J.E. Johnson mentiones in his book ("Wing Commander") the occurrence of a Spit 9 having a damaged wing after a midair collition with another Spit.
Backtranslating to English he says "...and I saw, that the largest part of the starboard aileron as well as the wingtip was torn off."
The pilot managed to keep flying for some time, but lot long enough to fly from the french coast (wher the collision happened) all th way to english soil. The pilot was struggling with all his force to hold the controls. The plane was rolling more and more until it was not possible to hold it level flight. As his canopy was blocked and closed, the pilot, Shouldice, perished in the sea.
So it can be debated wheter the theoretical possibility of keeping a plane somehow aloft is realistic when done with a joystik, when in the real world control forces prohibit such.
The impact of control forces were also a real world debate: As Hanna Reitsch complained (to the Führer!) that the control forces of a Me 321 are unacepptably high (It had just one pilot seat) Willy Messereschmitt retorted (also to the Führer) "Well, she's not really a big warrior, is she?"
(She wasn't really tall...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rch_Hitler.jpg)
Cheers!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Luno13
My 2 cents:
If you pause at 0:47 you can see full aileron deflection, and at 0:39, the slip indicates full rudder.
It's important to remember that the A5M is extremely light with moderately large control surfaces. It's not 1 and 1/2 wings that it's flying on, but closer to 1 3/4 or even 1 4/5 (look at the break-point and realize that the eliptical shape of the wings means that a length of the tip has much less area than an equal length at another part of the wing.)
The upturned bit of metal at the leading edge probably contributed a great deal to its stability.
That's not to say that flying with this much damage isn't possible....It just takes a variety of specific circumstances to come together perfectly. Think of all the pilots who lost that much wing area and didn't make it back. Those are the ones that never appear in films. 
Compare this to the Hurricane screenshot:
1) clean break of the wing. No protruding bits to influence roll.
2) Ailerons are small, and roll authority is sub-par to begin with, especially compared to the A5M
3) Considerably greater area of the wing is lost, including the entire right aileron (The A5M still had 1/2 of its left aileron).
4) Hurricane has no rudder or even fin left.
Conclusion: Hurricane should not be flying straight and level. |