Experience vs Machine Performance

[Fallschirmjager]

Ive been reading lots of threads and doing some thinking


In my opinion I think pilot experience should trump aircraft performance to a certain degree


If you look at records of the some of the more "elite" air groups you will see that in some cases they flew inferior planes agaisnt better planes....but since they were superior pilots, performed much better that what the specs on their machines would indicate

Its may make sense...you may disagree...it may already be in the game

But its just my opinion

[Luskan]

I would agree with you, but I'll abstain for now while you get flamed (and although your post doesn't even mention sides), you're going to be given the label of axis fanboy in no time)

I'll come back and agree with you after the trolls have gnawed on you for a while!

[Brady]

I would tend to agree as well.

[Daniel Oskar]

ditto.

[mogami]

Hi, I also agree. I think it is easier to give to much aircraft to a poor pilot, then it is to give too little to a good one.

[Fallschirmjager]

I would agree with you, but I'll abstain for now while you get flamed (and although your post doesn't even mention sides), you're going to be given the label of axis fanboy in no time)

I'll come back and agree with you after the trolls have gnawed on you for a while!

It was actually after reading histories of the Flying Tigers and Cactus AF that I came to this


They used superior tactics ( like dive and slash and covering each others tails...getting in really close and covering each others tails)
To shoot down better planes (manuverbility and speed wise)

And Japanese Aces shot down planes thorughout the whole war by using there then inferior machines but using better tactics



So im not advocating one side over the other..but im stating something that makes sense to me

[Brady]

The F4F-4 and the A6M2 were prety close realy spead wise depending on Alt in Fact on the deck the F4F-4 was faster, while the Zero was faster at around 15K, the Wildcat also enjoyed some advantages over the Zero in terms of Firepower, effective gun range, and in Durabality.


Check this Chart out, It is for a flight sim but the chart does give a good idea of comparable preformances and compares favorably with real world data.

http://www.jannousiainen.net/online_sims/jg_4/index.htm

[2ndACR]

I completely agree, pilot skill over a/c.

[mark24]

Me too, for what it's worth. I'll back a good pilot in an obsolescent plane flying against a poor one in a modern one, any day.

Mark

[Chiteng]

Just dont tell Mdiehl or TJ

[mdiehl]

It was actually after reading histories of the Flying Tigers and Cactus AF that I came to this.

Well, this is sort of moot since the F4F was not particularly inferior to the A6M2 and the P-40 was considerably better than the A6M2. But this is not really your central point.

Your original point was that "experience" should trump aircraft specs "to a certain degree." With the proviso that no one seems to know what "experience" is in GGPW, UV, or WitP in re training, tactics, and flight time, I agree with your assessment. The problem with the translation of this sentiment into a simulation lies in the murky "to a certain degree."

A pilot that is adequately trained to the strengths of his aircraft and trained in superior tactics will usually wreak havoc on the most veteran ace of aces if the former is flying a markedly superior aircraft. One should not think of a difference in experience giving the more experienced pilot the edge in combat (although that may indeed be how the various Grigsby games handle the EXP ratings).

The argument is best illustrated by a reducto ad absurdem argument. Please forgive me. Consider, for example, a combat between an F4 Phantom (that's right, the jet that proved that with enough thrust even a brick can fly), and a Sopwith Camel. The sopwith has all of the advantages in maneuverability. There's no point or need to talk about maneuverability at speed, because the Sopwith is by any standard slow, and its best "mvr" occurs around the stall speeds of the F4.

Now suppose that super duper Ace of Aces is flying the camel, and has 4000 hours of air time in the plane. He has all the knowledge of Manfred von Richtofen, Saburo Sakai, an Joe Foss. The F4 pilot is Lieutenant Mudd, a USMC pilot with 500 hours of air time in the F4 and no combat experience.

Will Ace of Aces have any control over this combat? Not really. Lt Mudd can decide when, where and how to engage the Sopwith. The Sopwith in turn can use its superior maneuverability in an effort to turn out of the F4s attack. We'll make the model simple and assume that both aircraft are using their guns.

In this combat, the Sopwith has, at best, a chance of survival. It has no realistic hope of doing any damage to the F4 unless Lt. Mudd is so poorly trained as to not fly his aircraft to any advantage. The relative difference in the two pilots' air times and Mudd's lack of combat experience is completelty immaterial. He either knows his plane or he does not.

The upshot is that EXP in any of these games should not be a continuously distributed variable. This is something that one should suspect ANYHOW given that nobody can justify where these numbers come from. They are in effect cardinal numbers (quantitative) that have inappropriately been subsitituted for ordinal numbers (a rank-order system). The ranking should probably just rate pilots, for example, as untrained (can get airplane off the ground etc), pilot qualified (minimal airtime in plane), and trained (will fly aircraft to the strengths of the plane), and experienced (might have situational awareness enough to avoid getting killed when encountering trained pilots flying superior aircraft).

How aburd is the comparison? Not so absurd when one compares late war Allied a/c with things like the Zero. Imagine an A6M2 encountering a P51D. At ANY altitude the P51 has more than 100mph on the Zeke. And "Roll Rate" should be the P51's "middle name." Ditto for a variety of other allied aircraft. In general, the deterministic factor in deciding whether or not "average" pilots kill veterans when the average pilots are flying better planes is maximum airspeed. That lesson has been repeatedly learned throughout the history of aerial warfare. It is why people now fly Sukhois and F18s rather than A6M2s and Sopwith Camels. If "MVR" were worth much, the ideal modern fighter would be a Fokker D1.

I'd back an adequate pilot in a superior plane any day over an ace of aces in an antiquated plane. All the Ace can realistically hope for is to live long enough to see his aircraft replaced with something better.

[mdiehl]

Really, history support my pov on this. The aforementioned Guadalcanal campaign, the 1942 USN campaigns, late (1943+) WW2 combats in the ETO and PTO, and various events from the Korean and Viet Nam war, all prove that an ace only has a strong advantage if his plane is the equal or better of the Adequately Trained Pilot.

Otherwise I would have to believe, in accepting your claims, that the F4F was a markedly superior plane (allowing the USN to regularly defeat the IJN in fighter combat in 1942), or that USN pilots had much more training or experience than their Kido Butai counterparts. Since documented history states otherwise, the claim that experience gives a strong advantage does not seem to be well-supported by the facts.

[mogami]

Hi, If I recall correctly a few years ago the Confederate Airforce had a combat between a Jet and WWI aircraft. The WWI plane never stood still it was all over the place and the jet could not line up a shot. The heat signiture of the WWI was so low that the missiles could not get a lock. The Jet pilot finally said what he would do was just go full speed at the bi-plane and knock it out of the sky and the combat ended. Turns out the Bi-plane did score a few hits on the jet. When the Jet tried going slower to line up shots.



Me-262 had same problem. The turrents on a B-17 could not track a ME-262 at high speed. But the ME pilots often slowed down to shoot and they they were hit.

[mdiehl]

Exactly. All the WW1 craft can do is hope to live.

[tiredoftryingnames]

I think pilot experience should have a drastic effect on combat between aircraft within a certain "range" of one another. What I mean is the best pilot in the world flying a slow piece of junk with a single 7.92mm gun isn't going to stand a chance against a good pilot flying the top of the line with 6 .50 cals. But give the best pilot an aircraft that is only a few steps behind the one the good pilot has and he's got a chance to use his experience and skill. That would represent the best pilot knowing not to turn with an enemy that can out turn him or perform a maneuver that he knows his enemy will have trouble following. Throw in a random value into the formula to represent the sun getting in someone's eyes or bird crap landing on the canopy and you're all set.

[mogami]

Hi, The Russians, Chinese, Italians all had aces who flew bi-planes against mono-planes. The Japanese had at least one float-plane ace. (Joe Foss lost a F4F from damage against a floatplane fighter. He destroyed the enemy plane but had to bail out as well)

But I think we are looking at the extremes here. I think the point is giving a hot aircraft to a novice pilot does not make them more dangerous to the enemy (it might make him more dangerous to himself and other friendly personal)
Where aircraft are comparable. The slightly better aircraft with a green pilot is at a disadvantage when facing a slightly inferiour aircraft with a greatly superiour pilot. Not all Japanese pilots fit the bill but the ones that did had great success against better allied aircraft. There were allied pilots who flew Buffalos and such and still managed to destroy enemy aircraft and survive.

[panda124c]

Ok I'll disagree, :sleep:
Good pilots are important, but the tactic employed are even more important, in a one on one dogfight the Japanese were (in the begining) better than the Allied pilots. But as the Allies became better at using their A/C in coordinated attacks the superiority of the individual Japanese pilots became less important (the Japanese never seemed to grasp this). The AVG is a good example, the pilots were good but they were handicaped by the A/C they were flying, but the tactics they employed made the difference. The fundamental rule was "Don't dogfight the Japanese you'll lose."

So there are three parts to an air victory, tactics, pilots, aircraft in that order. The really good pilots were the one's that were good leaders who knew how to hit the enemy hard with his unit and still come back another day and do it again.

[mdiehl]

I think the point is giving a hot aircraft to a novice pilot does not make them more dangerous to the enemy (it might make him more dangerous to himself and other friendly personal).

I do not think that characterization accurately represents the situation discussed. No one is talking about operational losses or, for the most part, the use of pilots who are unable to control their aircraft (although this may adequately represent some of the late war Japanese groups).

Where aircraft are comparable. The slightly better aircraft with a green pilot is at a disadvantage when facing a slightly inferiour aircraft with a greatly superiour pilot.

Define "green." If you mean "never seen combat and not trained in the appropriate use of his plane" I agree. If you mean "never seen combat but extensively trained in the appropriate use of his plane" I do not agree that there is any intrinsic advantage to the veteran relative to the rookie. Of course, in a combat, anyone can be taken advantage of. Richtofen, WW1's ace of aces, died from a rather rookie-like mistake -- target fixation, breaking a whole suite of rules that were part of his routine instructive advice to his newer charges.

Still, I agree that when the aircraft are comparable, it comes down to the likelihood to make a mistake. In such circumstances there is a modest, marginal advantage to the experienced pilot (who may have made the mistake before but lived, or watched a friend die making that mistake). In combat the likelihood of slipping up is probably a function of the amount of time the pilot is engaged in maneuvers.

[mdiehl]

The fundamental rule was "Don't dogfight the Japanese you'll lose."

The fundamental rule was "don't let your airspeed drop below 300 mph." It was not "don't dogfight."

[mogami]

Hi, I think we need to confine the limits to actual WW2 circumstance.
There were P-40 deployed at start of WW2. I've posted an account of early actions by one group. They did well. They do assign part of their loss to not being trained. Once they are convinced to stop 'dog fighting' they improve.
So I guess we have to say that part of being green is not knowing tactics. (They had been taught the correct tactics they just couldn't force themselves to follow it before several of them had been shot down.)

I think where this fits into the picture is the early period (Where the Japanese get their myth started)

Having better aircraft did not give the allies the victory. I like the AVG but I think it is not a good example unless we say the Japanese Ki-27 pilots were better trained and I don't think this was the case. The P-40 is better then Ki-27 and Ki-43 (They didn't fight A6M2) (2 of the AVG pilots who went into USAAF fighter sqdns were shot down and killed by A6M2 while flying P-40E)

I don't think the Japanese 'pilot' advantage was as manifest in Aug 42 or later because Allied pilots had been convinced in the tactical use of the aircraft. (Which were better in many ways compared to A6M2)
It is harder to break habits that have yielded prior success then to adopt new ones when the first fail. So it is not surprising to me the Japanese kept doing things in the same old way while the allied pilots change.