I-153: cheap or not?

[kozzm0]

Originally Posted by InfiniteStates

Seraph stated "Actually.. both turn radius and rate of turn have nothing to do with lift, but a lot with speed." which is wrong. A plane's lift and turn rate are one in the same thing applied to different spatial axis. "Lift" is simply opposing gravity. If you take that force and apply it perpendicular to gravity it becomes turn (in conjunction with another forward velocity component).

Yes, I know a slow moving thing can turn tighter than a fast moving thing. That is obvious if you try and walk around a corner and then run around it. The forward component of the velocity is much greater, therefore a much greater centri-petal acceleration is required to match the turn of a slower object. And I'm sure we all know that you need a calender to time how long it takes to do a 180 in a jet.

But if you're trying to tell me that the I-153 can turn tightly because it's engine doesn't pull it forwards fast, and not because it has nearly double the upward (relative to the plane) force of a mono-plane, you're wrong.

If that were the case, the tight turning circle could be countered by simply dropping your throttle to match, and it would be a non-issue.

Right, speed matters but in the sense of lift as a function of speed, because how fast you're going affects the amount of lift. Biplanes can generate that upward force at much slower speeds. Other planes can fly that slow without stalling, but they won't turn as many degrees per second flying at minimum-radius speed. The biplane's full-g maneuver speed is most plane's flat-scissor speed.

IF you try to fight a biplane close up, the intelligent thing to do is rather than try to get an inside angle, to use lag pursuit, maneuvering outside its turns and rolling to stay out of its guns plane, until it either loses sight of you or overestimates your 3D turn rate and overshoots by turning too fast. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to do against a competent pilot, and often fails because it involves concentrating on evasion before attack.

I think the "they shall not pass" mission, sums up the polikarpov's usefulness as a defensive plane. Though it's I-16 in the mission, I-153 would have had similar performance in that situation, chasing bf-109's away, waiting for them to come back (and down from 3000m) and chasing them away again. Point defense. It did a great job for what it was faced with. But in the game, dogfight mode isn't really supposed to be about that. It would be more appropriate as a local air-superiority element in Strike mode.

They could make things more interesting by adding other biplanes, then people could have biplane battles. The Germans and British had plenty of biplanes too.

You know what would be a great new mode for IL-2: the one most air combat was centered around, escort/interception. One side has a bunch of bombers to protect, and the other side has to shoot down the bombers. For the p51's, fw190's and jets.