Do you mean real life BoB pilots trained on Tiger Moths and then Harvards? I don't think so. :eek: There were 2 levers you used to control your engine and that was:

1. throttle (same as in 109, you move it forward and you go faster you know)
2. propeller pitch (same as in 109, but slightly easier to reach before the Daumenschalter got introduced)

everything else was the same. Of course later, when the LW came with the Kommandogeraet equipped fighters, things were much easier just as you say. But in the BoB era all you had was RPM you had to tinker with constantly even during the dogfight (what we have in game as Drehzahl lever in the middle of the instrument board was certainly a bit awkward to control, I always admired the LW pilots who could do that and fight - must have been great skill) and that's the reason they put it on Daumenschalter on later models, you would still had to tinker with it more than the RAF pilot who had the set and forget RPM CSP lever. He basically also only had to work with the throttle lever doring the combat. As for E-4 automatic PP, it wasn't exactly great right from the beginning and especially in the high alt, it was common procedure to switch to manual and work with the lever again in order to get some extra speed up there. If the E-4 pilot uses the throttle lever in the combat and auto PP, the RAF pilot would use the RPM lever once to set combat RPM and then just throttle lever. I don't see much of a difference. Even using both levers was natural and they were close together.

There was nothing wrong or more difficult on RAF setup imho, I believe that in order to get the max performance from you engine, pilots of both sides would need to show same amount of skill.

Neg-G effects are irrelevant for pilot's workload. It was certainly a big limitation but it was also quite natural to them all.

+1

This will be very interesting when it comes to the eastern theatre as the la5 apparently had a load of levers to deal with compared to the 109 and 190.

I am now wondering if my favourite aircraft from 1946 the 190 will be one of the most boring aircraft to fly :-| and be given the "n00b plane" name which was given to the la7 in 1946 :lol:

Hey swift what makes you say that?

I don't know a lot about the stuka in real life to be able to compare it to the COD one, it is enjoyable to fly though.

German plane armament is a huge advantage.

I actually feel the .303s are undermodelled in current state, according to many combat reports. 8 .303 is actually pretty lethal at close range with an astonishing amount of rounds tearing through the plane. What's strange is you can get pilot kills all the time with the MG17, but with 8 guns putting down an enormous amount of lead you can barely get pilot kills??

All the .303 are good for in this current state is putting a large amount of rounds over a plane, with 1 or 2 rounds likely to strike the radiators and cooling system- thing is though, the planes can go forever with burst rads/streaming glycol. This claimed a huge amount of aircraft in real life.

Sorry I tend to disagree here. I have quite a few PKs when I aim well and I find the .303 pretty effective even in default (historical) setup. Often it's matter of luck - sometimes you hit him well and he keeps going alright, sometimes a few bullets find home from your burst and there he bails out immediately. Pretty cool imho although I've been in situations where I got shot down by a 109 that I shot down twice already. Such is the life of a RAF jockey lol. You just need to shoot well, that's it.

Oh yes, the cooling system damage is non-existent and you can pretty much ignore the leak. Funny thing is that sometimes your a/c actually cools better with a radiator leak. How is that? :o

Robo last time I checked the cooling damage model is there it just takes too long for the temperatures to rise.

Was it Adolf Galland who likened the 109 to lining up a well fitted shotgun to the shoulder while with the British fighters it felt like trying to aim the weapon at arms length? Apparently when the Merlin was first mooted some thought was given to making it an inverted vee-12, and making allowances for an engine-mounted cannon, same as the DB and Jumo series - just imagine the Hurricane and Spitfire roaring in to the attack with a couple of .303s blazing away on the nose and a working Hispano firing through the propeller hub...and maybe a couple of Hispanos in the wings?

Just for interest this is Emmanual Gustin's page on WW2 aircraft gun ballistics.

Ahh, the hispanukes. I've often wondered, and would have liked to have had the opportunity to play around with guns in this and other games - to try various weapons configs that were a-historical.

I'd love to play for example with a 109 armed with 8 mg17's - just for the fun of it, or a spitfire armed with three hispanos.

There are no sims I am aware of that allow this kind of manipulation of weapons systems though - at least not without major hacking abilities, which I sorely lack.

This has been a fabulous discussion though. Thanks guys. S!

it would hve been called a Dewoitine ... with a working efficient engine ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__-Hn_-VtGg

I still have no idea how to pronounce that. Duh-woy-teen? Duh-Wah-teen? Di-wah-teen? Nope. No idea. :(