[Pips]

Been following this thread with much fascination. Aircraft performance discussion's are always a passionate, hard argued topic.

Several good points have been made on both sides, although not always accepted by those of a different view. Many links have been offered touting flight information, which again are not always accepted by those with a different view.

We all have our own preferences and beliefs, and changing anyone's view is a very hard thing to do. Lots of facts and figures can often get in the way of reaching an agreement. Especially as there doesn't seem to be an agreement of just 'one' set of figures for performance.

Which in a roundabout way brings me to my question.

In all the various threads with links/comments to performance graphs and figures, no mention has been made of the those contained in the superb book "America's Hundred Thousand: US Production Fighters of WWII" by Francis H. Dean.
This book contains it all; info on all 11 US fighter aircraft (and all sub-models), graphs, figures, turn rates, roll rates, climb rates, development background, performance, compressability effects, aircraft comparisons, take-off runs, loads (fuel and ammo), weights, engine settings for all forms of flight and so on. If that was used as the basis for modelling US aircraft flight performance it sure would go a long way to avoiding this form of dispute.


One of the little gems covered in the book is the issue of water-alcohol injection (WEP) for the F6F-3. It's been mentioned in the v4.11 ReadMe that TD has dropped WEP for the -3 model (but retained for the -5) in the interests of historical accuracy.

That however is not quite correct.

Whilst the F6F-3 originally was produced without WEP installed, following it's first actions by VF-33 in August '43 BuAer requested Grumman to fit WEP to all new -3 models, and to organise retrofitting of those already produced.
It didn't happen overnight, but by January '44 60% of all in-service F6F-3's had been fitted with the water-injected P&W R-2800-10W engine. That's covered in the book on Pages 26, 560 and 584.

So on that account TD should perhaps revert to the v4.10 setting for the F6F-3 model.