch down effect. 

This was the Primary issue with the P-38. It had a fat wing, thus local flow reached Mcrit ~ .68M (contrast to Mustang/Thunderbolt at ~ .82-.85M)


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## bobbysocks (Feb 10, 2014)

GregP said:


> Exactly how did they find the flight models?
> 
> That is an intersting question because various flight test reports wildly disagree with one another depending on manifold pressure used, fuel used, rpm used, and whether or not the aircraft used for the test was typical of combat planes in the theater of operations being looked at. A p-40 with tropical filters was not going to fly like an ETO P-40 with no air filter. The same can be said for various types and various conditions including finish, cleanlinesss, prop condition, mud on the airframe, bugs, dun port covers, etc.
> 
> ...



some are not as easy as you make out. have you ever sat down and played any of the IL-2 PC games or any of the others in that genre? if not you really cant tell me what they are and what they are not. some are downright technical where you have to go through the start up process by clicking the switches in the cockpit/instrument panel. many you need the original pilots manual to even accomplish this. also many have different "difficulty" modes...where things are dummied down for ease of play. the higher the difficulty the more demanding and techincal the flying gets. in the several i have played landing isnt a piece of cake...and i am a pilot. i have ground looped spits, pranged the gear on several different ac....it wasnt like flying a 150. i can get on x pilot and pull 3 pointers in a cub or old stinson all day long. these will never be at the real difficulty of flying a real warbird but a complete novice cannot get behind the stick of a spit, 51, 47, etc in these games and perform flawlessly at the higher difficulties....they will crash and burn...auger in...stall and spin...etc. if you ram the throttle of the 51 to full power too soon you will skid right off the runway just like in real life. try putting a dropping a corsair on the deck of a carrier and see how easy it is even for a game....only you get to hit a button and start all over again....something not afforded to real pilots. no one is insinuating that if you can jockey one of these planes in the game you could jump in the seat of a ww2 fighter and happily soar off into the wild blue yonder like a pro. but i have known some CFIs who believe it gives a prospective pilot a head start. they at least have a rudimentry understanding of basic ac maneuvers and handling over someone who never never sat behind a stick (virtual or real ). i do know of several gamers who have gone and gotten their single engine certificate and were able to handle the 152s fairly decent right off the bat. no they didnt land but were able to hold a heading and alt...do some basic co-ordinated turns. in these games you will never feel you body pinned back in the seat and how heavy your arms get due to G forces....you will never suffer sinus pain...or black out/red out....never feel the sheer terror of seeing tracers rip through your wing and know the next moment can be your last....that someone is actually trying to kill you...nor will you feel the boredom of flying several hours in formation. but as far as being able to sit at you computer at home and be challenged...its as close at you can get to real life flying. and a lot of ww2 mustang pilots didnt have 250 hours in an AT-6....some had ~300 hours total and that included their time basic and intermediate trainers.


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## Garyt (Feb 10, 2014)

As far as "realism" goes on a flight sim or game, personally I don't think it's important to have 400 "flight hours" before you can fly the thing reasonably efficiently. What would be nice though is to try to mirror some of the problems the planes had with trained pilots.

For example, making a plane very difficult to recover from a dive if it's going to fast. It would be very difficult to make the controller tougher to pull back on, but you could at least make the joystick difficult or close to impossible to control until you reach lower altitude. Or you could try to mirror some of the stall issues the planes had.

You can't (and would not want to make it) the exact same as flying the plane - but you want to incorporate the real positive and negative features of every plane.


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## bobbysocks (Feb 10, 2014)

exactly. there is a lot you cant do ( and will never do unless you have a multi-million dollar simulator) but there is a lot you can. you can move CG around to compensate for a full fuse tank or make the plane sluggish and stall quicker under different load outs...etc. the biggest thing is how you make it handle against its contemporaries...the planes it flew against at the time....rate of climb, rate of roll, acceleration, etc. it shouldnt be that difficult but it seems to be. it seems most developers either are biased or only focus on one nations ac.


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## GregP (Feb 11, 2014)

Yes, but it has nothing to do with flying a WWII aircraft ... it is a video game that doesn\ not and cannot include g-forve and the active control sticks cannot mimick the feel of a real WWII aircraft.

I can fly a sim upside down right down the middle of a road inverted at 15 feet altitude between trees (all the WWII sims I have flown). Try that in a real one and you die. They didn't HAVE inverted fuel and oil systems, and were NOT intended for negative maneuvers for the most part.\

The unlimited ammo and fuel I don;t mind since you get to stay engaged but, if you set them off, it is simple ... when you run out, disengage and go home. In all the sims I have tried, I have been mostly able to do that, even with a sjot out engine, but fast-moving when I can.

Sure, its fun. It has nothing to do with real flying though. In some sims, you can't even SEE the airfield and if you land off airport, you crash. That also wasn't real ... the real forward airfields WERE off airport and were farmer's fields. 

That one is IL-2, which I see as one of the video games, but not a flight sim. It is fun but would not be a good sim for a real pilot in WWII. Back then you landed off airport sometimes and could SEE the airfield since you were familiar with the area you were stationed in, and it wasn't the same color as the rest of the ground.

I like realism, and most fighters fly pretty well when inside the envelope. I think they should add some shaking when approaching a stall in the sims, and give warning like a real plane does. The Bf 109's didn't always outclimb the opposition in real life and the Spitfire didn't always turn inside the Bf 109's. The enemy wasn't always on his game, no matter which side he was on.

Most importantly, your wingmen weren't always stupid. They are in most sims. Unless you tell them what to do, they just follow in formation and don't help you much. You also don't get ANY info from ground control about what opposition is ahead.

Frustrating.

We need a good sitck, rudder, and throttle system and the view should be able to be moved with the hat switch easily and should NOT be a keystroke.

Many items to consoder, but some of the sims are fun, nonetheless.


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## Garyt (Feb 11, 2014)

> not and cannot include g-forve and the active control sticks cannot mimick the feel of a real WWII aircraft.



Yeah, the control sticks would be an issue. I'm sure if you wanted to spend enough to put a cockpit together you could mimic a lot of these factors - but the game would have a very limited market 

However, I remember the old F16 game, if you pulled to many G's you would begin to red out, then the plane would continue doing what it was doing but you would have a blank screen til you woke up.



> They didn't HAVE inverted fuel and oil systems, and were NOT intended for negative maneuvers for the most part.



That indeed should be fixed IMO


> The unlimited ammo and fuel I don;t mind since you get to stay engaged but, if you set them off, it is simple



I'm not a fan of unlimited ammo. It should be in the arcade version in most games IMO, as this was a specific difference between planes. Makes you appreciate the late war 2 .50's instead of 2 7.7mm's to go with a zero's 20mm cannon. You could switch off your main cannon and use the 50's to finish off a wounded bird. The 7.7's really were almost useless. Heck, an occasional gun jam would be a nice touch.



> I think they should add some shaking when approaching a stall in the sims, and give warning like a real plane does.



Definitely. And unresponsive control's when approaching to great of speed in a dive. And it should give the Zero, at least the early ones problems on a dive. And planes that historically did not roll well at high speeds - this should be reflected as well. Can't really make the controls stiffer, but can make them far less responsive.


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## eWildcat (Feb 11, 2014)

@GregP : Ill-2 is a thirteen-year-old game.  You can't ask Windows 98 to give you everything you get with Windows 7.

Nonetheless, some things you and Garyt seem to ask for are already available when you play Il-2, like shaking before stall, view moved with the hat stick (though "serious" simmers all use a Track-IR instead now), effects of negative G-load or roll rate depending on speed.

Well, enough with this : if you happen to have some time, just have a look at what exists today.  As for the rest, Bobbysocks covered it pretty well.


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## tomo pauk (Feb 11, 2014)

Garyt said:


> ...
> 
> However, I remember the old F16 game, if you pulled to many G's you would begin to red out, then the plane would continue doing what it was doing but you would have a blank screen til you woke up.
> 
> ...



Would that be the 'F-16 Combat Pilot'?


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## Garyt (Feb 11, 2014)

> Would that be the 'F-16 Combat Pilot'?



That would be the one. Great game for it's time (I think it's 25 or so years old).


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## tomo pauk (Feb 11, 2014)

Yep, quarter of century. IIRC, the landings with side wind were b!tch


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## Garyt (Feb 11, 2014)

LOL, I'd autopilot past some of the more difficult parts.

I never figured out how to use HARM missiles effectively - I'd let the computer pilots to that and fly CAP myself


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## tomo pauk (Feb 11, 2014)

I've had no problems with HARM, just be sure you use it on proper target, ie. SAM site. The most useless missiles for me were the IR versions of the Maverick, in some missions the laser-guided ones were unavailable.
Didn't put too much of effort for the allied computer pilots ( just give them something and let go), I'd usually bomb up my F-16 to the teeth and unleash the havoc. 
Other sim from that era I've enjoyed was the Silent Service II, ie. the submarine ww2 sim.


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## Garyt (Feb 11, 2014)

> I've had no problems with HARM, just be sure you use it on proper target, ie. SAM site.



Yeah, did that. I lost so many planes going after a SAM site, rarely took out the SAM. Went to having the computer wingmen go after the SAM site, did much better. Absolutely no idea what I was doing wrong. Could do everything else fine, just not the HARM missiles.

Wish they would have added a few planes as options for the player, like F15/14, F18, F111, etc.


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## bobbysocks (Feb 11, 2014)

you dont have to do everything by key stroke. you can get a stick with an attached ( or separtate) throttle quadrant that has levers for prop pitch and mixture. some also the have flap functions, gear, and trim wheels. there are a ton of pedals that work flawlessly. you can get IR tracking so when you turn your head the camera view moves....the complete goggle style hd arent too far in the distance. they do get you a way better view but where everything gets lost is depth perception. once they add 3D look out. with the goggle monitors and 3D you could probably get someone to throw up in their lap with some great maneuvers. almost no one i know plays with unlimited fuel and ammo. most are careful with their loads because it does affect the maneuverability of the ac. only time i ever use unlimited is if i am in a free flight and want to explore the map or i am practicing gunnery. like was said some of these games are way old...


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## Garyt (Feb 11, 2014)

What are some of the best (closest to true sim) of the games out there, Bobbysocks?


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## bobbysocks (Feb 12, 2014)

first let me say i have a mac right now so i am really limited on what i can play. I have warbirds which is ok..nothing to scream about. mostly i got introduced to these on console. most are cheesy arcade games but there are a couple that are decent....the 2 best for PS3 and Xbox are Birds of Prey and Birds of steel. both of those are from gaijin ( more on that later ). one of the guys i fly with is a former airline pilot and tows gliders on the side. he is impressed with some of the handling of some of the planes even in this console game. as far as PC, the best are yet to come out like Battle of Stalingrad which looks very promising. as was mentioned, though i havent played it, IL 2 cliffs of dover. it became a huge debacle for the developers so they gave up. the community took over and made missions and worked at fixing bugs and i guess turned it into a decent game. war thunder is in beta...i am not too happy with the developers...gaijin as they do not have a great track record supporting and fixing their console games and seem to have a bias against us ac. ww2 europe 1944 is in developement...a great team and if they can do what they claim it shoud be awesome...but that remains to be seen. so right now you have the old stuff that has been reworked by mission builders and modders...IL-2 1946 seems to be the fall back game and if you like ww1 rise of flight. a lot of these games can be modded and there is a HUGE community of guys to work to make them as real as possible and in some aspects they are spot on. i plan to get a pc this year and will build myself a small set up with pedals...throttle quad and a decent stick...i just have too much other stuff that i have to throw money at first. i listed several links below....they are to some of the forums. you can get a feel for things just lurking about in them. the x-plane ( its a free DL ) crowd...actually build different ac for the game....some are decent some completely suck. but they have a forum where they talk about building and getting info for the flight models...which might be of some interest to you. now these ( except for x-plane ) are all games where you can fly/dogfight/etc with people. there are programs like microsoft flight sim but you are pretty much by yourself...not much fun unless you are working on navigation skills or messing with instruments....traffic pattern work, etc. a lot of real pilots use them if they are travelling to an unfamilair airport. they can see the lay of the land and by shooting some landings and take offs they get a feel for the airport. so check out those links and see what you think.


Mission4Today

Airwarfare: Storm Of War Forum :: Recent Discussions (1/1)

TotalSims.com Forums ? Index page

DCS: P-51D Mustang

General Discussion - Gaijin Entertainment Forum

The X-Plane Flight Simulator Forums and Community


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## Garyt (Feb 20, 2014)

Below is a link to a forum where there is been a good deal of work done into conglomerating tests that have been done on WW2 fighter craft. I must say it's about the most comprehensive list I have seen - and does a good job detailing not only test results, but the specs on the test, i.e. plane weight at time of test, what exactly was carried in regards to fuel, armament, etc.

http://www.warbirdsforum.com/forum/22-performance/


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