Turn Rates of WWII Fighters

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CORSNING

Tech Sergeant
1,630
987
Dec 24, 2008
Clyde, Ohio
I have been collecting WW2 fighter information for several years now. Back in 2011, I think, I organized
a system and continued collecting information on fighter performance. A year ago I finally acquired
excel. GregP contacted me a couple of days ago about posting what I have put together for turn times
of WW2 fighters. At that time it was all hand written. I have spent the last few days transferring that
information onto excel. The majority of listings at 1,000 m. are from the Soviet turn time tests. All
the figures posted at 4,000 m. comes from Erik Pilawskii's Fighter Aircraft Performance book.
References:
juhansotahistoriasivut.weebly.com/results-of-the-soviet-turn-times-tests.html
Juha posted most of the above listings on this site.
Lavochkin Fighters of the Second World War by Jason Nicholas Moore
Yakovlev Fighters of World War Two by Yefim Gordon, Sergey and Dmitry Komissarov
Soviet Air Power in World War 2 by Yefim Gordon
Soviet Combat Aircraft of the Second World War Vol.1 by Yefim Gordon
Finnish tests figures.
A.P. (I can't remember who or what this source was anymore).
Fighter Aircraft Performance of WW2, A Comparative Study by Erik Pilawskii

I used only official observed data to the best of my knowledge except for one listing. That would be
Henning Ruch calculation for the P-40N-1. From all the considerable information I have read on the
P-40N I believe his figure of 17 seconds is dead on.
 

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Hi Corsning,

Found it! Thanks a bunch for posting this.

I am trying to work up a fighter rating system based on 1) Top Speed, 2) Climb rate, 3) Service ceiling, 4) 360° Turn time (have not decided how to score this yet), 5) Armament (Soviet Q rating * rate of fire * # guns; but I decrease the rate of fire by a factor (say 25%) if it is synchronized and increase the Q-factor by 1.5 if the gun is fuselage-mounted or wing root mounted (close to centerline).

The hard part is getting turn times at the same altitudes. I am assuming the turn times quoted are for level turns and not for descending turns.

Your file helps a lot to at least get started on it.
 
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