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Thanks… I’m no expert, not a fighter pilot, not even a pilot, but there were plenty of 'em hanging around my house back in the day… I’ve been able to play a vicous game of Crud with the best of 'em ever since I was 9, lol…
I forgot to mention the CoG issues with the B/C’s fuselage fuel-tank though… That changed the flight-dynamics of the Mustang a LOT by moving the aircraft’s CoG aft… If a Mustang pilot were caught in a fight while that thing was anything over about 25 gallons, the aircraft was, according to two Mustang pilots I know a complete “dog” and subject to a snap-roll at low speed, high AoA manuvers, a tendency to “porpoise” at high speeds, and the fabric-covered elevators were removed and metal-covered ones installed… Also, the fillet kit for the vertical stab was added, which the lack of caused several B/C crashes during ACM…
According to the pilot’s handbook (The D-Model is the one I have, but the tank issues apply to the B/C as well), most combat manuvers are restricted, and both intentional slow-rolls and tight turns (at airspeeds of 150 knots or higher and angle of bank greater than 45 degrees) are forbidden, until the fuselage tank is below 25 gallons…
Never really think about things such as weight of fuel (or where the tank is) on an A/C performance but this all makes perfect sense.
What most of these arguments usually never discuss is that probably over 90% of the time when a fighter a/c shot down another fighter a/c, he had the “drop” on him…that is to say, the guy that got shot down didn’t know he was being shot at until his plane started taking hits…
These hypotheticals are only relevant if both planes start the fight with no advantage over the other (altitude, surprise, speed, etc…) and that almost never happened…
I read where the 190 had incredible roll characteristics, which is great for jinking and aggressively avoiding hits. However, when it came to that, the 190 is already at a disadvantage and very defensive. There is a great “dogfights” episode where a 51 went up against two FW’s in the Alps, Up and down they went, until the 51 finally got the drop at a very low altitude. It looked like they were pretty evenly matched for quite some time. Albeit the 51 had his hands full fighting off two.
I remember where Yeager said they would take off and burn that aft center tank first, hoping they didn’t have to engage too early on. Think P-39…
Though not in a FW, Erich Hartmann had some good tactics, such as waiting until just before he sensed the enemy was ready to fire, then pushing hard below the nose sight line of the pursuer, pulling back and coming right back in on the tail. He would also fly in constant slip, to make any enemy over lead. Things like that could win the day. Also, the matra of the time was to never ever fly straight and level for more than 20 seconds. A slight relaxation on this and, as Herr Manstein mentioned, you are riding in your chute.
Great summation Hammer. Very interesting. Kudos to your dad for what he did…
Incredible rundown, thanks Hans.
Somewhere I read an account of a P-51 dogfighting over Paris with an FW-190 in 1944…
Result : the P-51 expended all it’s ammo and the FW-190 got away- albeit smoking badly.
Moral of the story was that the FW-190 was a dangerous adversary when flown by a skilled pilot- even in late 1944.
I believe that account was published in either an Air Classics or Airpower magazine sometime in the early 1980s…
Really, read the accounts. Reliability is the first factor. Every squadron history I have read relates that no mission really ever goes more than about 80% as planned. Three or four a/c have to turn back.
Then they can’t find the bombers, and when they do, they are scattered all over the place.
By then the fuel and temperature parameters are catching up on the day.
Visibility, those two dots down there suddenly zip by and that’ s all you get because the gunsight is fogged up.
P-51 is probably more manuverable [t$t] →
→ Somewhat depending on the model and loadout I would say the P-51 is more maneuverable. If you do some number crunching youll see that a p-51 has a higher sustained turnrate. Also the FW190 has a higher wingloading so instant turnrate is probably worse than the p-51. Only maneuver advantage is perhaps the rollrate, have not found any rollrates but all I have read indicates a higher rollrate for the FW190.
And I’m talking about all altitudes.
Also related to maneuverability, Rate of climb depends on the model, fw190A-8 with almost 2000hp climb pretty well. A-8 with 1670hp does not. P-51 is probably faster at all altitudes but I think a FW190A-8 with 2000hp can give a stang a run for its money down low.
I’v written a program that calculates performance of differnt aircrafts, pretty neat if I may say so myself. It runs under Windows and any interested can send me a PM.
You could also program your calculator to do the same task.
There’s no magic, just weight, power and drag.,
is that the episode where the P-51 pilot would chase one vertical and the second would come straight down and they had the P-51 pilot fooled for a bit thinking it was one FW-190?
i’ve always thought of the FW-190 as the “P-47” of the Luftwaffe: not extremly agile, but it packs a big punch and its tough as nails. IMHO the FW-190 is also probably the best looking WWII fighter as well…the P-51 is a close second though.
In the UK we also get it as part of our sky package. We also get some of these programmes on free view channel yesterday. Though to be honest i am getting a bit bored of them. I don’t think i have seen one in which US forces were not covered, well, maybe the odd Israeli one.
i used to love the history channel…when they actually talked about real things. now al thats on there is stupid alien crap. monster quest is passable, but not much else is good on there anymore…even Modern Marvels isnt on there anymore. i’ve been converted by the military channel…it actually has interesting and useful (for modeling research) shows.