Mogster

The P47 lighting is the most natural somehow, the others can look strangely bright for no apparent reason. Lighting will always an issue in flight sims, it’s very hard (impossible?) to replicate the way our eyes and brain operate. I remember Oleg Maddox posting about these problems back in the old IL2 days, he was a photographer as well as a gamer.

I can move back and forwards through the 3 settings using mouse L/R.

I did notice that, but then I suppose he’s not trying to get off the ground with 4000lbs of bombs and enough gas for Berlin and back.

Nice video. The cockpit looks tiny, the props seem very close. The rudder trim gauge is prominent and enormous... Love the way the pilot has to change hands on the stick to raise the gear. Awesome 1940s ergonomics Although I suppose the navigator could flip the switch if he could reach.

You have to think about the P51s mission, protecting bombers from enemy fighters. It didn’t need to be a heavy hitter, just carry plenty of ammo and dissuade an attack or cause enough damage to convince the opposing pilot to bail out. That said 50cal AP was really quite anaemic by 1944. RAF fighters were hitting with 20mm rounds containing 6g of RDX, the fast firing Hispano meant if you hit with one you’d probably hit with more. German 13mm was explosive so hitting with much more energy than US 50cal, the reality is that the P51 was under gunned even compared to the 1944 109. The weight of the US home armaments lobby shouldn’t be underestimated. Brownings supporters were a powerful force.

And the Ju52 for the Axis.

OK. Maybe it’s just that the P47 and A10C II look so good.

Both the Spit and P51 could do with a bit of a cockpit revamp.

It seems it was built in 45 as a D -40. It was in service with the Peruvian airforce till 1967, so lots could have happened to it in the meantime. https://www.flyinglegends.com/aircraft/republic-p-47d-thunderbolt-g-thun.html

Interesting article by Richard Grace on flying the P47. He mentions the risk of engine damage from reverse loads caused by excessive windmilling, saying you can rapidly kill the engine. He also says landing is impossible with throttle on as you’ll just carry on flying floating above the runway. Engine failure seems to be a constant concern, he talks about glancing at the oil pressure gauge every few seconds. His comments about raising the gear as soon as possible are interesting. He says if the engine packs in (engine stress again...) then a belly landing causes much less damage than ripping the gear off. Not really a concern in sim land but interesting non the less. https://vintageaviationecho.com/p-47-thunderbolt-nellie/

Much as I’d love to fly a DCS B17 or Lancaster they would be a massive project. Each crew station is almost like a mini cockpit, and DCS isn’t like FS, you can’t get away with only modelling the cockpit, you’d need every crew station and damage modelling. The crew stations in the B17 mean you would have to model the whole interior, no way out. I’m sure ED are eternally relieved that the initial DCS WW2 Kickstarter didn’t cross the threshold for the B17... I can see the Douglas A20 being much more viable. It has a small cockpit like a single seater and it’s suitable for the small maps we have. It’s a very overlooked aircraft that was used in all WW2 theatres, including the eastern front. There are flying examples also.

It’s surprising how attached crews seem to have become to their aircraft, even ignoring their well documented faults. I suppose there is some survivor bias at work. The Short Stirling is supposed to have had truly frightening ground handling, monster ground loops on takeoff were common. I read somewhere that standard takeoff procedure was advancing the right engines only while going full rudder. You continued this way for 20 secs until some rudder authority appeared over the single tail...

An important real world consideration is that in a chase the Mosquito has way more gas to play with than a perusing 109 or 190. The RAF spent a long time dogfighting various Mosquito variants against single engine fighters. The conclusion was that running was always the best option, the Mosquito had sufficient level performance to frustrate most opponents and fuel on board to run at full throttle for extended periods. A properly flown single engine fighter will always out manoeuvre a multi engine plane.

20 years ago Flugwerk in Germany made 20 FW190 replicas, mostly A8 spec but a few listed as D9 with inline engines. It’s interesting that out of the 10 reported as being airworthy six are recorded as having had some form of operational incident leading to damage. Just confirms that high powered tail daggers are not easy to fly.

It seems the changes in the later 22/24 mks were partly an attempt to make the Griffon Spit more compatible with paved runways. The common, sideways, full rudder and aileron takeoffs generated by the XIV while OK on grass and earth caused extreme tyre and landing gear stress on tarmac.

From side profiles the rudder was a bit wider. Didn’t the wholesale aero changes come with the mk22/24. They had a huge tail.

Someone suggested that Hawley (Flexman) was involved with this project. I’ve no idea if it’s true or not.

Yes, I love seeing them flying but when surviving airframes and complete restorations are so rare I’ve almost come to prefer this approach. So many have been lost in crashes, aircrew also, the loss of Mosquito RR299 and it’s crew at Barton airshow is still painful and it was 25 years ago.

Shame they aren’t flyers, but even so

TFC do have a flyable FM2 Wildcat so I’d imagine a DCS Wildcat of some flavour is very likely. As with most surviving WW2 aircraft it’s a late war example. Surviving early war aircraft are very very rare unfortunately. Quite often stuff that survives in numbers was sat in a factory or in storage at the end of the war.

Yes. It would be interesting to compare the Griffon Spitfire to the Mk IX we have. LH prop, extreme torque barely controlled by the same size tail...

The Spitfire’s feels like a sportscar, the P51’s a limo and the P47 is a truck. That’s how they feel from flying them in the sim. I can’t comment on how close they are to real life feel but the way ED has made them feel so totally different in the sim is quite amazing.

We need the Spit xiv to rumble with the Kurfurst. Best of all TFC has one The Tempest V would be awesome but the lack of flying examples appears to be make it less attractive.

References are a major problem for Japanese planes. DCS Zero would probably be a goer, but much else?