Dive bomber accuracy in perspective.

BiffF15 said:

The CEP for the A-10 with iron bombs is probably pretty good due to the death dot (CCIP) or Constantly Computed Impact Point. It's like a red dot sight for aircraft. Dot on, push pickle button, target hit, period dot. As for the Spad, I would think it's a bit better than WW2 iron. The predominate reason is time between WW2 and Vietnam gave room for much improvement in academics, techniques, tactics and procedures. Heck, range rides in the OV-10 would have almost all the BDU-33s falling inside 150' (non-combat dropping understood). The more you drop, the better you get.

Cheers,
Biff

Click to expand...

How was the ride of the OV-10, I understand the pilot's view wasn't the greatest for landing?

Shortround6 said:

However now that you brought it up...............................The Skua was a product of it's time. I Still can't figure out the thinking behind the 500 SAP bomb. It was neither fish nor fowl.
Too much AP for destroyers, light cruisers, transports and too little AP for German Battleships (or newer Italian ones). Using one bomb for everything simplifies logistics and training but isn't go good for target effect. Again, there was no improved Skua, what they had in in spring of 1940 was what they had in Dec of 1938.


The SBD could carry a 1000lb from the start. It may have been capable of carrying different types to suit the target (the Japanese may have had that capability, the Germans sure did).
The SBD did get a variety of bombs later on although the much ballyhooed 1600lb AP bomb may never had dropped in anger from an SBD.

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elbmc1969 said:

The specification was for wrecking the flight decks and hangars of Japanese carriers. (And the RN's armored hangars were supposed to prevent the same from happening to them.)

Of course, they demonstrated good performance against the one German light cruiser that they hit.

Against destroyers it doesn't matter much because the chance of hitting is stunningly low. Look at the performance of SBDs against them in the Solomons.

Against battleships, a 500 lb bomb is inadequate, but they simply couldn't design a dual-role aircraft that could lift a 1000 lb bomb. It didn't matter in RN doctrine because battleships were the second priority of Swordfish, and then the RN battleships were supposed to clean up everything.

Whether or not this was realistic, there was clear doctrinal thinking behind it.

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The primary target of US carriers in the pre-WW2 period were the enemy aircraft carriers not heavily armoured battleships, just as in the RN. Torpedo bombers were to slow an enemy fleet down to allow the battleships to engage. Sinking battleships was the job of other battleships.

The USN began the move from 500lb to 1,000lb about 1932. A competition that year was won by the Great Lakes BG-1 which saw service with a single front line USN squadron between Oct 1934 and 1938. Two USMC squadrons also used themm between 1935 & 1940. Only 61 were built.

In 1934 the USN began a search for two types. Firstly a scout bomber (5,000lb aircraft to carry 500lb) and secondly a heavy dive bomber (6,000lb to carry 1,000lb). Out of that came the Northrop BT-1, carrying a 1,000lb bomb, to meet both requirements. 54 were delivered from April 1938. This evolved into the SBD in 1939.

Meanwhile two of the competitors for the first requirement upgraded their proposals in 1935 to carry 1,000lb bombs, thus effectively eliminating the heavy dive-bomber category. From this emerged the Vought SB2U Vindicator, which entered service in Dec 1937, and the Curtiss SBC-4, delivered from January 1939.

I can't trace a USN AP or SAP bomb from the pre-war period. This may explain why (from Dictionary of American Naval Air Squadrons Vol 2 Appendix 2:-

"Effective armor-piercing (AP) bombs were not developed
by the U.S. Navy between the wars because
near misses did not produce pressure-wave damage to
surface ships equal to similar weight light-case bombs."

To be effective an AP bomb needed dropped from height. That reduced the chances of a hit. Hence the idea that a large HE explosion from a near miss was a better solution to attacking any warship.

The US Army had a series of AP weapons ranging from 600-1,400lb converted from seacoast artillery shells. Their AP M-52 1,000lb bomb was produced between March 1942 and June 1943. Their M63 1,400lb weapon was produced Oct 1942 to Jan 1943.

Production of the AP Mk.1 1,600lb didn't start until Jan 1942 and AP Mk.33 1,000lb for the Navy didn't begin until Oct 1942 with Army production beginning in March 1943.

Pre-WW2 the USN had a 1,000lb Mk.13 GP bomb. So pre-WW2 there was clearly no change of intended target, just a desire to inflict heavier damage, especially from a near miss.

As for the utility of the British 500lb SAP bomb, while it might not be able to penetrate heavier armour, it could penetrate lighter armour very effectively. Most battleships did not have their uppermost deck as the main armoured deck. It was usually much lower in the ship with a lighter armoured deck above. An SAP bomb was perfectly capable of penetrating that top layer and exploding between the armoured layers and wrecking any equipment located there.

By way of example the Bismarck class had a 50mm thick upper deck. Their main armoured deck of c100mm was carried two decks below. The deck armour arrangements in the Littorios was similar. In the British KGV class more of the armour was concentrated in a single 5" thick deck carried one deck higher than in Axis ships giving more protected volume internally.

Uh, oh - what happened to BlackSheep?

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

I'm not saying that energy doesn't matter, but I think turning is a combination of power and drag and wing loading

Click to expand...

There is a lot more too it than that.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

Equating real turn rate with climb rate is, I think, incorrect.

Click to expand...

I have usually said it is an indicator, I have said it a bunch of times and perhaps I don't use the same wording all the time.

Now some of the problems with turning concerning power and drag is that once you are turning you are creating more drag than flying level. As Biff has said this doesn't matter for around the first 90 degrees of the turn (perhaps the plane is trading some momentum as the speed bleeds off).
Some aircraft like the Spitfire and Hurricane with less wing loading can turn using less angle of attack on the wing which means a smaller increase in total drag at a given speed. The planes with high wing loading need a higher angle of attack and are generating a higher amount of drag in proportion to their level speed drag.

Few numbers from a calculated chart on the Spitfire I at 12,000ft, I chose 23 seconds because that seems to be where the line on the chart is, makes things a bit easier
All turns taking 23 seconds.
2 Gs......................706ft radius..........................135mph..................extra power allows climb.
3 Gs.....................1150ft radius........................220mph..................plane cannot climb but will hold attitude.
3.5 Gs..................1350ft radius.......................260mph..................plane is loosing altitude at around 1600fpm.

Obviously there are occasions where the plane is bleeding off speed to maintain altitude rather than bleeding off altitude to maintain speed.

Having more power gives the pilot more options. It may not change the turn radius much, if any, tight turns get the planes down close to stall fairly soon. Spitfire 1 (6000lbs) was calculated to stall at 225mph at 5 Gs pulling a 670ft radius. It needed to descend at about 18 degrees to maintain speed. Having an extra few hundred horsepower can help maintain altitude or allow climbing while turning or even allow pulling a slightly tighter radius while not descending.

The 109G-6 gun boat was about 24% heavier than the 109E so a fair amount of the extra power was just lugging the weight around and whatever the F had gained in streamlining the Gun boat was loosing in lumps, bumps and gun pods. And once the heavier plane has to bank and use a higher angle of attack the drag goes up faster than the light plane.

Again, excess power is an indicator, use it after looking wing loading. If two planes have similar wing loading the plane with the higher excess power should perform better in turning maneuvers. I like climb performance as it is sort of cheat. It takes out the power needed to simply fly the airplane at 140-160mph (or whatever climb speed is) and leaves with the power available for maneuvering. (if the 109 has it's slats out it is down in the climbing speed area)

EwenS said:

The primary target of US carriers in the pre-WW2 period were the enemy aircraft carriers not heavily armoured battleships, just as in the RN........................................................................

Click to expand...

Thank you, I knew the Americans had AP bombs (or were working on them in the 1930s) but I didn't realize the it was army only for most of that time.

The Navy reasoning makes sense. The later 1000lb AP needed to be dropped from around 10,000ft from a level bomber and from 6,500ft in a 60 degree dive at 300kts to defeat 5in armor. Accuracy in either case would not be good and even if older Japanese BBs had 4 in decks things are still pretty iffy.
Chew up the upper works with a few 1000lb GP bombs and then let the BBs have at it

Most of the 8in gun cruisers (everybody's) would have trouble with 1000lb SAP or GP bombs. Armor decks within the 2in range and often less outside the protected areas.

We also have the problem that the British kept using cheap munitions. I don't know what the US was using in 1930s but in WW II (and just before) their GP bombs held about 50% explosives. Having a 1000lb bomb with 500lbs of HE go off 15-20ft away from the hulls side could cause a lot of problems. British GP bombs were just under 30%. US 500lb GP had about 250lb of HE and the British had about 144lbs. The British SAP bomb had 90lb of TNT. Chances of the British SAP bomb causing damage from near misses was much reduced.
Fusing is also important. SAP bombs with standard fusing may go too deep on a near miss or go through a small non-armored ship.

If your enemies carriers don't have armored flight decks a 500GP bomb in the hanger should mess things up pretty good.

The US came up with a 1000lb SAP bomb during WW II that held 30% explosive by weight. But this requires a different steel than the British commonly used for bomb casings.

The British did come up with GP bombs they called medium capacity which held about 50% explosives but not until the Skua was going out of service. The 1000lb MC bomb didn't show up until the end of 1942. The British didn't have a 1000lb GP bomb until late 1940.

BTW I believe the Koln had a max of 40mm of deck armor but I don't know how it was laid out or variations in thickness.

Excess power and the capacity to take on enemy single seat fighters lead to the dive bomber being less of a requirement over time.

By 1943 the US and Britain were able to field big chunky custard fighters repurposed as fighter/ground attack weapons.The two
best examples of this are the Thunderbolt and Typhoon. Rockets, bombs, and a dangerous gun package in both cases without the need
for specialist dive bombing training. The aircraft didn't need flight modifications and could also take on enemy fighters.

The power plants these planes had plus the big frame gave these functions.

The FW-190 was also used as a highly capable ground attack vehicle while still being able to fight it's way out of trouble.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

According to this chart, posted in the earlier pages of this thread, Stukas didn't have much trouble hitting destroyers and smaller ships, and 'others' (presumably Ju 88s?) didn't do so badly either.

View attachment 705563

Click to expand...

Those are absolute numbers. They give no idea how many attacks were launched against each ship type. So, no way to know what the percentages were

One thing we do know is that there were far, far more destroyers available as targets than capital ships and carriers.

elbmc1969 said:

One thing we do know is that there were far, far more destroyers available as targets than capital ships and carriers.

Click to expand...

Especially ending in Feb 1941. The Germans hadn't starting doing much anything in the Med yet.

Quite a few attacks off Norway (trying to dodge in fjords?) and operations off Dunkirk (again sometime few to maneuver and sometimes not).

Shortround6 said:

There is a lot more too it than that.

I have usually said it is an indicator, I have said it a bunch of times and perhaps I don't use the same wording all the time.

Now some of the problems with turning concerning power and drag is that once you are turning you are creating more drag than flying level. As Biff has said this doesn't matter for around the first 90 degrees of the turn (perhaps the plane is trading some momentum as the speed bleeds off).
Some aircraft like the Spitfire and Hurricane with less wing loading can turn using less angle of attack on the wing which means a smaller increase in total drag at a given speed. The planes with high wing loading need a higher angle of attack and are generating a higher amount of drag in proportion to their level speed drag.

Few numbers from a calculated chart on the Spitfire I at 12,000ft, I chose 23 seconds because that seems to be where the line on the chart is, makes things a bit easier
All turns taking 23 seconds.
2 Gs......................706ft radius..........................135mph..................extra power allows climb.
3 Gs.....................1150ft radius........................220mph..................plane cannot climb but will hold attitude.
3.5 Gs..................1350ft radius.......................260mph..................plane is loosing altitude at around 1600fpm.

Obviously there are occasions where the plane is bleeding off speed to maintain altitude rather than bleeding off altitude to maintain speed.

Having more power gives the pilot more options. It may not change the turn radius much, if any, tight turns get the planes down close to stall fairly soon. Spitfire 1 (6000lbs) was calculated to stall at 225mph at 5 Gs pulling a 670ft radius. It needed to descend at about 18 degrees to maintain speed. Having an extra few hundred horsepower can help maintain altitude or allow climbing while turning or even allow pulling a slightly tighter radius while not descending.

The 109G-6 gun boat was about 24% heavier than the 109E so a fair amount of the extra power was just lugging the weight around and whatever the F had gained in streamlining the Gun boat was loosing in lumps, bumps and gun pods. And once the heavier plane has to bank and use a higher angle of attack the drag goes up faster than the light plane.

Again, excess power is an indicator, use it after looking wing loading. If two planes have similar wing loading the plane with the higher excess power should perform better in turning maneuvers. I like climb performance as it is sort of cheat. It takes out the power needed to simply fly the airplane at 140-160mph (or whatever climb speed is) and leaves with the power available for maneuvering. (if the 109 has it's slats out it is down in the climbing speed area)

Click to expand...

Well, I appreciate this as it's a much more nuanced approach to the discussion. What you are talking about here, in part, is what the Soviets called 'vertical maneuvering'. They credited the Bf 109 as being very good at 'vertical maneuvering'. In the US world, maybe British as well, this included the well known immelmann etc., and what they called high and low "Yo Yo" turns. High Yo Yo is where you use excess energy (like if you are starting a turn at high speed) to climb a bit in your turn and then dive from the top of it. The opposite is the Low Yo Yo where you put the nose down in the turn, picking up speed and then zoom climb back up at the end of it. In both cases you 'cut the chord' of the turn and use energy to advantage.

I had been told that they didn't know these terms in WW2 but I have now seen WW2 era documents by US pilots who mention them.

Aircraft with an exceptional climb angle, such as the A6M, could actually loop in combat and come down behind and above a pursing aircraft, this was a widely used and very deadly tactic used by A6Ms. They could climb away from a pursuer, ideally until the enemy plane was running out of energy, then pull off a surprising loop and shoot right into the enemy cockpit.

Conversely, aircraft with very good dive acceleration, like P-40s, could cut corners on turns using "low Yo Yo"... if they had sufficient altitude.

One standard opening combat tactic used by a figure four of German fighters (and also by the Finns I believe) was to split into two pairs, with each pair turning in opposite direction and going into a climbing turn right or left. The enemy (especially Soviet) pilots would usually chase one of the two pairs. The Germans would take advantage of their better power to continue a high speed climb to the point that the Allied fighter would begin to 'loose steam', by which time the other pair would be swiftly coming up behind them. Then just as their partners attack, the 'bait' team would do a vertical turn and come back on their pursuers.

This worked particularly well against the early aircraft with the turtledeck type cockpits and in many cases, lacked even rearview mirrors (a deficit quickly corrected in the West, though I'm not sure how long it took in Russia) so they couldn't see the swiftly onrushing planes coming up behind them.

Another defensive tactic the Germans used was if they had been put into a disadvantaged position, they would resort to a 'rolling scissors', in which they would roll turn into their opponent cross their path (usually above or below), then roll again and cross back the other way. Often using vertical turns to bleed off or gain energy as needed (yo-yo). When done in pairs, this is somewhat similar to the Thach Weave used by F4F pilots in the Pacific, and was similarly effective against better turning aircraft.


WW2 Air combat in detail is very complex, and quite an interesting subject. The key for successful types was that the pilots learned their flight envelope (something that could take a while to figure out especially with new pilots being thrown into the breach in the early war) and that of their opponent, and then learn what they could do that was difficult for their opponent's to cope with. Like German pilots nosing over into dives during the BoB because they knew the British carburators would stall out temporarily. The best units developed all this as institutional learning, but this was unevenly distributed so to speak. One of the problems with keeping the same types in production for a very long time is that their flaws became known over time, (though sometimes a new engine or some other improvement could surprise enemies who thought they knew what they were up against)

The bottom line though is that any sustained air combat or dog fight, which wasn't the most common way that aircraft engaged one another but was something indeed that happened, typically did inevitably descend toward the ground. If they kept fighting all the way down they could both find themselves riding the edge of a stall over the forests and fields or the waves. This is where little extras like the leading edge slats on a Bf 109, the careful use of a 'combat' flap setting, overboosting an engine, or later on, methanol water injections etc. could make the difference in survival, just by keeping you above stall speed.

elbmc1969 said:

Those are absolute numbers. They give no idea how many attacks were launched against each ship type. So, no way to know what the percentages were

One thing we do know is that there were far, far more destroyers available as targets than capital ships and carriers.

Click to expand...

Regardless, I think it shows that Stukas were hitting a lot of destroyers and other small ships, and I doubt it was anywhere near the ratio of sorties to hits someone suggested up thread (as we can see in some of the specific examples also posted in the early pages of this thread). Same for Vals.

It wasn't easy to hit a maneuvering ship, especially a small one, that is shooting back and putting out smoke and so on. But they did it often by using sophisticated tactics, bracketing ships from multiple directions etc.

I think in the Pacific the US found that it was easier to use land based light and medium bombers, and fighter bombers (including Beaufighters) to strafe smaller ships to death and then skip bomb or masthead bomb them (and later to use rockets). This was partly due to comparatively weak Japanese AAA and partly due to to the Allies having so many aircraft with very heavy armament available there (including the A-20s and B-25s with the multiple HMG in the nose and even 75mm cannon). They did also do this to some extent in the Med, though with more severe casualties, and you can see in that wonderful IWM footage posted upthread that the British were doing this with Beaufighters and Mosquitos against German ships hiding in the Norwegian Fjords.

It must have been truly terrifying to face such an attack.

Again these were coordinated attacks, often coming from multiple directions, and the strafers took advantage of the fact that the Axis ship captains often thought they were facing torpedo runs, so they turned their ships to point at the onrushing enemy aircraft, thus reducing the number of AAA guns that could come to bear.

British quad .5 in mount. The vast majority of British destroyers in 1940 had one on each side between the funnels and.......................................................
That was it, there were no other real AA guns. At least for self defense. the older post WW I destroyers had a max elevation of 30 degrees and the newer ones had 40 degrees (but only by pulling up sections of deck plating). Only the very last ones got 40 degree elevation while standing on the regular deck. The Tribal's got a quad 2pdr but they were never going to build anywhere near the number of Tribal's compared to smaller destroyers.

Back to the .5 in, two sights because on man turned the crank that traversed the mount and the other man turned the crank that controlled the elevation. Needed team work
Admiralty thought they would give the gunners a better chance by aiming the guns in different directions and making for a larger field of fire. Of course that also meant that only one gun would actually hit the target at the same time. Please note that the British .5in was about 2/3 as powerful as the US .50 cal. Effective range was about 1000yds. It might put the dive bombers (and low level bombers) off their aim but by the time you hit a plane with this the plane was already dropping it's bomb.

Summer of 1940 and the Channel battles saw the British fitting anything they could as AA guns but that usually meant each small ship only got a few small guns of dubious parentage. (Ex- WW I Lewis guns in .303) or things of even less use. Much more for moral than any hope they would actually hit anything.

Part of the problem with naval AA is they had to put at least something on every ship while the aircraft did not have to attack every ship, at least on the same day, and could concentrate. This a problem with defense in general. German ships in 1939 weren't much better.

BlackSheep said:

How was the ride of the OV-10, I understand the pilot's view wasn't the greatest for landing?

Click to expand...

Blacksheep,

The view from the cockpit was actually really good for the most part. The view immediately in front of the pilot had the weapon sight, and two frame rails but they weren't really bad especially for what we were doing with it. You could be wings level, look down from one side, then the other and see the same spot beneath the plane. When controlling fighters we would often write all over the side panels / plexiglass with grease pencils to keep track of the assets / info.

The only time I didn't like the windscreen set up was on an instrument approach along ragged bottoms. I got spatial disorientation from it once (maybe 300 hours total military flight time) during an approach. The sensation was of a very steep approach / dive I and literally did a full aft stick pull. I realized my error / spatial d source and corrected back on glide slope. You don't get this particular version of spatial d in other planes as you couldn't see out of them that low in the cockpit (maybe C-130s to some extent due to the multiple glass window panes they have to look out towards their feet). The T-37, T-38, and subsequently the F-15 didn't "suffer" from this design aspect.

davebender said:

Ju-87 with average pilot had a 25% chance to place 1,000kg bomb within 30 meters of target.

Click to expand...

If your target is a large, high value ship, like the Ju-87 attack on HMS Illustrious, 30 meters will suffice.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

Well, I appreciate this as it's a much more nuanced approach to the discussion. What you are talking about here, in part, is what the Soviets called 'vertical maneuvering'. They credited the Bf 109 as being very good at 'vertical maneuvering'. In the US world, maybe British as well, this included the well known immelmann etc., and what they called high and low "Yo Yo" turns. High Yo Yo is where you use excess energy (like if you are starting a turn at high speed) to climb a bit in your turn and then dive from the top of it. The opposite is the Low Yo Yo where you put the nose down in the turn, picking up speed and then zoom climb back up at the end of it. In both cases you 'cut the chord' of the turn and use energy to advantage.

Click to expand...

Veritcal maneuvering is probably (in my opine as it relates to WW2 aircraft) more of getting away from the horizon as compared to the other guy vice "loops" or over the top type flying. Not in all cases but in most as the planes generally didn't have the energy to due "pure vertical" maneuvers while in a turning engagement. Notice I'm saying mostly.

The low yo yo can be either a maneuver to gain energy (speed) or to tighten ones turn. When going down one can allow speed to build, or pull harder to increase ones turn rate / decrease ones turn circle size. Imagine you are in the cockpit, looking out the windscreen, and your opponent is to your left and close to the horizon line (both of you are turning left). Your nose is pointed behind him and you are unable to pull harder to get your nose in lead (you need to be in plane, in range, and in lead to shoot at him - plane means plane of motion). You can over rotate (roll further to the left) and start a descent while pulling harder. You don't want to descend too much, just enough to get your nose to rotate out in front of your adversary. From your perspective in the cockpit, your opponent will go above the horizon line as you over rotate and start down. As you pull to tighten (shrink) your turn circle, he will slide aft or your nose will move out into lead although pointed downhill and not in his plane of motion. Once you have moved him aft far enough, you roll out some and start a pull back up as to arrive with your nose in lead, pointed to were he is going (in plane of motion), and once in range turn on the trigger.

There are several counters to this maneuver, which were not known or widely so back in the day. It's easy to negate from the defenders perspective if he knows what to do and when.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

I had been told that they didn't know these terms in WW2 but I have now seen WW2 era documents by US pilots who mention them.

Aircraft with an exceptional climb angle, such as the A6M, could actually loop in combat and come down behind and above a pursing aircraft, this was a widely used and very deadly tactic used by A6Ms. They could climb away from a pursuer, ideally until the enemy plane was running out of energy, then pull off a surprising loop and shoot right into the enemy cockpit.

Conversely, aircraft with very good dive acceleration, like P-40s, could cut corners on turns using "low Yo Yo"... if they had sufficient altitude.

Click to expand...

Good divers or bad, it was available to all aircraft. Whether they used it not may depend more on training or understanding of dogfighting.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

One standard opening combat tactic used by a figure (may just be a typo but it's the finger four formation) four of German fighters (and also by the Finns I believe) was to split into two pairs, with each pair turning in opposite direction and going into a climbing turn right or left. The enemy (especially Soviet) pilots would usually chase one of the two pairs. The Germans would take advantage of their better power to continue a high speed climb to the point that the Allied fighter would begin to 'loose steam', by which time the other pair would be swiftly coming up behind them. Then just as their partners attack, the 'bait' team would do a vertical turn and come back on their pursuers.

This worked particularly well against the early aircraft with the turtledeck type cockpits and in many cases, lacked even rearview mirrors (a deficit quickly corrected in the West, though I'm not sure how long it took in Russia) so they couldn't see the swiftly onrushing planes coming up behind them.

Another defensive tactic the Germans used was if they had been put into a disadvantaged position, they would resort to a 'rolling scissors', in which they would roll turn into their opponent cross their path (usually above or below), then roll again and cross back the other way.

Click to expand...

The best way i can describe a rolling scissors is using a slinky and a straight stick. The aircraft doing the scissors is basically barrel rolling around it's target and flying a longer flight path but covering less distance across the ground. Take the slinky, open it up and bit, then put the straight stick through the middle of it. The stick my poke out of both ends, but if you open the slinky up all the way it will be much longer than the stick. The whole goal of the rolling scissors is to get behind someone or prevent going out in front of them.

Both aircraft doing scissors is when you have two slinky's merged if you will, and both aircraft are trying to barrel roll to a position of advantage. These usually don't last long as similar performing aircraft will quickly run out of energy.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

Often using vertical turns to bleed off or gain energy as needed (yo-yo). When done in pairs, this is somewhat similar to the Thach Weave used by F4F pilots in the Pacific, and was similarly effective against better turning aircraft.


WW2 Air combat in detail is very complex, and quite an interesting subject. The key for successful types was that the pilots learned their flight envelope (something that could take a while to figure out especially with new pilots being thrown into the breach in the early war) and that of their opponent, and then learn what they could do that was difficult for their opponent's to cope with. Like German pilots nosing over into dives during the BoB because they knew the British carburators would stall out temporarily. The best units developed all this as institutional learning, but this was unevenly distributed so to speak. One of the problems with keeping the same types in production for a very long time is that their flaws became known over time, (though sometimes a new engine or some other improvement could surprise enemies who thought they knew what they were up against)

The bottom line though is that any sustained air combat or dog fight, which wasn't the most common way that aircraft engaged one another but was something indeed that happened, typically did inevitably descend toward the ground. If they kept fighting all the way down they could both find themselves riding the edge of a stall over the forests and fields or the waves. This is where little extras like the leading edge slats on a Bf 109, the careful use of a 'combat' flap setting, overboosting an engine, or later on, methanol water injections etc. could make the difference in survival, just by keeping you above stall speed.

Click to expand...

Realize that slats (Me-109) or combat flaps P-38 / P-51 create both lift and drag. Particularly in the case of "combat flaps", what I think is going on is there is a way for the pilot to put out just a little flaps, creating just a little more lift, allowing him to get his nose in lead just enough to get the gun on. Regular flaps usually go out in significant increments (1/4, 1/2, 3/4 or full). All those are big drag step increases. Just a little flap, maybe 10%, would allow for more nose authority. If you do drop "combat flaps" and don't release some back pressure on the stick, you will bleed speed at even a higher rate, or start bleeding it if you were holding stable.

In other words there are no freebies.

The Eagle was initially designed without flaps but the USAF wouldn't sign off on that. The engineers added them. Dinky little switch outboard of the throttles, easily missed. Light near the gear indications said FLAPS. If the light was out the flaps were up regardless of where the switch was (they would retract automatically to avoid an overspeed if you missed the switch or it failed). If it was yellow they were in transit, green down. We only had up and down. Only plane I've flown built like that.

Cheers,
Biff

I love that kind of talk.

In WW2, early on, a lot of pilots would apply a very small amount of flaps, as you noted, to increase lift and help tighten turns. It also lowers the stall speed which is very important especially during a long dogfight where they have descended down to the ground. It does of course impose a penalty in drag.

In some cases an automatic 'combat' flap setting was made available. For example when the Ki-43 was first introduced to Japanese Army pilots, they balked at using it for a number of technical reasons, but mainly because it couldn't turn like the previous feather-light Ki-27 they were used to. So Nakajima introduced 'butterly' fowler flaps which would be deployed in tight turns.

The next step was automatic flaps. The late war Kawanishi N1K, originally a float plane fighter, was a big stout aircraft (almost like a Japanese P-47). To improve maneuverability, Kawanishi put in flaps which were triggered by a mercury switch and deployed automatically in turns. This apparently worked very well.

Many aircraft had manual flap settings which could be set at different amount of flaps between fully deployed (such as for landing) and partly deployed (such as for takeoff). In a P-40 or Hawk 75 / P-36, the flaps were controlled by a hydraulic switch on the joystick, which was engaged on or off with a handle on the left side. Once switched on, the flaps could be deployed like with a dimmer switch to whatever amount you wanted. Apparently they used a partial flap setting in climbing too.

Other planes were just "up" or "down" like the Spitfire. The Spitfire had such good turning performance it really didn't need combat flaps, probably. But it only had a landing setting essentially.

Most fighters by the mid-war had "Takeoff", "Landing", and "Combat" settings such as the Bf 109F (and I believe, all later Bf109s though someone can correct me if I'm wrong). Same for MC 202, FW 190, most Soviet fighters, and I think most of the US late war fighters too.

Some US Navy fighters however had spring loaded flaps which would not deploy (or would automatically close) above certain speeds, so these could not be used with combat maneuvering.

I think "low-yo-yo" works better if you have very good dive acceleration, and high yo-yo if you have good rate of climb. All of that matters a lot more in a WW2 fighter compared to an Eagle, compared to which all prop planes are very 'low energy'.

This is how double ace Robert De Haven described out-turning a zero in a P-40:

[Y]ou could fight a Jap on even terms, but you had to make him fight your way. He could outturn you at slow speed. You could outturn him at high speed. When you got into a turning fight with him, you dropped your nose down so you kept your airspeed up, you could outturn him. At low speed he could outroll you because of those big ailerons ... on the Zero. If your speed was up over 275, you could outroll [a Zero]. His big ailerons didn't have the strength to make high speed rolls... You could push things, too. Because ... f you decided to go home, you could go home. He couldn't because you could outrun him. [...] That left you in control of the fight.

To me that sounds a lot like a lo-yo-yo. At the end there he is also referring to the fact that they could outrun a zero if they needed to. This wasn't the case however necessarily in the early war, depending on their altitude. It wasn't until they increased boost settings.

And increasing boost, both simply by pushing up the manifold pressure and by using special enhancements like the MW/50 injections and later NO2 were ways to give an aircraft just a little extra power sometimes in a dogfight, sometimes to flee combat, or sometimes to pursue an enemy aircraft. I read a gripping account of a Corsair pilot named Ira Kepford using Methanol Water injections to outrun four A6Ms which he had gotten into a fight with down at sea level. There is an abbreviated account of the action here.

Whether fighters did maneuvers like loops was basically a function of training / tactics and the capability of the aircraft, and it sounds kind of crazy to do a loop in close combat, but the A6M pilots really did that trick. The A6M could climb at a much steeper angle than any of the available Allied fighters (at least monoplanes) and the experienced Japanese pilots figured out when to get away with it just as the pursuing Allied fighter (such as an F2A, F4F, P-39, or P-40) was running out of energy.

Apparently the Italians also had some kind of weird complex escape maneuvers involving loops. American, British and German pilots all commented on it, and all seemed baffled and a little put off by the trick, but the Italians managed to avoid heavy casualties for the most part so something about it must have worked.

BiffF15 said:

Blacksheep,

The view from the cockpit was actually really good for the most part. The view immediately in front of the pilot had the weapon sight, and two frame rails but they weren't really bad especially for what we were doing with it. You could be wings level, look down from one side, then the other and see the same spot beneath the plane. When controlling fighters we would often write all over the side panels / plexiglass with grease pencils to keep track of the assets / info.

The only time I didn't like the windscreen set up was on an instrument approach along ragged bottoms. I got spatial disorientation from it once (maybe 300 hours total military flight time) during an approach. The sensation was of a very steep approach / dive I and literally did a full aft stick pull. I realized my error / spatial d source and corrected back on glide slope. You don't get this particular version of spatial d in other planes as you couldn't see out of them that low in the cockpit (maybe C-130s to some extent due to the multiple glass window panes they have to look out towards their feet). The T-37, T-38, and subsequently the F-15 didn't "suffer" from this design aspect.

Click to expand...

Since we've already veered wildly off-topic ...

Out in the California desert, well away from the borders of any military base, I once saw an OV-10 dogfighting a pair of Cobras.

The OV-10 was the energy fighter, which was very weird. And the Cobras were operating very low, probably dangerously low for the Bronco and below its exercise hard deck.

I wonder who "won"?

SBD would pwn the whole gang...