First time Russia sent troops to Finland they found that the whole Finnish military was over-modeled! But quantity has a quality all its own... :(

Really, in the old Avalon Hill Panzer Leader series design notes they rated the Finns so highly that the regulars were treated as elite officers.

This happens when you shoot people without realising that they're your best you'll ever have.

That's him, the one I forgot ... MaxGunz ;)

So that we're now all back +- a few extras.. are we agreed that the aeronautical engineers do not know everything about aerodynamics, as well as the pilots do not know much about aeronautical formulae ??

;)

AE's can tell you to what decimal point they know and prove it.

People expect too much from computers and algorithms they can run.
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* To match charts everywhere and still give every effect possible is not possible on a PC is not a failure of aero-engineering.
* To know all the details of historic planes without the actual planes is also not possible given that serially produced planes did vary often as much as 5% in a production run.
* Gauges of the times have different kinds of error including position error so we have seen a picture of 2 fighters wing to wing where IAS on one was 20 kph more than the other. How can anyone play comparison chart monkey when that is true? How can their knickers get so twisted over 'FACTS!' that are not?
* Flight sim makers bring however much they can make work on the PC of what they know. It is wrong to try and judge what they know by how the sim works.

You want to play "all opinions are equal", it is because you can't tell any better. You might as well invoke the influence of the planets and stars or even resort to "stress risers".

I am reminded of a story a friend told me of a conversation he heard at an Aircrew Association gathering with vets from the Luftwaffe and the RAF/RCAF. One Hurricane pilot was talking with a Do-17 pilot of the same vintage. He was saying how fast the Do-17 was and relaid his constant cursing that his Hurricane was not fast enough.

His counterpart chuckled and said he always thought the Do was too slow and they were too easy to catch. When you are trying to catch (or run away from something) you are never fast enough or I would imagine, able to turn tight enough. Perspective is everything.

This was actually done with the ailerons when the P-36 was upgraded to the Allison engined P-40. The leverage was increased, which meant less maximum aileron deflection at low speed (stick travel limit), but more aileron deflection at higher speeds (force limit). The P-40 had a lower roll rate at low speed than the P-36, but a considerably higher maximum roll rate and a much higher roll rate at high speed.

Indeed, I do believe that until the FW 190 came along the P 40 was the roll rate king of fighters.

Thanks for this, something I didn't know before. It helps explain why the P36 did as well as they did against the Ki43 when it didn't have the speed advantage that the P40 had.

Thanks again

They say when holding a weapon, one should point it skywards as you might shoot yourself in the foot. :cool:

Do you know of any FW-190A pilot who actually said such a thing?

The only concrete thing in that direction I ever found, for all of WWII, is a ridiculous quote from a German La-5 Rechlin test center evaluation: It said that the La-5FN's sustained turn rate is slower than a Me-109G, but faster than a FW-190A's...

It positively reeks of ignorance and sillyness, and the Rechlin test center itself has said several times textually the opposite ("The FW-190A out-rolls and out-turns our Me-109F at any speed"), but it's there...

Another quote, in the same direction, is a comparison test between the Me-109G14AS and FW-190A-9s at 26-28 000 ft., which puts the Me-109G14AS as far faster turning at said altitude (where the FW-190A can barely fly), which is very plausible given the absurdly high and impractical altitude of the test, given the time period and the available roles for the Luftwaffe at the time (late '44)...

That's it for my fifteen years of research... British RAE tests unequivocally state the FW-190A turns far better than the Me-109G, which Me-109G is out-turned by a P-51B with full drop tanks, while the same P-51 cannot out-turn the FW-190A even when clean... It seems the Me-109G is badly short-changed here (it has only a slight disadvantage to, occasionally, a perfect sustained turn parity to the P-51B in actual battles), and this, to my mind, just shows how unreliable these non-combat side-by-side tests can be...

Given what else I've been finding for fifteen years now, and posting for five, I'd say you'd be up the creek finding such a ridiculous agreeing statement (to what you said) from an actual FW-190A combat veteran.

Occasionally some FW-190A pilot did believe this crap, judging from their continual use of diving and ailerons in combat, but judging from the outcomes of those tactics, these pilots typically didn't live long enough to voice their opinion about it...

Gaston