[horseback]

The Il-2 Mustang is not all that comparable to the real thing in the context of the sim. I have to agree that it is very accurate on a one to one scale to the real Mustang, given the constraints of the game engine, but compared to the other aircraft depicted in the simulation, it is way too touchy to trim and control. If we were talking pictures, the Mustang is photo-real while the other (especially Axis) aircraft are done in a graphic novel style. Part of this may be due to what I perceive as the way the game was optimized for Force feedback sticks, but the Mustang's notoriously light stick forces should result in much less demand for re-trimming at the slightest change in airspeed or AOA, not more.

Compare it to the P-40, which is also in the game. The P-40 in real life is always referred to as a handful; the pilot has to be alert and ahead of the aircraft at all times and the rudder trim wheel is constantly in play. America's Hundred thousand devotes several paragraphs to the section about trimming the P-40, and makes it clear that trimming every other aircraft in the US inventory was quite easy (and predictable) by comparison.

Let's remember that the P-40 was basically a P-36 with an inline Allison crammed onto its nose. It was a compromise design. The Mustang, designed almost five years after the basic design for the P-36/40 series was completed, was a much more refined and tractable aircraft. It should have been, given that its design was targeted at out-performing the P-40 with the same basic engine. 'Bumping it up' to the (also) inline Merlin was a much less traumatic surgery than replacing a radial engine with a heavier inline powerplant; the Merlin powered Ponies needed more minding in some respects, but the consensus was that it was still much more easily trimmed than any model of the Hawk 81/87 series, and generally more ...predictable, if not quite as 'slam-bang' at low speed aerobatics.

The P-40 in the game is much easier to trim and fly accurately than the Mustang, which is simply turning the historical record on its head; most pilots who flew the Mustang in combat also flew either the P-39 or the P-40 in training or earlier combat tours, and all of them report that the Mustang was better in every way that mattered--it was easier to fly, not just faster, better at higher alts and longer ranged.

This is particularly egregious when we remember that the Soviets got a few thousand Lend-Lease Warhawks and thoroughly tested & documented examples of every sub-type at TsAGI, which Oleg and his team used as their primary source of flight data for most of the aircraft initially depicted in the sim. One can only assume that the P-39 and P-40 are accurately depicted compared to the other aircraft of that era modeled in the sim, that their faults and strengths are in proper proportion to those of the Bf 109F/G, the FW 190A and the Japanese fighters. The Mustang and most of the late-war US fighters are not. You can claim that they are more accurate in comparison to the real aircraft using recent data from actual flying examples, but it is a bit silly to claim that they are accurate in comparison to aircraft that have not been flown and measured in 70 years.

You can de-bunk and question the memories of an old man, but he was there, doing things that 99 out of a hundred of us could never do on the best days of our lives. Maybe, just maybe, there is a bit of truth in what he was saying.

cheers

horseback