My little 109 v spit experiment
 

Thanks to Lolsav, I decided to have a wee run in the 109, and makes some quick anecdotal comparisons to my usual crate.
OK first up; cards on the table:
I've typically only flown spits, but today was convinced to have a go in the 109, in an online map.

This is not a plea for balance. I'm not interested in "balance". If I wanted "balance" I'd play a game where everyone flew the same aircraft ;)

I hope these points will also help other red-only guys see how some of their tactics might be playing into the 109's specific nature.

Some initial thoughts from the previously unfamiliar;
The 109 has some interesting differences;
1. the nose weapons configuration is great. they shoot where you point it! (unlike the wing-mounted only fighters) my confidence in the trajectory of the fire is much greater with the 109. This is historical, and reflects one of the real advantages the 109 had - its armament.
2. The visibility is excellent. Much better that you would imagine based on the external look of the 109. That extra little bit of over-the-shoulder window meant I could see aircraft behind/below (7, 5 o'clock) that you just don't see in the spits. This helps explain why I'm often spotted, when I think I'm concealed. You really have to be under the 109 to be invisible - which is not a safe place to be anyway!
3.The 109 engine sounds gave me a warning when the RPM was too high, and was about to overspeed/ blow! All I had to do was reduce rpm, and she went back to normal running. How I wish we had that kind of audible "warning" in the red fighters... which just suddenly blow the second they hit the modelled threshold!, and there's no way to anticipate/ recover in time without strict engine management procedures. I think the 109 engine setup is more forgiving.
4. Recovering from a flick-stall (but not in a spin) was marvellous. I took my hands and feet off and just waited about 3 to 5 seconds for the heavy nose to drop. she righted herself and I was power diving and under lift within a second or two more. really nice. really stable. I might try and put one in a spin soon too, to see how that experience compares.
5. Turning is not awful, but there is a slight pedestrian feel to it compared to the spit - which you can "yank" around for 180 degrees in a quick burst (provided you keep the nose relatively level!). The lack of turning speed (rotational velocity) in the 109 is, however made up for the fact that she will turn with the nose up a lot better than the spits. So, whilst the spit might turn inside the 109 will be gaining height. But this shouldn't be news to anyone who has seen this borne out time and time again online.

Defo a nice crate to fly. I might brave a few missions in the busier servers now too.... ;)
Does anyone know if point 4 is "historical"? Are the reasons why a 109 v spit will blow engines different, and thus the "sudden" nature of the spitfire breakdown is accruate? Should there be any kind of audible warning from the engine in either case that something is about to pop? Should it be avoidable to a point, even once the engine tone has changed to "abnormal"?

Interesting post from a "Spitfire pilot's" perspective. I flew a short time offline in an E4 a couple of days ago, but mainly as a "systems' check" to verify my HOTAS controls operated correctly in this fine machine. I didn't do any formal testing at all, but just to get "a feel" for it.

My initial impression: this is enough to drag me kicking and screaming over to the Dark Side! LOL. Seriously, it had a "good feel" to it (and I say this after flying the various Spit and Hurricane marks exclusively online). As you say, visibility was excellent which surprised me. No birdcage effect at all and no annoying horizontal canopy bar at eye level as in the Hurricane. Speed and climb was wonderful, workload virtually non-existent once your controls were set. Didn't have to constantly keep one eye on the temp gauges and risk losing SA. The eye-opener: bunting into a steep dive at 6000 meters where my view temporarily went red from neg -g but the engine kept purring, then quickly reaching 710 kmh IAS in the dive......AND PULLING OUT!!!! That's 447 mph IAS and I still had all ailerons, elevator, and rudder still attached! The only thing missing? The smoking hole in the ground if I had tried that in a Spitfire.

I didn't try any stalls or spins. I did find the prop pitch a little slow (in manual) to change from fine to coarse and back again compared to the Spit (I have prop pitch in the Spits assigned to an axis on my HOTAS, the E4 had pitch control assigned to a joystick hat). The auto pitch was a joy for just casual aerobatics, not sure if I would use it in a close-run dogfight.

My overall impression: the devs, from my perspective, have done a fine job on this model. Even the cockpit animations work! :)

Interesting read from a 'red only' perspective.

Personally I can not understand why anyone would not fly all the aircraft in the game, it's interesting and you pay for them. The only reason I fly mainly red at the moment is because of the challenge with the gaps so far apart in current patch. That gets you concentrating really hard.

From a game perspective you're absolutely right, we should all be flying all the different aircraft. For some of us old farts, it's Spits and Hurries. That's it.

I totally agree!

Well, my love affair with the spitfire is what drives me to keep flying it. It's not a rational decision, it's an emotional one ;) But I'm slowly geting around to looking at the others. Someone (Divitor) convinced me to go bombing in a blenheim the other day.

This is partly why I have little interest in RoF or the upcoming BoM. I just love the spit - even when if it is just a game.. and the modelling is suspect in places.

Go over 750 kmh and you will loose ailerons, elevators and so on. ;)

Interestingly snapper I find the spit a joy to fly while the 109 is like a train (albeit a very fast one ;) ) if you keep on the rails your good but if you try any kind of quick manoeuvre your in a spin WTF :(

i don't. I'm totally all right with flying my favorite bf 110 only. that's i've bought this game. i dont interested in flying any other planes.

yes the 110 is one of the most interesting plane to fly in CoD. I do agree.

Sadly it's too easy to fly. Devs have a lot of tweaking to make it less perfect ;)

I disagree, do you use TrackIR? I do and I am addamant that rear visability is better in the Spitfire. You can also open the canopy in the Spit and look even further!

Forward visability on the other hand is ALLOT better in the 109, partially due to the tinted windshield in the Spit and hurri which is terrible.

This isn't the first time I've heard this but really it makes little sense in relation to a 109 "E". You could certainly make the case with later variants of the 109 because they incorporated an engine mounted cannon, but the E had just two little MG 17s in the cowl. That gives you about the same stopping power as a Sopwith Camel or a Fokker D7! Furthermore, all of the forward firing weapons on a fighter are harmonized to group at a given range, not just the wing guns. If you shoot at too great a range, you miss, unless of course you incorporate some elements of successful deflection shooting within your calculations. Gravitational forces apply equally to wing and fuselage mounted weapons.

I don't usually fly red but I can assure you that once my 10 seconds worth of cannon ammo have been expended (uselessly in most cases) I'd very happily swap my twin MG 17s for your eight Brownings any day of the week!

Agree 100%. All around visibility in the Spit is far better than the 109. You can lean left/right even with canopy closed and get a full view of 6 & low 5/7. Red pilots can even sit up a bit and get a look out over the nose which can't be done in a 109.

IMHO in-cockpit 109 engine sound was much better in last official Steam release patch when the engine would really scream when it went over 2500 rpm. The current sound is very bland in comparison.

Only noticed this a few days ago but the manual prop pitch control is missing in the E4. Was prop pitch auto (only) in the real E4s ? Is manual prop pitch control of the E4s in CloD unrealistic ?
Personally I prefer manual prop pitch when in an E4 as some of the auto settings are annoying. However this fact alone would make flying against an E4 more interesting if they were subject to the vagaries of auto prop pitch manipulation.

One of the aspects of forward visibility in the Spitfire that Jeffrey Quill (amongst others) complained about was the distortion to forward visibility created by the rounded sides of the windscreen - this was one reason later Mk VBs and all Cs switched to flat sidescreens and an internal bullet-resistant windscreen, first used on the prototype Mk III.

As to 4, yes, from everything I have read the gentle stall characteristics were definitely a forte of the 109 (which is the no. 1 reason I kept flying it in the old Il2 times, even after when the 190 was added, and which I would have normally preferred). I guess the plane's longitudinal stability has a lot to do with it.

As for the Spitties engine breakdowns, I would say the prime reason is that the 109 has so many automated systems that its basically fool-proof. It has great cooling capacity, and essentially you only need to adjust the throttle. In comparison the Spit has a zillion engine related switches and levers, so its quite easy for the pilot to select wrong mixture/rpm/boost/temperature combination. In addition the negative g problem of the Merlin means that you can suddenly loose oil pressure with a bad move on the stick, and that is not a good thing for any engine. There's quite simply too many things going on too keep track of all of them. Rpm should be probably less of a problem on both planes, since actually both the DB and the Merlin tolerated fairly high overreving for considerable periods (2400/3000 and 3000/3600 for 30 secs iirc)

There was a training period for those pilots that we do not have access to for this sim. Mistakes being made here is understandable, a training do's and don'ts is needed, or the butchering of fm.

Then try the stuka. This plane is so arcadish in this game it's a shame!

You can use manual in the E4, the control was moved to the throttle. You must set toggle prop pitch automation key. In fact when flying online you need to disable it and re-enable it when your going 300kmh plus or it tends to malfuction and either got to 12:00 or 08:30 hours... ;)

I'd very happily swap my eight .303 for two nose mounted MG 17s with 60 seconds of fire. ;) I fly both RAF and LW and the stopping power and accuracy of the nose mounted mgs is great and suits me well. You can shoot long range and you can keep the thumb on the trigger for much longer. The effect is suprisingly strong when you hit well - works against 109s and RAF fighters as well - fire, PKs, important parts falling off etc... Flying for the RAF, you might have more guns but unless you get your target on the convergence range, you're wasting your 14 seconds of fire. Now getting a good 109 pilot to convergence range is a bit of a problem on its own, but even against the bombers, the MG17s are very effective and you can snipe from very long distance. Works great, trajectory is nice as it should be. Just my 0.02, YMMW of course... ;)

Whoever said in this thread that the armament was an advantage on LW side was right - nose mounted mgs + cannons = hell of a punch. Good shot will be succesful with anything, but I admit the MG17 are a great weapon when used right, as a RAF pilot I fear not the Oerlikon cannons, but long range MG 17.

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. :(

lol

Dee (like dee dee bridgewatter) - Woa - teen (like your prime love).

Dee-Woa-Teen ;)

Thanks Tom, it's only taken 50yrs for me to find that out. Much appreciated. :D

Hiya Tomcat! I assume you are the same fellow from "that other combined arms sim" that I know. A hearty S! to you!

I'd love to see dewos in this or 1946.... I haven't seen any even in mod packs...