OutOnTheOP

Actually, the upper portion of the Mustang's pilot armor is 7/16". That's 11.1mm. And it covers from head to middle of the shoulder blade (the bottom edge being below the bottom of the radio mounts). So... to recap, you are claiming 8mm on K4 cannot be perforated by a 640 grain 12.7mm API moving at 2910 feet per second, but a 594 grain 13mm API moving at 2329 feet per second readily defeats 8-11mm armor on Mustang? A .50 cal delivering 16,432 joules at the muzzle, with a more aerodynamic bullet and less energy loss to drag, is markedly inferior to a 13mm delivering 9,776 joules at the muzzle? Even though the relative energy delivered gets MORE disparate as range increases? Am I understanding you correctly? Oh, and hey, the canopy is about as resistant to bullets as, and as a thicker, lower-density medium, MORE likely to precipitate bullets tumbling, than is the aircraft skin, so your notion that the 13mm can easily perforate the 11.1mm of pilot armor after penetrating the canopy is a joke. Let's not forget that when firing at any deflection angle above maybe 5 degrees, all the .50 cal has to contend with on the K4 is.... yep, just thin aluminum aircraft skin and 8mm pilot armor. How, exactly, does this justify the 13mm being more likely to kill pilots? Failing to see the logic here.

Really? Because I seem to recall some 4-odd years of live fire testing where the .50 cal did just fine. 30,000+ nazi aircraft don't lie.

The use of an aircraft for informal dogfights between individuals is not the same as the use of an aircraft in groups, in formations, with trained and cooperating wingmen, against other groups and formations. Consider that in the 15th century, the pike was the dominant weapon of war. Big spear, 18-24 feet long. When used by one man, against a single other man, it is HORRIBLE. Something more manageable like a poleaxe or halberd or short spear would be far better. *But*, when used by a formation of men cooperating together, it was crushingly superior to all other weapons of the time. The Bf109 is like the obsolete short spears: great for individual combat... not so good for actual fights as coordinated groups. There are a lot of negative factors of the Bf109 that are not, and really can not, be adequately represented in a computer simulation. For example, in the computer simulation, you don't have to exhaust yourself pulling against a stick that give ludicrous elevator forces at any significant speed. You don't have to fight against poorly located, manually operated flaps and other controls (you can just put them onto a hotas button!). You aren't crammed in a tiny cabin with no room to turn around and look around (exacerbating already poor visibility). In a simulation, you can practice takeoffs and landings until you're a pro- you can always just respawn if you screw it up. In the real Bf109, the airplane had a good chance of killing you on takeoff or landing before you ever get a chance to figure it out; P-51s and Fw190s didn't have that problem. It's kind of like comparisons between the M16 and AK47 (which, by the way are really tainted by decades of misinformation and propaganda): on paper their performance looks similar... until you actually go and USE them, and then realize the AK47's safety is in a horrible place and slow/difficult to operate, the magazine locking system makes for slow and awkward magazine changes because the magazine locking lip can be easily over-inserted, and the sights are difficult to acquire and use, particularly in low-light situations. Soft factors like that matter A LOT. They just don't show up on pure statistical comparisons. Also... when was the last time you had a fight at 20,000+ feet? In the real war, that was the fight that mattered in the western ETO. The Germans had to go up there to get the bombers; if they just circled around at low altitude, there would have been no fight (and the Mustang escorts would have accomplished their mission without firing a shot). Here in the game world, we're here to have FUN, not to win a war, so if the Germans don't come up to angels 20, we go down to fight them at low altitude. Fight up high and the Mustang does much better (though I'll admit I kind of find high altitude dogfights a bit boring, as they play out pretty slowly) Oh, and if the Mustangs got their correct 72" ratings, they would have 15mph more speed and 1000 ft/min better climb rate, both of which would make a huge difference.

Yep. I've never understood the blind faith in the "Germans had superior superweapons to the allies and all their equipment was better" fanboyism. The fact is that at the very end of the war, the most prevalent fighters were still FW190A8s and Bf109G6s (over 1 in 3 Bf109s made was a G6, twice as many as G10, G14 and K4 combined!)- both inferior to the most prevalent (western) allied types, and the most prevalent tanks at the very end of the war were still Panzer IVH and J, which were slightly inferior to the Sherman, and there were significantly more PzIV than Panthers, to the very last day. If we count the StuG, it TOO had significantly more in service than Panthers, to the last day of the war, and it TOO was slightly inferior to the Sherman (particularly if one considers the wet-stowage 76mm models that were then common). Yet armchair generals always want to talk about how the Panther and the K4 and Me262 were so amazing. So what? They weren't the representative example.

That sounds about right. M8 will perforate 16mm at 500 meters (at 30 degrees angle). M20 does even better; 21mm at 500 meters. At 100 meters it will be significantly better. I suppose if we're talking late '44, you might be carrying either. ... It might be nice to allow selection of M2/M8 or M2/M20 belts in the mission editor. M20 should be particularly brutal.

At any sort of deflection other than a dead-astern shot, that armor is of limited value. And as you yourself admit, ANY shot inside 200 meters (a pretty average distance) will penetrate in absolute worst-case scenario, going through both the fuel tank, the pilot's armor, AND the pilot. Of course, if the fuel tank *isn't* full, or if the round comes through on any of the vast majority of angles that are *not* through the fuel tank, it will easily perforate the armor. The M8 API perforates 8mm rolled hardened armor out to 1,200 meters (measured at a standard 30 degree impact angle). The K4's pilot armor is not a particularly difficult barrier for .50 cal at WW2 air combat distances. But let's say that you're right, and the round has to transit through the fuel tank, and doesn't have enough energy to make it through the fuselage, both sides of the tank, the fuel, and the bullet just splatters on the back of the pilot's armor. Of course, this assumes the tank is full because the K4 has magically not emptied half the tiny fuel capacity just getting to the fight- and let's not forget that the portion of the tank actually behind the pilot is the narrow, top end of an L-shaped tank, and accounts for perhaps 75-80 liters out of the 400 liter capacity... so once 80 liters are burned off, the pilot no longer has liquid fuel behind him, just a big gap full of easily ignited vapors. Anyhow, bullet goes through all of that and somehow doesn't have enough energy to penetrate the pilot's armor. Ok, that's certainly possible. So, hooray, pilot survives! ...but now he has a through-and-through perforated fuel tank that just sprayed aerosolized high-octane fuel throughout the rear fuselage, and his pilot's armor has just struck a hard surface which ensures the 15 grains of barium nitrate and aluminum/magnesium alloy incendiary filler reliably ignites and disperses everywhere around that spilled fuel. Best case scenario, the Bf109 has a severe fuel leak. Worst case, it explodes. Actually, worst case, the .50 cal perforates the pilot's skull AND the aircraft explodes. *lol* I love how you point out that the K4 has "so much stuff behind the pilot other than just the armor- the bullet has to go through a fuel tank, and an MW50 tank, and skin, and, and.... ...and then you claim the P-51D does *not* have anything behind the pilot. Because, you know, there certainly weren't multiple radio sets and, I dunno, an even bigger fuel tank than the K4? And of course at any shot beyond about 5-10 degrees deflection, none of that stuff- on either the Mustang or the K4- is actually between the shooter and the pilot. Nor, in a 5-10 degree deflection shot, is any of that stuff between the shooter and the engine.

Yes, they are "HE" rounds with a whopping 1.5 grams of explosive filler. I was waiting for someone to make the claim that 1.5 grams of WW2 explosive propelling 37 grams of projectile casing is more efficient than 17 grams of .50 cal propellant driving 42 grams of API projectile, which carries more incendiary fill than the "HE" 13mm, delivered at higher velocity, and which will throw the jacket and lead swage upon impact with anything solid anyway. Even with 60+ years better technology, the US chooses API as the primary projectile of choice for .50 caliber-class MGs, because even the advances Mk211 "explosive" round (which is *still* officially classified as API!) is less efficient against vehicle targets than the good old API. The .50 has more mass, moving faster, even after the HE detonates in the 13mm, so the overall kinetic energy the .50 cal API round is depositing into the target is greater. Simple physics. The 13mm has *arguably*, *marginally* better effects against aircraft skin, but the 12.7x99 is much better at deeply penetrating the canopy, pilot armor, engine block, or going deeply enough to hit radiators or fuel tanks. If 12.7x99 hits structural members, it will cut right through them; the 13x64 is far worse at that. I suspect DCS damage calculations were based on "how big a hole does it leave in thin aluminum aircraft skin", and did not take into account "how well does it penetrate to destroy vital internal components?". Realistically, at best, you can call the projectiles analogous in damaging capacity... and again, we come back to "why, then, do 2xMG131 get kills as easily as 6x M2 .50 cal"? No, I'm pretty sure the reason it's so much easier to get pilot kills on the Mustang is that DCS considers any hit on the relatively large surface area of the canopy as a "cockpit hit" even when the hit would not have transited any space particularly close to the pilot, whereas hits only count as cockpit hits on the Bf109 if you hit the relatively tiny canopy, and DCS altogether throws out hits that hit the skin near the cockpit which *would*, in reality, continue on through the pilot. Just not a very good method of adjudicating hits. The new damage model should help out with that.

Yes, the results with the 13mm guns alone are indeed very similar to the effects of Mustang gunnery. Only, they shouldn't be. The Mustang has three times as many guns, and the 12.7x99mm Browning cartridge is significantly more powerful than the 13x64mm (2900 fps for 12.7x99 versus 2500 for 13x64mm).

Technically, neither. The prop pitch automatically sets to the appropriate pitch at any given airspeed. If you have RPM set VERY LOW and you're in a very high speed dive or something, it might run out of prop pitch adjustment and be unable to get it coarse enough, in which case the prop would act as an airbrake (and aileron!), but 2700 rpm should be capable of dealing with anything up to at least 350. Being properly trimmed (and eliminating all slip!) is more likely the culprit if you are having trouble making 300 indicated. I know a lot of guys around here have had the best speed results with rpm around 2700-2800 instead of 3000; that said, you'll get the best acceleration at 3000, which is why you should probably go to 3000 rpm for combat. Makes sense; at lower RPM, the prop is set coarse, and would cut through the airstream more efficiently... but after a point, it will also be less efficient at "pulling" into the air. I generally go 3000 rpm for maneuvering dogfights, 2700 cruise, and 2800 for high-speed dive-aways (after giving it a few seconds at 3000 to accelerate the AC) Too low RPM for a given MP will also over-stress the engine. With the exception of dive-away escapes, I don't go over 50" with 2700 rpm, 55" at 2800, 60" at 2900. Or are you saying you can not get over 36" with rpm set to 2700? That doesn't sound right. What altitude?

Obviously it is better to get the jump on them, but you don't always get to dictate terms of the fight. The Mustang (even the rather finicky DCS Mustang) will hold 46" at 2700rpm until it runs out of fuel, and never fail (unless, of course, you're standing it on it's tail in a stall-climb and overheating it!). Most often you'll be somewhere in the 250-300 IAS range. At 300, it dominates. At 250, it's good. 200 and below, you're in trouble. You should be able to manage 320 IAS at sea level, ~298 IAS (387 TAS) at 16,000, and ~258 IAS (420 TAS) at 29,000 while pulling maximum continuous (46"/2700). In a fight, you're obviously going to lose speed, but you'll also be above max continuous rating most of the time. 250 isn't too hard to maintain.

"Don't turn with 109s" is actually pretty bad advice. You can only dive so long before you run out of sky, and you can't out-climb or straight run in the current DCS modeling. You have to turn (unless, of course, you can take the Bf109 completely by surprise). You just have to be smart about *how* you turn fight a Mustang. The Bf109 bleeds energy in a turn like a stuck pig, and many Bf109 pilots haul back on the stick WAY too much. The trick is to get them to commit to an action that bleeds their energy. 1) In a neutral (head-on) merge, open fire at a long range. The .50 is quite likely to get hits, and you have TONS of ammo. The K4 has to hoard their ammo, and their ballistics suck. If you're lucky, you kill him before the merge. Even if you get no hits, you'll probably cause him to maneuver and bleed energy. 2) In a neutral (head-on or oblique) merge, I find that starting with a relatively hard flat (or slightly climbing) turn often suckers the Bf109 pilot into going high yo-yo, or more often (and even better) he responds with a maximum-rate flat turn. Those both kill the Bf109's initial energy going into the fight. Do NOT continue your hard flat turn through the merge- you only START that turn to sucker the Bf109 into a hard turn. As you merge, relax G and drop the nose... he'll probably try to follow you downhill, but you already have more speed than he does if he hauled the nose around hard, AND you'll build speed faster in the split-s than he will in trying to come downhill to get you. You end up in an energy advantage, which can then be used to turn hard into him or (usually better) to zoom climb onto a good perch. If the K4 driver doesn't take the bait (and waits up in the perch for you to make a mistake instead of diving right after you), just extend and disengage; you'll have a quite hefty head start on him. 3) Fire early and often. The Mustang carries a TON of ammo in comparison to the K4, and the sight means you can get good hits on difficult shots. Not only that, but all that ammo weighs a lot, so your performance just gets better as you expend it. I frequently take off with only 70-80% ammo, because that's plenty enough to make 2-4 kills. I wish we had the option to download a pair of our guns and go with 4 (like the real Mustang could), because that would cut a couple hundred pounds off the aircraft. 4) Practice deflection shooting and using the K14. Then practice it more. Then practice it more. The goal isn't to outmaneuver your opponent, it is to SHOOT your opponent. You don't always need fancy maneuvers, but you DO need to hit the target. If you can kill him at the merge, who cares how maneuverable his aircraft would have been in an extended fight? 5) Keep your energy state high. The Mustang owns the over-300 IAS arena. Try to never go below 250 if possible. This helps with engine cooling, too. 6) Fly the Mustang smoothly. If you try to brute-force the nose around, you'll just lose energy faster. Be patient and *ease* the opponent into a position of disadvantage by forcing him to burn energy faster than you are; you'll never win by a straight-up turning competition. This also means you need to keep the slip ball centered as well as possible to minimize your energy loss.

Hey, that's a pretty strawman you've got there. First, I don't break P-51 engines in combat. I don't break them, because I know how far I can push them in DCS. The POINT, for those who are actually paying attention, is that "how far I can push" the Merlin in DCS before it breaks is significantly less than how far I can push the DB605, to include overheating and the amount beyond original design HP the engine can be pushed. The Merlin will occasionally break in DCS with all temperatures in the green, at 61" or less MP. As for the programmers making a "broken side", they already have. They have severely artificially handicapped the P-51 through mediocre boost levels, modeling one of the heaviest Mustang models ever built (I know Kurfurst LOVES to point out it's a very late block, but what makes it such a late block isn't aerodynamic enhancements, it is IFF and navigation systems and radios that are NOT EVEN FUNCTIONAL in DCS, yet for which the weight is accounted and therefore hurts performance! Earlier blocks actually perform better!), poor DM handling of solid shot MG projectiles, and overly frequent engine failures, which appear to have been based on the guidance Rolls Royce gave for recommended engine operating parameter, and NOT off a comparative assessment of the frequency of failures between the different engines. But people still buy the Mustang. You really think LESS people would buy DCS WW2 modules if there was actually an enjoyable competition online, rather than the extremely lopsided stupidity there is now, with every weeaboo gravitating to the K4 because they think it makes an easy win? We can either model REALITY, where K4s broke engines all the time, or we can model "what-if" fantasy where the reich had unlimited access to factories, workers, and high-grade alloys. If we're modeling *fantasy*, might as well go whole-hog and make a good *game* of it and admit that the US response would have been to field P-51F (no fuselage tank, 4x .50s, short-range interceptor Mustang, 2000 pounds lighter than P-51D, developed and tested ready to be put in production in by D-Day. First flight February 1944) or P-51H Or we could make the game both more realistic *and* more competitive by making the DB605 have a high (historical) chance of simply blowing an engine rod if the engine is pushed into high MP (IE, MW50). By the time the K4 was in production, Germany didn't have access to good alloys. There are MANY references to Panther armor shattering because of poor alloys, and there are MANY references (from luftwaffe pilots!) to engines blowing rods because of the same reason. DCS doesn't need to model the completely random failures at cruise MP for the K4. But it would be nice if MW50 came with a significant risk of engine failure. Without MW50, the K4 is still a match for the P-51D as currently (under) modeled. It then makes for a good game, because the K4 pilot has to make a hard decision on whether it's a better risk to fight the Mustang on equal terms, or risk the engine eating itself to have superior performance. More realistic, better gaming. But of course luftwhiner hardliners would never have any of it. And of course, Kurfurst already KNOWS better, because he's already been schooled on the subject a decade ago: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=99259

Oh, hey, look, Kurfy is tossing out spurious and un-cited assertions again. Big surprise. I mean, it's as if he hasn't already catastrophically undercut his own impartiality by running a fan site for the Kurfurst, NAMING himself after the aircraft, and using stupid perjorative nicknames to refer to any competing aircraft ("runstang"? Seriously? What are you, a five-years-old?) The DB605 is just a product improved DB600. Developed starting in 1930, originally rated to 850-1000 metric horsepower. By 1944 it was stretched WAY beyond original design goals to 2000 metric horsepower on MW50 and overboosting. The Merlin was designed in 1933, with an original rating of 950-1045 metric horsepower. By 1944 it was available in the Merlin 130, 131, 133, 134, and V-1650-9 with +25 / 80" hg boost (some variants up to 100" hg boost!) providing up to 2248 metric horsepower as installed in the P-51H with water-methanol injection. Obviously both engines were of comparable age, technology, and capacity for power generation. Their failure characteristics would be generally expected to be similar at similar power output ratings. And this is of course playing in the luftwhiner's ideal world where we don't even consider the fact that German industry was suffering from shortages of skilled labor and materials by the time the K4 was made, which resulted in poor reliability in the *real* world. If I wanted to be a historical prick about it, I would insist that the DB605 eat itself every few hours of flight time, but I'm not even trying to advocate that, just that the failure characteristics of each be generally the same likelihood at the same over-MP/ over-heat levels. If you cannot fathom why the failure characteristics for a Merlin pushed only to 1600-1700 horsepower (173% original designed power) should be more forgiving when compared to a DB600 derivative pushed to 1850 horsepower (217% original design), I'm afraid I cannot help you, because you're buried too deeply in your own hubris to ever see the light. Oh, and I love how you assume I regularly blow up engines and imply I am incompetent ("your" engines indeed). Amazing how you know exactly how I operate my engines, and are therefore in a position to state as fact that they blow up because they're operated outside parameters. Because, y'know, I certainly couldn't have based my assessment of DCS engine failure characteristics on DELIBERATE destructive testing of virtual engines or anything, no. That would be silly. :megalol: By the by, the DCS Merlin quite happily blows up (at least, in DCS builds as of a few months ago) without having *any* engine gauge out of the green. I suspect you don't know that, because you don't seem like you'd sully yourself actually flying those "crude, inferior" Mustangs. I mean, you can't even bring yourself to refer to them by proper name!

This is one of those things that some Luftwhiners/ Wehraboos never seem to understand. The US and UK *did* in fact have super hot-rod aircraft on tap. The lightweight Mustangs (F, G, J, and H) were fully developed and *could* have been manufactured and deployed if the USAAF had needed high-performance, short range superb dogfighters. There were entire classes of USAAF aircraft that were cancelled in development because there was no tactical need for the role for which they were designed (IE, ANYTHING defensive. No lightweight interceptors, no bomber destroyers... which is a shame, because some of them like the XP-67 were really quite promising airframes. Who doesn't like the idea of a 4x 37mm main armament?!) The USAAF did NOT need high-performance, short range superb dogfighters, because the USAAF was on the offense, not the defense; and more importantly, because the Luftwaffe was already broken by the time the Bf109G14 and K4 and FW190D9 (and the jets) came into being. If, in August or September 1944, the Luftwaffe was still credibly contesting air superiority, and there was an obvious need for higher performance aircraft, the P-51H would have been fast-tracked through development and prioritized on production runs. It was not, because there was no need. What few aircraft the Luftwaffe was capable of putting in the air by then were getting ROFLstomped by overwhelming numbers of D models. The D, operating at 72-75" manifold pressure, was already fighting at superiority or near parity of performance to *everything* that it faced, and the numerical, logistical, and pilot experience advantages were so huge that the Luftwaffe was barely a credible threat. If the Luftwaffe HAD been a threat, the -H would have been expedited (yes, I am aware the -H was not actually available before early 1945 in actual history; I am saying that the -H or a similar program of lightening modifications would have been hurried if they *had* actually been needed). Or the -Ds would have been cleared to higher boost levels (and cut weight, like the fuselage tank and bomb racks- or even 2x M2 .50 cals- as field modifications, cutting probably 300-500 pounds off the airframe). After all, that's exactly what the Germans did when they were on the ropes: they cleared their aircraft for higher boost levels, accepting that the high risk of engine failure was probably a fair trade, given that the aircraft probably wouldn't survive more than a sortie or two anyway. There was a *lot* of extra power that could still be coaxed from the Merlin than the basic -D model was pulling; it's just that for the allies, engine failure was a much bigger hazard to the aircraft than was the Luftwaffe. So, for all the luftwhiners that like to wax philosophical about "but if the Luftwaffe hadn't been suffering from spare parts shortages, pilot shortages, fuel shortages, and generally poor industrial standards, they *totally* would have stomped the allies, because their aircraft were better in a one-on-one comparison on paper"... well, right, good show. Except, in that hypothetical situation, the allies would not have continued doing exactly what they did in actual history; they too would have adapted and changed their tactics and/ or equipment to deal with the changed situation. So the argument is a bit moot. In actual history, the Luftwaffe super-planes got stomped, and the allies felt no need to field better aircraft, because why bother? They were already stomping everything the Luftwaffe put in the air anyway! On a related note, that is what I most hate about the DCS WW2 so far: the engine failure chances seem to be equal between the Merlin operating at it's official rated limits, versus the DB605D at *its* official rated limits. Thing is, those rated limits seem semi-arbitrary: they're based on what each respective air force thinks is the engine rating that results in an acceptable chance of engine failure and acceptable service life. It should be pretty obvious that what each air force would consider "acceptable risk of engine failure" and "acceptable service life" was pretty different for the allies and the Germans by November-December 1944. Right now DCS treats the "plenty of safety margin for long-range escort missions" Merlin rating as having an equal chance of causing failure if exceeded as it treats the "this is the most horsepower we can physically wring out of this highly modified engine block before it explodes" DB605D rating. It is silliness.

Look at right side of cockpit. Turn radar power switch to on. Wait a couple minutes for radar to warm up. Done. You can flip the test switch to test if it's done warming up yet. The light to the left of the gunsight will illuminate yellow and a bell will ring when the radar detects something. It *will* get returns off the ground, so it will go off constantly at altitudes of less than about 3000 feet above terrain.

Yes and no. I think it's less that the .50 does too little damage (though it *does* do too little damage), and more that the way the damage model works in DCS is horrible for small caliber solid slugs. See, DCS appears to just defines each aircraft as a number of areas ("hit boxes") with a number of hit points each. If you reduce a particular hit box by a particular number of hit points, it results in a particular damage to the aircraft. The problem is, that's horribly unrealistic. It means that in order to kill the engine, for example, you MUST put X number of rounds into the engine bay. It also means that while, say, 50 hit points to a single area kills the aircraft, if you don't get *concentrated* hits on one hit box, you could do 49 hit points to 10 different locations and basically not hurt it at all (even though you put 490 hit points of damage onto it!) The .50 is low-damage/ high ROF, so it's more negatively impacted by that artificiality than are high-damage/ low ROF weapons (like, say, the 30mm on the K4). In the real world, however, you *could* kill that engine with one, single, solitary .50 cal. Or you *could* pour 50 rounds into the engine bay and not manage to hit anything vital whatsoever (even though that's incredibly unlikely). You *could* put 100 rounds into a wing and do nothing but punch a bunch of half inch holes that just go through the wing skin for minimal effect, or you *could* put one single .50 cal through the center of the main wing spar and snap the wing off. To realistically model .50 cal damage, the entire damage model has to be re-done, either by modeling every critical component in 3d inside the aircraft and tracking the path of each projectile as it passes through the aircraft, or by a probability-driven damage model that "rolls the dice" to see if you hit anything super-vital with any given round. ED has said they are completely re-working the WW2 aircraft damage models, so there's certainly hope. Hit points are for chumps.

See, it's funny that everyone says all the best pilots are flying the K4 online, or that the K4 is the best plane for experts to fly... I actually disagree. For me, the K4 is the best plane for a mediocre pilot to fly. Now, before people get all up in arms, when I say "mediocre", I don't mean terrible and skill-less, I mean it seems best suited to pilots of moderate skill. The K4 is terrible for low-skill pilots, because it's flight characteristics will just kill them on takeoff and landing. So the pilot has to be reasonably skilled just to *fly* it. However, once airborne and in a dogfight, the K4 is very forgiving of mistakes, because it a) is very difficult to stall out a wing, and b) it has enough power-to-weight to fairly rapidly re-build energy that was lost. However, I think the P-51D is actually the best aircraft for the REALLY good pilots. This is because the Mustang's advantages in situational awareness, the superior gunsight, and the vastly superior ballistics of the weapons means it can successfully engage from parameters the other aircraft cannot. People REALLY underestimate that advantage. In a turn fight, the Mustang *can* turn with even a K4, and a good pilot in the Mustang will kill the K4, because it is capable of those high-deflection shots. The K4, on the other hand, is extremely difficult to land high-deflection shots with. When I fly DCS WW2 online, I find that the only time the K4 kills me is when I never even knew it was there (probably 80-90% of my losses, and I have a favorable k:d flying 51D vs K4); the K4 weapons systems just aren't that good. So... if you fly with a wingman to prevent a K4 from just sneaking up on you, they're a lot less dangerous. The K4 is clearly a superior aerobatics machine. The Mustang is a superior weapons platform. This means the K4 has an edge in a 1v1, but the SA and weapons systems advantages of the Mustang make it superior in a 2v2 or many vs many... assuming that the P-51D pilots have worked on their gunnery and deflection shooting technique. Does that mean the Mustang shouldn't be improved? No. It would really benefit from the additional WEP boost rating. Probably more important, though, is to tweak engine failure characteristics. This appears to have been done a couple times over the life of the module already, but the single biggest problem the Mustang has in a turn fight with a K4 is not the Mustang it cannot turn with it; the Mustang slightly out-turns the K4 at high speeds, and at low speeds if you drop one notch flaps and it can turn with the K4. The problem is that the Merlin fails- and fails catastrophically- too easily, it seems. In the real world, the Merlin was run for 15-30 minutes at 80" without issue numerous times, and in testing it was run for 7 hours without issue at 75".... yet in DCS, it can fail catastrophically, and without warning, 30 seconds into a run at 67". I don't know if I'd go quite *that* far; P-51D and Fw190d9 are quite close in aerodynamic perfomance, and the D9 are certainly much closer to the Mustang in SA and gunnery ability, but I still think the Mustang's gunnery and SA advantages are superior enough to call it the better for a many vs many situation. I absolutely agree with the basic premise, though: the K4 is the best 1v1 dogfighter, but in a many vs many with cooperating and communicating team-mates, the 190 is superior to the K4, for the same reason the Mustang is: it has better SA, a better disengage/ dive-away, and far superior weapons/sighting setup for longer-range and/or high-deflection kills against maneuvering opponents. Now, if only more than a couple players on any given team were ever on TS and felt like flying cooperatively.... But that's an entirely different problem, and one that would be GREATLY assisted by ED taking the time to make an in-game voice channel. The lack of it is possibly the single greatest flaw in DCS multiplayer. TL;DR: The Mustang is an excellent fighter, perfectly capable of taking on K4s toe-to-toe with favorable exchange rates if the 'Stang driver fights smart and practices his deflection shooting. The Mustang should always be flown with wingmen to get the best out of the SA and weapons employment advantages.

It seems to me like the ammo is pretty under-powered against aircraft, too. There have been a number of passes I've made on (AI, granted) Hawks and MiG21s, which failed to do significant damage to the enemy aircraft with what appeared to be a solid burst. I have only once (in dozens of engagements) gotten a first-burst kill on an enemy aircraft that was not at "fill the windscreen" (IE, *way* under minimum) range; that one was clearly a hit right on the enemy's canopy that killed the pilot. All other engagements I have had required multiple bursts. Fixing the ridiculously over-done dispersion would help some, but I suspect the ammo is a bit underpowered at the moment. It is significantly easier to kill trucks with .50 cal from the Mustang than 20mm from the F-5E right now.

Gee, that kind of sounds like "the last little push to kick your pursuer off your tail in a close scissors fight". You're welcome to use more flaps if you feel it benefits you; my experience is that the drag does more harm than the lift does good. Personally, I find it highly inadvisable to use more than one notch, or to drop them for longer than a few seconds (10 seconds being *forever* in a dogfight). Particularly if there's another hostile anywhere in the area who can swoop in on you while you're trying to rebuild all that lost energy you blew fighting the first one. The way you're advising fighting (or at least, the way it *looks* like you're advising) will result in a lot of blown engines.

...which isn't what I said, anyway. I never said A/A2 should be capable of snapshots, I said that A/A1 should be capable of steady tracking pipper-in-center-of-mass shots. The manual says snapshots are A/A1 only. The manual says that tracking shots are primarily A/A2, but does not say that A/A1 cannot conduct them. The description of how snapshots are executed in A/A1 furthermore reinforces that tracking shot CAN be accomplished with A/A1 through a steady, center mass tracking shot, because a tracking shot meets all the requirements of moving the pipper on an intercept course with the target in relative motion and timing the shot for when the pipper will intercept (or in this case, *still* be intercepting) the target in relative motion 1 TOF in the future. In fact, the snapshot description even says that lower relative convergence rates between pipper and target are desirable (and zero is as low as it gets!) One of the A/A1 snapshot sketches depicts opening fire while the pipper is still behind the target, but moving to coincidence. One of them depicts opening fire while the pipper is beside the target but moving to coincidence. Both depict taking a shot when the pipper is 1TOF away from intercepting the target in relative motion. None of them show that you must place the pipper ahead of the target in real space, only that they need to be converging to coincidence in relative position on the gunsight. The only document that states the pilot is supposed to put the pipper in front of the target when using A/A1 mode is the Belsimtek manual, which is obviously a very early draft, given all the grammar errors and poor translations. I strongly suspect BST implemented A/A1 slightly incorrectly, based on a misinterpretation of A/A1 engagement sequence (or the graphics depicting them) in the original USAF manuals.

It absolutely does! Regarding the flaps, I would personally say never more than one notch, and before employing them, you should ask yourself "if I get a couple more degrees/second of turn, can I kill him in the next 10 seconds?" If the answer is no, leave the flaps up, go to a trail pursuit (or high yo-yo) and try to come back in into a more favorable position. Sometimes the flaps are NEEDED, because there's just no other way you can quite bring the nose around far enough to get guns on a Kurfurst who's pulling a stick-in-the-gut low speed turn, because they will hold a tighter, smaller-radius turn at low speed than you can manage unless you drop flaps. In that case, drop flaps, get the nose in, and kill him fast. You have to be patient enough to wait for the right opportunity to arrive. When it does, execute decisively, because you can't sustain a high-power, flaps-down turn for long before your engine overheats. Defensively, they should only be used for *maybe* that last little push to kick your pursuer off your tail in a close scissors fight, but again, first ask yourself "with a couple more degrees/second and 10 less knots airspeed, can I force an overshoot in the next 10 seconds?" In pretty much all other cases, avoid the flaps. They'll bleed too much energy and ultimately do little for you. Low energy Mustangs are dead Mustangs; if the enemy doesn't kill you, the engine blowing due to poor airflow/ poor cooling will!

Errr... you're talking (and the lower half of that page as well) about using A/A1 for a snapshot TECHNIQUE. In the upper half of that same page, it speaks about using A/A1 (and A/A2) for tracking shots. "28.4.2 Tracking Solution.... when tracking, the pipper remains one time-of-flight away from target future position to provide a continuous solution to the aiming problem. Keep the pipper motionless on the target to get maximum concentration of hits. Any pipper motion with respect to the target can result in misses. The tracking solution is primarily (not exclusively!) used in A/A2 gun mode" And "28.4.3 Nontracking solution... the task is to project target and pipper motion to a point of intersection and fire approximately one time-of-flight before this occurs... pipper displacement occurs because of the relative motion of the target to the pipper...an attack in the plane of the target makes estimation easier" In other words, you fire when the pipper and target are moving to where they will intersect one TOF in the future. Aiming in A/A1 is NOT supposed to be "put the pipper at the spot in space where the target will be 1 TOF in the future", it is "fire when the relative motion between the pipper and target will make them converge 1 TOF in the future". The second sketch illustrates this well: it instructs you to drag the pipper from behind the target, start firing while the pipper is still behind the target, and cease firing as the pipper drags up to the nose of the target. Thing is, if you're in A/A1 and holding a steady track, then the pipper and target ARE moving to a point of intersection. They're already AT that point of intersection, and are constantly moving to other, future points of intersection. As I described earlier, I was conducting attacks in which I would drag the pipper through the target's plane of motion from rear to front, opening fire when the pipper moved through the tail of the target and cease fire as the pipper left the front of the target. As described in the document. And would get no hits. Instead, in DCS I have to drag the pipper from the tail of the target, through the target, open fire at point 3 (pipper ahead of target), and drag the pipper even further ahead of the target (ceasing fire at point 4) to get good hits. This means I have to fire, in A/A1 mode, when the relative motion between the target and pipper are diverging (the pipper is ahead and getting farther ahead) instead of when they are converging (when the pipper is behind and catching up).This behavior doesn't match the posted document, nor does it match 1F-5E-34-1-1 manual on nonnuclear weapons employment (which is pretty much verbatim to the posted document). Obviously, if the target changes vectors between firing and impact, any mode will miss.

But against a constant rate maneuvering target, that should still be a center-of-mass hold. If it were increasing it's rate of turn, sure, but I'm talking about a lazy sustained turn. Normal procedure is still to "walk" the pipper through the target tail to nose, but it just doesn't seem to be predicting at *quite* the right place. Pretty sure it computes pretty much the same way the K14 does (rate from gyros), only with radar providing ranging; with the K14, a solid center-of-mass hold will give good hits. No, it centers lower than that at min; if I cancel out after closing to min range and then go immediately back to DG, it raises the reticle back to the start point.

Lovely that A/A1 is implemented and working now; it definitely makes things a lot easier. I'm not sure if it's a bug, an intentional feature, or just that my tracking shots are not steady enough, but it seems to me that the reticle doesn't give *quite* enough lead to result in good hits in A/A1. It's close; I find that I get solid center-of-mass hits if I put a solid tracking pipper right at or a foot in front of a turning target's nose; it misses aft or just gets tail hits with pipper on center-of-mass. This might be a result of different ballistic characteristics of the different ammo types- is the reticle maybe calibrated for the API ammo instead of HEI? I would think the A/A sights would be calibrated for the more typical HEI A/A load. Also, might be a feature (my reading of the F-5E weapons employment manual didn't seem to cover it), but the pipper stops tracking and locks into a fixed position when I get inside the minimum range warning. I'm not surprised that it stops giving lead computations (to discourage under-min-range shots), but it doesn't actually stow the reticle back in the boresight position, it stows it about 20-30 mils low. Is that intended behavior?

"It isn't done yet" and "it's done wrong" both result in broken modeling. What it seems like to me is that the bomblet dispersion is done as a single "entity", where each bomblet disperses out on a scripted path, and the whole formation then moves as a unit, rather than having each bomblet individually tracked along their trajectory the way cannon shells are. Once the bomblets reach the maximum scripted dispersion, they just fall in formation. Unfortunately, that means they never get very far apart.