The 'Great Debate' - Spitfire vs BF109

[5./JG27.Farber]

Originally Posted by arthursmedley

As we have seen, graphs and the interpretation of any data can be challenged because of the number of variables involved and whether the people producing these graphs were even aware of these variables.

Pilot, sorry, eyewitness accounts and memoirs are very often contemporaeneous to the events themselves and most were written if not during the war years then in their fairly immediate aftermath with logbooks and combat reports to back it up. Both RAF and LW accounts share a remarkable commonality in their fear of the bounce, the acceptance that most pilots shot down never saw their opponents and the acceptance that following an opponent round and round and round in a dogfight would invite a hail of lead from an unseen opportunist.

Arguments on every flight sim forum I've ever visited about aeroplane performance always degenerate into some "expert" denying the veracity of pilot accounts that differ from their own dearly held views because they know their graphs hold the real truth.

+1

However the graph like the memories applied sensibly in the correct ratio should be good enough. You can never please everyone.

We cant have it 100% accurate. Afterall we are all aces in the virtual world...