MW-50 Bf 109s Vs Fw 190 A

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Greg, just looking at Juha's numbers for turns - both radius and time - I was wondering how important the turns are in air racing?

For example, how much time is spent in tsraight lines, and how much in the turns?

Could a plane that turns well but doesn't have a high top speed be competitive with a plane that turns poorly but has a high top speed?
 

Aren't you just making up numbers?
 
Gosh, the likely closer-to-life figures are hard to hear about, are they not?

The language is pretty clear for "my" turn figures unless your reading skills are seriously lacking... What else when Tsagi tells you 26-27 sec, is "less" than 20-22 sec.?

Oh yes, I know, the German testers are not as reliable as the Soviet testers... The Germans didn't know the P-47D as well as the Soviets did, and that's why it flew too well...

Still waiting for one historical example of multiple consecutive level 360° turns gains, without a prior dive or high starting speed/altitude, by a Spitfire over the FW-190A... Please just ONE... PLEASE!

Still waiting for ONE example of a Me-109G out-turning the P-47D in any circumstance...

Your idea of these aircrafts is what they would call vapourware guys...

Gaston
 
Gaston said:
Gosh, the likely closer-to-life figures are hard to hear about, are they not?
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How are they likely?



Gaston said:
The language is pretty clear for "my" turn figures unless your reading skills are seriously lacking... What else when Tsagi tells you 26-27 sec, is "less" than 20-22 sec.?
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Do they? Or do they say that the Jug does take longer to turn than a Bf109?



Gaston said:
Oh yes, I know, the German testers are not as reliable as the Soviet testers... The Germans didn't know the P-47D as well as the Soviets did, and that's why it flew too well...
Click to expand...

What do British and American testers say?



Gaston said:
Still waiting for one historical example of multiple consecutive level 360° turns gains, without a prior dive or high starting speed/altitude, by a Spitfire over the FW-190A... Please just ONE... PLEASE!
Click to expand...

Did any pilot actually fly cosecutive 360° turns in combat?

Maybe there aren't reports of Spitfire pilots out turning their Fw190 counterparts because the latter were expressly instructed to avoid turning fights with Spitfires?

I know, from Eric Brown's book on Luftwaffe planes, that after the tests of the captured Fw190 by the A&AEE (or was it the RAE?) Spitfire V pilots were instructed to not follow Fw190s into dives and zoom climbs, but to try to force a turning fight.



To my mind combat reports by pilots cannot be considered a good primary source for aircraft performance. For one thing there is likely to be some exaggeration and some misremembering, and there is no guarantee that either aircraft involved was flown anywhere near its potential. You could have experten up against novices, one of the aircrfat may have already been damaged by previous encounters and so on.

The reason that the Tsagi and A&AEE/RAE and their German and American counterparts did tests was to evolve tactics to gain any advantages their aircraft had over the enemy.

btw I have never seen anyone descibe the P-47 as agile. Fast, powerful, tough, but never agile.
 
Hello Gaston
a couple comments
combat reports are reports by the winners, loosers usually didn't write reports, especially those shot down over enemy territories. And because there are so few LW combat reports around we have little info from LW winners. I have read several memoirs of LW aces, but most of them are written by JG 52 aces, so not much use here and IIRC Knoke's memoirs isn't very reliable.

One must remember that the Soviet tests were flown at 1000m (3048ft) and most of Jug combats were fought at much higher level. Jug was designed for high altitude fighter but on the other hand 109G would also suffered less from its heavy control forces higher up.

What is interesting is that Soviet tests were in line Finnish tests and combat experiences. The only exception from that rule is LaGG-3 Series 28 which Finns thought was clearly poorer turner than the Soviet tests showed. Here the combats were as typical to Eastern Front mostly fought at fairly low level, so nearer to the circumstances in which the Soviet tests were flown.

In his 56th Fighter Group book pp. 21 and 23 Freeman writes on early 47Cs "As combats had taken place near same level as the bombers, many of the group's pilots had been forced into slow turning and climbing actions. It was clear that the P-47 was no match for the Bf 109 or Fw 190 in such circumstances..."

Juha
 
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The guy who ran the P-39 with the very short wings in the post war races later admitted that what ever he gained on the straight aways he lost in the turns. Top speed up but lap speed down or unchanged.

I think the planes were only doing 2-3 Gs average in the turns back then. Prewar there was quite a argument over taking the pylons in a short, hard turn at higher "G"s to maximize the straight aways or using longer, larger radius turn at lower "G"s which slowed the plane less and let it accelerate back up to speed quicker. Of course pre-war many planes were still using fixed pitch props
 

Sure it could or it could have to do with the fact that the P-36 wing was known to buckle anyway and had to be reinforced. XP-40 was the 10th production P-36 airframe. Stick heavier engine in airplane known to have a wing strength problem and pull the same "G"s and see what happens.
 
Hi Wuzak,

I have spent the last 3 weeks working with Steven Hinton Jr out at the shop. We are overhauling the left Allison from the Museum's P-38, 23 Skidoo. It is basically done. In that time, we talked about many things including Reno and Strega.

According to Steve, Some of the Reno turns are at 2 - 3 g and other turns are 5g - 6+g depending on your arrival line at the pylon. In the Valley of Speed, you are at 1.0 - 1.0g on the straightaway, but turn 8 is one of the hi-g turns. He tries to keep the g-forces as low as possible so as not to scrub off speed unnecessarily ... keeping it as smooth as possible. If he stays tight, the g-forces go up but the speed carried onto any subsequent straightaway or near-straightaway is lower, and that results in worse lap times. From this talk, I surmize that you need a fast plane that can also handle the turns ... but faster is probably more important than good turning. So, if you had a Burt Rutan, high aspect ratio racer (turns well) that was, say, 20 mph slower than Strega, I think Strega would win due to higher average speed around the course as a whole. The history of the race is filled with results from people who tried a new strategy ... but the facts are hard to dig out since the teams don't talk about it much, escpecially if they don't win or do better than the previous year.

Of course, all the Reno strategies may change now since they are relaying out the Reno course after Jimmy Leeward's accident last year. The new course has less of a turn at pylon 8, so as to have more of a straightaway near the pits and the the stands. None of the race pilots has ever flown this new course, so I suppose we'll get to see what it all means in about 5 months. The fastest 3 planes out there will be Strega, Rare Bear, and Voodoo, assuming they all show up ... unless someone else shows up with a dark hourse entry.

Rare Bear has the most horsepower on the ramp, the speeds for Bear, Strega, and Voodoo appear to be about the same, but Strega and Voodoo turn a bit better in theory. They also all race with wildly different strategies.

Rare Bear always starts the race slowly and builds up to fast laps as the race goes on. The R-3350 can DO that. On lap 1 or 2, the Rare Bear pilot won't be anywhere near race power. He is just making sure everything is in the green and is probably not at anything more than takeoff power. They take off at about stock power levels. By lap 4, he is probably at 80 - 90% race power.

The Merlins in both Strega and Voodoo are highly tuned and can produce very good power, but not for 8 laps; they get heat soaked and must be throttled back to live 8 laps. So Strega and Voodoo tend to throttle up and do the first 2 - 3 laps as fast and as smoothly as they can and then back off and depend on staying out in front while the people who can go fast all 8 laps try to catch up. Sometimes they DO catch up and sometimes they don't catch up. Rare Bear has Gold wins and so does Strega. Voodoo, with about the same potential as Strega, donesn't have a Gold Final win. It would have been a great race last year, but The Galloping Ghost had the accident on lap 3 on the first day of qualifying.

Since it was the first day of qualifying, Rare Bear wasn't really racing. They were just wringing out the Bear and going just fast enough to make the next round. If there is ONE truth at Reno it is this: You will never know who is the fastest until the Sunday Gold race becasue that is when they really go racing. The rest of the week, they go just fast enough to make it to the next race. Also, a Gold win gives the team bragging rights for only a year. Then they have to prove it all over again.

This year, Strega has some new drag reduction (I know what they did but it is not public information). That does not mean that the other planes also don't have some new drag reduction. Again, we'll see in September, won't we?

In the first unlimited heat race, the Sea Fury Race 232, the former September Pops, ate a piston and didn't fly again ... and still hasn't. It is sitting in a hangar at the Planes of Fame waiting for the R-3350 to be "freshened up." You can read that as overhauled since the piston that got eaten made a lot of metal in the engine.

I'm sure Flyboy J has some insights into the jet class, too. Maybe he'll post his thoughts in here? There are other posters out there who are Reno fans and have opinions, too. Maybe this needs a new thread?

Cheers, Wayne!
 
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Cimmex,

Our cohort, Gaston, likes trying to re-invent the science of aerodynamics in his spare time. He refuses to take a course in it, buy a book on it, or accept the explainations of people who have taken aerodynamics and have designed airplanes. His idea of proof of performance is a combat report written in the heat of emotion. War stories are fun to read but rarely tell the entire story. A guy who shoots down an ace that never saw him attacking isn't necessarily a better pilot; he surprised someone and probably got lucky. The ace that was just shot down never gets to file the combat report unless he lives and is repatriated with his unit. Even then he may not write it correctly, but may instead cite mechanical failure to avoid embarrassment. Running out of fuel is a better explanation for a combat loss than failure to spot your enemies.

Instead, Gaston comes up with some really inventive theories that, though inventive, are not related to the real world. After you have spent time tried to explain it to him a number of times, you tend to get frustrated and stop wasting your time with explanations that he discards in one-sentence dismissal while advancing another theory.

Guys like Drgondog have flown the warbirds, taken aerodynamics, and have gone on to design things that fly. After a certain number of failed attempts to disuade Gaston from unsound theories, the yawn may SEEM arrogant, but it is much more likely to be a case of, "we've been there before Gaston, and I won't go there again."
 
Thank you for the explanation. To be honest, I've never read Gaston's posts completely because of the length.
regards
cimmex
 
Me 109, to me, was many good things combined with some bad things ... and ALL the bad things were fixable, but were never fixed!
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The same can be said for a lot of wartime equipment. Without immediate wartime needs a lot of production decisions would have been different.

Not an aircraft but still one of my favorite production might have beens....
Heuschrecke 10 10.5cm SP howitzer.
Achtung Panzer! - Prototypes !


The Panzer IV was originally intended as an infantry support vehicle and this is what I think the Heer had in mind. 65 degree elevation allowed this vehicle to perform normal light howitzer fire support missions. 30mm frontal armor protection also allowed it to perform assault artillery missions. 200 were ordered during December 1941 and then cancelled. Until the Panther tank entered mass production Germany needed every available Panzer IV chassis to be completed as a tank.

If it had entered service it probably would have been the best 10.5cm SP howitzer in the world prior to the 1950s.
 
Gaston, so help me you've done it yet again! Could you post a better explanation of a prop-to-tail ratio? And the math? Got me curious, you did.

I understand you are using the weight of the aircraft times the g-load for the "tail" part of it (which I think of as the lift produced by the wing ... how is that related to the tail?), but what in the world is a 900-pound prop disc? Are you weighing the propeller and comparing that to the g-force supported by the wing? Are you adding up the weight of air in the propeller-to-air interface arc? Are you assuming it to be gyroscopic precession force?

If you divide the weight of the propeller by the lift produced, what does that number indicate? Especially since the weight of the prop is included in the weight of the aircraft.

I am not trying to bait you. Just trying to understand prop-to-tail ratio. Never heard of that one before. I must have missed any earlier post on this one. The only tail ratio I am familiar with is when you are chasing women in bars as a yongster, and the research and test data on that one are probably beyond the scope of this forum. At least, that's what the rules in here say. The 3-views are interesting, though, particularly the armament.

Any 10,000 pound aircraft can generate 30,000 pounds of lift at 3g, but the ability to turn is much more related to the moment of intertia about the lateral axis ... the plane pitches around the wing's center of lift aligned wingtip to winftip. If the moment of intertia is relatively smaller, the plane pitches quicker thn another plane with a higher moment of inertia about the lateral axis. Of course, it is also related to the choice of airfoils for both the wing and horizontal tail, but I was assuming competent designers. By the above I mean a plane like a Polikarpov I-16, with the engine's center of mass very close to the center of lift, can pitch more quickly than a plane like the P-40, with the engine's center of mass farther from the center of lift.

Of course, that assumes the designer intended to take advantage of the low polar moment of inertia in pitch and provided elevators relatively larger than the other designer did. If the elevators of the other plane are relatively larger and if the tail airfoil is chosen correctly, even a plane with a higher moment of inertia can out-pitch one with a lower number. All aircraft designes are compromises and some designers emphasize one particular characteristic above all others.

A great example is the Mitsubish A6M Zero. At its best corner speed, there was no other WWII fighter capable of pitching with it. I am speaking of modern monoplanes, and specifically not including obsolete biplanes.
 
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The platform for the vehicle from the picture is from Pz-III.
 
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I think the variant pictured uses the Geschuetzwagen III/IV chassis. The same chassis used by the Hummel SP 15cm howitzer (a wartime interim solution) and the Nashorn SP 8.8cm/71 AT gun (another wartime interim solution).

The Heuschrecke variant ordered into mass production during December 1941 was made by Krupp and built on a Panzer IV chassis. I suspect the ausf B version would have used the Geschuetzwagen III/IV chassis which was designed for this type use. But we will never know for sure as wartime production requirements derailed the entire Heuschrecke program. Instead Germany squeezed the 10.5cm light howitzer onto a dirt cheap Panzer II chassis as a a wartime interim solution.

Speaking of wartime solutions.....
Would the DB605A engine enter mass production during 1942, before technical glitches were fixed? During peacetime I think RLM would refuse to purchase the DB605A engine until it could reliably produce the advertised 1,475 hp.
 

Mr Juha
There are memoiries from many German pilots. I am surpised you dont know them. Knocke? Ah yes, he is unreliable. Willie Rescke ? Of course unreliable and leir . Norbet Hanning? Herman Buchner? Hans Ekkehard Bob? Alfred Grislawski ?( dont tell me he was a jg 52 pilot!) ,quotes from dozens other, Rall,Krupinski,Bar,Buhligen,Schroer and dozens others( its pointles to report them all)?Just read Jg 26 war diary.it is full of them Unreliable too? ( Overclaimers without a doubt) Why you"forgot" them? BecauseThey do not fit your claims?
What is reliable? The stories of the winners about "tail fork devils" and "whispering deaths"?
Lipferts (JG52) book says that he could outmanouver the P51 (without Mw50) all times he encountered it. Its report according to you is "of no use"?
Also according to you Finish air force knew the 109 better than the germans? Its tests were correct and the german unreliable? Was reliable the soviet tests that show their aircrafts massively superior but at the same time refuse to publish their airforce losses losses?

Also about the P47 outurning the 109. for the lates P47D s i calculated { wiki data) 284 kgr/m2 wing loading and 3,131 kgr/h power loading
An unboosted 109G6 had 196kgr/m2 wing loading and 2,13 kgr/hp power loading. Do these numbers justify the claim of P47 superior in turning given an equal energy status starting the fight? Wide blade propellers was helpful but enough? Later 109s had wide blade propellers too and more power. Fw 190 also had much better numbers than p47s
Mr Greg P
I respect,admire and i am jealous of your work with warbirds. However .You claim that according to your experience Spits V and IX had twice the climb rate of 190. Eric Brown in "Wing of the Lw" page 85 writes"In climbing ,little diference was found between the Fw190 and Spit IX up to 23000ft" Let me tell you i believe him.
You have very high confidence that the german damaged and rebuilt german aircrafts you have in America , and operated within modern regulations by American pilots are perfectly tuned and indicative of combat performance of actual Lw aircraft. Maybe,just maybe, Lw knew something about THEIR AIRCRAFTS better than your -without a doubt- excellent team.
 

The Geshutzwagen III/IV used 8 road wheels per side, unlike the Heuschrecke (6 per side); I'll try to find out the definitive answer about the exact chassis type for the later

added: the Rheinmetal version of the H. used full length (8 road wheels per side) chassis, while the Krupp version used shortened Pz-IV chassis (6 road wheels per side). I was mistaken to say it was based on the Pz-III
 
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Frankly Jim
what are you whining?
I haven't read Reschke's, Bob's or Hanning's books and I'm middle of Buchner's memoirs and Bergström's Grislawski Graf book, so still in Eastern Front period in both, so not much help to 109 190 vs Spit and P-47 problem. Same goes to Lipfert's memoirs, which IMHO is amongst the 4 best WWII fighter polot memoirs I have read. P-47s cut Rall's career in ETO very short, I'm not aware Bär's, Krupinski's or Buhligen's memoirs, sorry. Have read something on Schroer but cannot recall his opinions on Spit and P-47. Kaiser said that Spit V wasn't very dangerous to 109 pilots in NA but Spit IX was. I have 3 of Caldwell's JG 26 books.

Juha
 
This is a very early version of 1942 obviously using a heavily modified tank chassis with different roadwheels and changes to the suspension. This is not the vehicle commonly referred to as Heuschrecke. That's a Heuschrecke: File:Aberdeen Tank-Museum-Heuschrecke-10.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
 
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