[Gaston]

Originally Posted by lonewulf

My information about the fight between No 403 Canadian Squadron and I and II/JG 26 on 2 June 1942 comes from Mick Spick's 1996 book entitled, Luftwaffe Fighter Aces

If that account is correct, Al Deere's squadron (he was a NZer of course, not a Canadian) was first attacked from the rear at high speed by a single staffel and, as the Canadians turned to engage, they were then attacked from above and through cloud by two more staffeln, and then again from above by the whole gruppe. In essence Al Deere was compelled to engage the first attack which was about to overtake his formation, and then when he turned, he was flattened by the 190's waiting above. Tactics, and the speed advantage of the 190, won the day for the Germans.

I used to be a bit like you in that I was always trying to reconcile the IL-2 190 with the historical record.

Simply consider that the gross mistmatch of all flight sims with the historical record is [B]not[/] the result of ignoring flight physics theory...

The mismatch comes from precisely the fact that they all followed current flight physics to the letter (not a hard thing to do), and it simply illustrates perfectly how wrong our basic flight physics assumptions are for these types of aircrafts (which I believe have specific characteristics compared to jet fighters)...


Your account is very fragmentary for a fight that involved 8 British losses (which is quite a big fight, even in those days).

There is no difference in the tactics in your quote with what he describes being the tactics of the Me-109s (the whole point of my quote).

The whole point he makes is that he observed something different from the FW-190s that day, specifying that the difference was related to the fact that Me-109s usually feared the Spitfire's turning circle, and this is not apparent from the brief description you have: Ie, it is not the same aircrafts that hit them twice, but another group of FW-190s.

There is really not much of an element of "staying" in the fight in the more detailed account you have... In addition, the FW-190 didn't outclimb the Spitfire V by much, especially with its engine de-rated by the Luftwaffe at the time...

As an interesting side note, the same Al Deere reacted in this way when he was told the Spitfire had a superior turning radius to the FW-190A (from a captured example):

"Well turning doesn't win battles."

This is a rather cryptic statement which is commonly interpreted as meaning most "real world" fights involved diving and zooming, not turning...

However, contrary to the received wisdom, the reality of much WWII combat, if you read a large number of accounts, is that the wing-mounted guns have a convergence point, and thus are not even designed for dive and zoom attacks: They are designed for firing for some time at a target that is at a fixed distance: Wing guns are really optimized for turn fighting, because the location and convergence of the guns means you will have trouble placing enough rounds on a slower target if you are closing fast on it...

The only routine exception to this was the Pacific Theater where the Japanese fighters were fragile enough to make diving at them pay off, even with converging wing guns. With most other fighters, you had to pepper them a while to get them to go down (a fact poorly represented in sims I think), so turnfighting was the predominant rule, not the exception... Turnfighting was far more predominant in Western Europe, and grew more prominent still as the end of the war approached: This was because the opponents were similar in performance: For P-47s and P-51s the predominace of turn-fighting is on the order of 90%+ of all combats, this increasing towards the end...

Even the Eastern Front was mostly turn fighting, but more flexible in tactics, with many types having centralized armaments (Yaks, La-5s, P-39s, Me-109s), and the climbing performance being more unequal in favour of the Germans until mid-44.

The P-38 also had a centralized armament, and thus tried to use dive and zoom tactics as well, but the dominance of horizontal turnfighting in Western Europe, from late 1943 onwards, is generally a little appreciated fact of late WWII warfare...

The late war Spitfire, by the time the Mk IX came around, was by contrast almost exclusively used in dive and zoom attacks (in combat accounts): Its wing armament was not well-suited for that, but the velocity and destructiveness of the Hispano 20 mm seemed to obtain a lot instant explosions even on FW-190As, so it seemed to have compensated for the use of dive and zoom tactics.

Such tactics were helped on the Spitfire Mk IX by its world-beating climb rate (the +25 lb/80" Mk IX was the best piston-engined climber of WWII below 20 000 ft.), and its poor sustained low-speed turning performance (which still allowed a better unsustained speed radius at high speed after a dive)...

Consider that when Eric Brown reported he engaged a FW-190A by turning, while the FW dived and zoomed, and claimed this practice remained the war-wide character of both aircrafts for years, it is hardly an impressive account that either pilots were flying their machines at their best: They failed to even get a bead on each other...

A lot of early FW-190A combat accounts show the use of dive and zoom by the FW-190 (precisely in the period of supposed greatest FW-190 superiority): By late 1943 such accounts mostly disppear, because the more intuitively correct way to use the FW-190A (dive and zoom) turned out to be poorer despite the more favourable 1942 circumstances...

Osprey "Duel" #39 "La-5/7 vs FW-190", Eastern Front 1942-45:

P.69 "Enemy FW-190A pilots never fight on the vertical plane.---The Messerschmitt posessed a greater speed and better maneuverability in a vertical fight"

P.65 Vladimir Orekov: "An experienced Fw-190A pilot practically never fights in the vertical plane"


What is intuitively correct and self-evident rarely turns out that way in real life: That is why many WWII pilots will swear by things that are entirely false.

Yes the Spitfire could carve A- a tighter radius at high speeds than a FW-190A: But B- it never gained gradually on it in a slow turning fight: Not one instance of this I have unearthed so far...

There is physical reason why it happens in this counter-intuitive way, and I think it does relate to prop load leverages on the CL and whatnot: Things that have yet to be examined (I actually hope to do so one day). But the basic issue is that counter-intuitive complicated things do happen, and the easy-to-grasp intuitive stuff often turns out to have been sadly mistaken, no matter how widely believed it is or for how long.

Gaston