Some comments about the changes

[Zanadu]

I'm feeling better about it now. Appearantly I was just unlucky enough to get two very tough opponants in a row and got cleaned twice.

Had much better luck in several sorties since. Also have started going in at VH instead of H.

[Fenrir]

All in all i think i like the changes very much.

First the tuning down of the wingman, i think the wingman is now much more an aid in getting an advantaged position or recovering from a disavantaged position and no longer a leader killer. Granted there is still the occasional wingman with 3 heavy IMS cards or OOTS cards, but in my oppinion these are lucky draws and those are a part of the game and this should'nt be changed.

Second i think that by introducing the burst/damage rating the planes got much more difference in character between them. I am allready developping a serious fondness for the me-410.

[Mistura]

The changes are GREAT. I am getting used to the new way of flying. I don't buy the OOTS cards anymore. ACE here I come. The J2M4 is scary with that +2 damage added. I do enjoy shooting them down so much more now. I just have a few questions.

1. Why is the Spitfire XP 1832 to fly when the P-51 Mustang is at XP 944. 2. Why is the P-38L Lightning at XP 1343 to fly. I just thought that the Mustang would be rated higher than the Lightning. I was just wondering/thinking. My wife always tells me that's what you get for thinking. You just have more questions afterwards.

Now if my pilots could get some medals would be nice. The last 4 pilots that shot down 4 planes received (NOTHING) Not even a slap on the back. My Japanese pilot shot them down in a Dogfight which is MUCH harder than an Escort mission. I can only play between 3-6 missions a day so I am into Quality not Quantity in my missions. As you can see in the Kills per Mission, and Points per Mission. Happy Hunting All.

[Guest Mike]

I think the +1 damage counts for a lot of extra points for the P38 and Spitfire.

As for kills per mission - the only thing keeping you there is that my pilots have only flown 2 missions so far this week!

Last night one of my guys got 4 kills in a dogfight for the first time - instant VC

[Zanadu]

A question: Why doesn't the (-1) damage reduction for mmg's apply to the rear gunner of the '110, or the gunners of a/c like the Swordfish, Stuka, or about any of the RAF bombers, which were armed with the same .303 mgs as the Spitfire and Hurricane???

[Dan Verssen]

From a straight realism point of view it should, but the gunners are already so weak that I didn't want to penalize them any farther.

[Sixxkiller]

Mist,

The P-38 is now +1/+1 and the P-51 is 1/0. The P-38 also has the turbo charger and more armor. I understand this logic even though the P-51 was the best fighter of the war.....

-Ray

[Dan Verssen]

Maybe people on insight on the idea that the P-51D "was the best fighter of the war." I also grew up with this idea in mind.

However, when I compare stats for speed, horsepower, weapons, etc. The Mustang comes out about even with other late war fighters, and sometimes inferior for weapons.

The only area that I can see the Mustang having a real edge in is range. Which, given the role they needed to fill, was vital. But, in a straight head to head fight, I don't see their superiority based on numbers.

Any thoughts on this?

[Sixxkiller]

Sure one. They shot down more fighters than any other in the war.

-Ray

[Dan Verssen]

But...

I'm thinking they were produced in large numbers. And, by that stage of the war the German pilots were of a lower quality than early war pilots due to lack of training. And, the Mustangs were flying escort missions, so the bandits were more likely to put themselves in bad positions in return for getting shots at the bombers. And, by that time in the war the Allies had a significant advantage in air superiority.

[Guest Mike]

The Mustang was a good aeroplane - short of any comparative tests vs other a/c I think all anyone can say was that it was good enough.

There are accounts of other a/c giving it the run around - eg the Ki-100 I think - the "Frank" - I've read stories that American radar operators could recognise this a/c by its speed and told the Mustangs not to bother trying to intercept it!

What was decisive at he end of hte war was the quality of pilots - even rookie allied pilots had 200-250 hrs training. German ones were lucky to get 50 before being made operational by the end of 1944 - dunno about hte Japs.

Given a "good enough" aeroplane a 200 hr pilot is going to have it all over a 50 hr pilot in a slightly better a/c but who is still scared of taking off and landing!

[Tomb]

{p51}Sure one. They shot down more fighters than any other in the war.

i think not

since the spit was fighting for 6 years compared to the mustangs 18 monthes and the 109 had been fighting since the spanish civil war.

lots of planes got shot down during the battle of britain, however it was that intense for for 5 years on the russian front so it is highly likely to be the 109 shot down the most planes by a very long way probally followed by something russian

[Sixxkiller]

Bob,

The general accepted kill total for the Mustang in the ETO is a little less than 5,000. I am sure the bf-109 scored more combined but I seriously doubt one version came close to that number. The P-51 also fought in the PTO but I as of yet cant find any sort of numbers.

And Mike the Ki-100 had like a 370 mph max speed in level flight and a P-51 was something over 400. The Ki-100 was actually not very good at downing B-29's and its a toss up as to if it was a better dogfighter than the Ki-84.

This is all just a matter of opinion.

-Ray

[Guest Mike]

Might've been hte Ki-84 I heard of - I'm sure it was hte "Frank" - I'll look it up......yes - the Frank.

See http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_other/ki-84.html

And if you're going to total up the numbers for all marks of P-51 then it seems only fair to do so for all marks of 109's too.

Found this while I was browsing:

"Flight Journal",in a special edition about WW2 fighters,gives the "TOP 3" of the prop-driven fighters in the European Theater:

1:Spitfire(Mk.XIV)

2:Focke-Wulf 190(D-9)

3:P-51 D Mustang

http://www.angelfire.com/nd/mihaipruna/dogfight.html

[Jaroen]

The Mustang saved thousands of lives of bomber crews just by performing it's role as escort fighter. There was no equal to it doing that. In that sense it was a miraculous airplane. It had about the same fighter capabilities as other fighters of those days in combination with an amazing range. There's no other plane even coming close to such performance. It's like any comparable fighter with something extra. Actually quite amazing when you think of it that way. But in a sense of pure air-to-air capabilities it wasn't extraordinary. Very much like Dan stated. But think of it ... flying thousands of miles along with the bombers and still being able to give the German interceptors a good fight. That's something special.

[Zanadu]

Compared the the Lightning, the Mustang had three advantages: better roll rate, a speed advantage of 15-20 mph, and it was much cheaper to build.

Advantages of the Lightning were: higher climb rate, better pitch rate, better acceleration, better gun battery and a more stable shooting platform.

In horizontal turn rate and range the two were very similar with the Lightning having perhaps a very slim advantage in both.

The Mustang's rep. is largely the result of the fact that very large numbers of them entered combat at a time when the quality of opposing pilots was in serious decline.

Actually, the bomber crews generally preferred the Lightning as escort, because the chance of mis-identification was less. A Mustang that tried to chase a '109 thru a bomber formation was going to be shot at by the gunners. A Lightning could do that without being mistaken for another attacker.

[Zanadu]

Add to the above. The following is the first verse of a poem credited to an 'anonymous B17 radioman of the 15th AF, Italy, 1944'.

Oh, Hedy Lamarr is a beautiful gal

and Madeleine Carroll is too,

But you'll find if you query, a different theory

amongst any bomber crew.

For the loveliest thing of which one could sing

(this side of the Pearly Gates)

is no blonde or brunette of the Hollywood set,

but an escort of P-38s.

[Skuderian]

Hi!

Nice ideas about quality of fighters and pilots but most ideas are wrong.

Here some facts:

10 german pilots killed 2.588 allied airplanes.

300 german pilots were able to kill 24.000 russian planes. (Totally all german pilots shot down 45.000 russian planes.)

25.000 british or american planes were shot down by the Luftwaffe, more than 50% of them only from less than 500 german pilots.

20.000 german fighters or destroyers were shot down during the war, but only 9000-10000 were shot down by enemy fighters.

The best fighter of WW2 was the Me 262. Only chance to attack them was during starting or landing process. During flying they were nearly unbeatable cause of their speed and arnament. (Hit and Run tactic)

From the allied planes only Spitfire XIV was really dangerous for the german aces.

Mustangs only had a chance against newbies cause of the mass of them. Also they were concepted as longe range fighters so in a dogfight they had no chance against german aces.

The best german nonjet was the FW 190. By the end of the war nextgeneration of figthers was going on duty. TA 152 and DO 335 had gone into service in the last months of the war. Especially the TA 152 was really superior to all nonjet planes in May 1945.

So if you make a ranking it will be like this:

1. ME 262

2. TA 152

3. Spit XIV & FW 190D

[Sixxkiller]

Mustangs only had a chance against newbies cause of the mass of them. Also they were concepted as longe range fighters so in a dogfight they had no chance against german aces.

LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jaroen]

Hmmmm, let me check my sources (Jane's fighting a/c of WW2; Combat Profile: Mustang + www.aviation-history.com/lockheed/p38.html and www.aviation-history.com/north-american/p51.html).

From looking up the figures I believe it's fair to state that the P51D was generally speaking about equal in combat performance to other fighters of it's days. Some characteristics a little worse (basic climb rate) some better (dive, zoom climb). But the figures are quite clear when range is considered. The second fighter in range capabilities was the P38 with about 900 miles which is still considerably less than 1300 miles for the Mustang.

Just another 2 cts.

Godspeed,

Jaroen.

[Guest Mike]

The only thing "special" about the Mustang was the tankage that gave it great range so it could be an adequate fighter over Berlin. It was originally designed as "jsut another fighter" remember - the long range was pretty much a fortuitous accident, and it spent it's early years fighting as a dive bomber - the A-36!!

Other a/c did have long ranges - the Yak-9DD did escorts of USAAF bombers flying between Italy and Russia, and provided support to Yugoslav partisans from Italy, with a range on internal tankage of 900+ miles - 1200 IIRC with overload, and never carried external tanks which woudl ahve made it more.

The Yak 9 airframe also carried 37mm and 45mm anti-tank guns and had an internal bomb bay in various versions. It was more agile than the Mustang given equal pilots in Korea, smaller, lighter, and simpler to build and maintain.

In WW2 the Spitfire XIV was itself outclassed in performance by the Spitfire 21, which did see service - 2 of them claimed a German mini-sub sunk at the end of the war!!

If you're going to include the Ta-152 and Dornier 335 then you need to ccompare them to the last generation of allied piston engined fighters - the P51H, P47M, the F8F Bearcat, the Tigercat, the Sea Hornet, the Hawker Fury II.

Sure the German a/c saw "more active service" - because the miniscule numbers of them produced were rushed into combat rather than being properly developed!!

But hte advanced allied fighters often did see some service during WW2 - both the Spit 21 and P47M were in service prior to the end of the war in Europe, the Bearcat was cleared for ops in May 1945 and VF-19 was on hte Langley en-route to ops when the war ended in August 45. F7F tigercat deliveries becgan in April 1944, although it never saw action, the first Tempest II production model was delivered October 1944 and over 150 were delivered befoer the end of the war in Europe although again they never saw combat, the Fury was a lightened Tempest 2 that first flew in July 45.

I get a bit mad with the myths of the fantastic German piston fighters that outclassed the best the Allies had - like all myths of invincible weapon systems (longbows, T34's, Tigers and Panthers, P51's etc) it doesn't stand up to any sort of factual analysis

[ January 25, 2006, 12:50 PM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organist ]

[lakespeed]

Yeah, and those German pilots were in combat from 1939 to 1945 if they lived that long while American pilots were rotated every 25 missions for bombers and I believe 50 missions for fighters, so your comments about kills are very misleading.

[Zanadu]

to Jaroen: In looking at range you missed two factors.

The ranges you gave were for internal fuel, but at different altitudes. The 900 miles for the P38 was at 30K ft., while the 1300 miles for the P51 was at 10K. Comperable number for the P38 would be 1175 miles.

The P51 counldn't do combat maneuvers with a full internal fuel load as it was too tail heavy until at least have the contents of the fuel tank in the rear fuselage were used up. So range on internal fuel, when figuring Combat Radius had to be reduced by at least 15 percent.

Followed with another reduction of 20 percent to both a/c for fuel used in fighting and results for combat radius are:

P51 at 10K/@ 890 mi. P38 at 10K/@ 940 mi.

P51 at 26K/@ 650 mi. P38 at 30K/@ 720 mi.

Close, with a small edge to the Lightning.

[Zanadu]

The German style of air tactics emphasized that the leader was the 'shooter' and everyone else was there to support him. Leaders were picked by number of kills rather than qualities of leadership. The result was that a comparatively small number of pilots got a wildly disproportionate percentage of the kills.

[Shrew]

After playing for a while with the changes, while I can say that they are certainly more realistic, I can't say that I enjoy them. Especially for the first-time player, the challenges of building up a pilot have now really become much more daunting, and the higher experience point levels make it very likely that you will be playing with the same aircraft for a long, long time. While I expect that hard-core and historical players will be very satisfied with the changes, I wonder if it will make the game less accessible for "new blood". I still like it and will play it, but it's drifted quite a ways away from the original GMT version...