1943+ Allied Aircraft Advantage at altitude ?

[Crackaces]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf


turbos and multi-stage superchargers will allow the engine to maintain power
to high altitudes - where there is less air resistance, that is why the top speed is high at high altitudes

at low altitudes, the system is useless weight and drag, and decreases the top speed of an identical plane
that would be single-stage supercharged

I am not sure what you are referring to .. but ... for example .. the TSIO-360-MB develops 4" greater manifold pressure all the way to the crtical altitude of 18000 feet the TSIO-420-N develops this all the way to 27,000 feet. In these cases more power than an normally aspirated engine by increasing the virtual stroke volume.

(CI * LS * RPM) /K = HP .. cubic inches * linear stroke * RPM / constant = Thrust HP * efficiency = BHP brake horsepower ..

It is quite possible to produce a heck of lot more HP for much less weight by increasing the stroke volume above normal atmosphere right up to the critical altitude.. it was the Mooney Mantra ..and how the Bravo was the fastest single in the business

The problem is heat .. it is explained in my article ..

[Crackaces]

Page 15 onwards for powerplant and how to operate it. As you can see, the pilot has an extra lever to move and an additional gauge to keep his eyes on, with some gauge reading restrictions to avoid damage and sudden power loss. A P-47 for example may not throttle back very quickly from high throttle high supercharger pressure. An enemy pilot knowing that could use it to help a tailing P-47 overshoot him, for example.

Instead of the stove pipe wastegate as per my article .. I am seeing that the P-47 is using a manual wastegate .. ok .. I get it although in terms of workload I am not sure how much more but I was never trying to shoot down anything in my Mooney [;)]

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: Erkki
What P-47 has is turbo superchargers, most WW2 fighters, including Japanese, did have superchargers, though.

Having a turbo supercharger is not necessarily a good thing in air combat and it does increase cost and pilot work load. However it does give P-47 an exceptionally high altitude of best speed though, and good speed there, even if the top speed at low and medium altitudes isnt all that great.

Also agreed that witpae is an operational/strategic war simulator. Not air war simulator.

Agreed. Whatever a game tries to simulate, the better the model for something, the more data it takes to build the model. In a typical flight simulator, the data for a particular aircraft is several KB minimum. Some simulators may be up around 100KB. The simulator covers every aspect of aircraft performance and does it's best to reproduce all those aspects accurately.

AE is a larger scale "simulation" (though I would hesitate to call it a simulation). It's strength is modeling the entire war to a degree never done in any other game. The model is much larger scale than a flight simulator and many details below the operational level need to be abstracted. Each aircraft in the air model is modeled with less than 100 bytes of data. Far less than even the more simple flight simulators out there.

A lot of details of aircraft performance are simplified because of this. The data simply isn't there, and there is no room to add such data.

There are some areas where results aren't quite historical, but AE's results are much closer to historical than WitP was, and they are pretty darn good when you compare it to other games that look at military conflict from this scale.

AE can't be everything. Modeling reality to the degree necessary would be beyond the capabilities of modern PCs and would take a very long time to design and code.

Bill

[scout1]

ORIGINAL: scout1

Curious as to the general consensus relative to whether the allied fighters had an advantage at higher altitudes in the 1943+ time period ? Also, whether sweeping at high altitude is considered gamey since there is no allowance for the japanese player to effectively order CAP to ignore high altitude sweeps ?

I seem to be getting my hat handed to me as the Japanese over my bases and was wondering whether it was more than my poor choices/orders ...... ?

Didn't intend to start a theoretical debate ..... Just seems like either player should have the ability to fly CAP AND intentionally ignore high or low altitude (or at least request too). Sure, that may result in permitting the bombers in, but at least it is a choice. Sweeping at select altitudes shouldn't beget a response from a bi-plane to chase after it .... the flyboys were gutsy as hell, but several did have the smarts to know when to pick a fight another day ...... at least those who survived .....

[crsutton]

In game terms the Japanese player tends to hold the advantage early in the war. Part of the problem is most play with PDU on and that tends to bring a lot of tojos into the game which have a good speed and the best max ceiling. Generally speaking, the plane that can fly higher gets the advantage. This is not too far off the historical mark either. Once the second generation Allied planes come into the game the worm turns fast. Better, faster and able to fly higher than pretty much any Japanese plane the Allied player can just do a lot of high sweeps. This really is not out of historical proportion. The only really skewed thing is that baring a HR limiting heights you are going to see a lot of combat at very high altitudes. Most players have come up with reasonable solutions both in tactics and using common sense house rules.

So yes, both historically and in game terms Allied fighters should start to do very well in 1943, and the ability to go higher is a factor.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

In game terms the Japanese player tends to hold the advantage early in the war. Part of the problem is most play with PDU on and that tends to bring a lot of tojos into the game which have a good speed and the best max ceiling. Generally speaking, the plane that can fly higher gets the advantage. This is not too far off the historical mark either. Once the second generation Allied planes come into the game the worm turns fast. Better, faster and able to fly higher than pretty much any Japanese plane the Allied player can just do a lot of high sweeps. This really is not out of historical proportion. The only really skewed thing is that baring a HR limiting heights you are going to see a lot of combat at very high altitudes. Most players have come up with reasonable solutions both in tactics and using common sense house rules.

So yes, both historically and in game terms Allied fighters should start to do very well in 1943, and the ability to go higher is a factor.

Look at those fighter combat altitudes as metaphors and the problem disappears. All that matters is the relative altitude, i.e. "this one is higher than that one" which is historical as opposed to "the display says 31,000ft instead of 22,000ft" which is unhistorical.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

In game terms the Japanese player tends to hold the advantage early in the war. Part of the problem is most play with PDU on and that tends to bring a lot of tojos into the game which have a good speed and the best max ceiling. Generally speaking, the plane that can fly higher gets the advantage. This is not too far off the historical mark either. Once the second generation Allied planes come into the game the worm turns fast. Better, faster and able to fly higher than pretty much any Japanese plane the Allied player can just do a lot of high sweeps. This really is not out of historical proportion. The only really skewed thing is that baring a HR limiting heights you are going to see a lot of combat at very high altitudes. Most players have come up with reasonable solutions both in tactics and using common sense house rules.

So yes, both historically and in game terms Allied fighters should start to do very well in 1943, and the ability to go higher is a factor.

I would also add that by 1943, the USAAC and USN had already rotated a number of very experienced pilots back the the US as pilot trainers, and that made a big difference. US pilots benefited from this experience as those that had been in combat and survived could pass on the tactics they had used to survive. IJAAF and IJNAF pilots stayed on station until they were either seriously wounded or died.

In the game, you will note that this is reflected in that while IJNAF and IJAAF pilot skills degrade as the war drags on, USN, USMC and USN pilots come out of the pools fairly well trained. Add better pilots and better airframes and it equals mostly Allied air victories.

[Commander Stormwolf]

Japanese and Allied planes were pretty evenly matched throughout the entire war,
it was the pilots that made the difference, both early on (japanese success with oscars
in 1941/1942) and later (1943 japanese air crew is badly trained and is cut to pieces above new guinea and rabaul)

[Commander Stormwolf]

People have watched too many episodes of dogfights

most us fighters (even 1943 onwards) were pretty helpless at low altitude

that being said, a Corsair could score hits with that initial pass from high altitude and score kills that way

even seasoned veterans like Pappy Boyington in corsairs were shot down

since they inevitably would be in a zero's attack position, and as Sakai
called it, at low altitude he had them in a "Sumo lock" the corsair cannot run away
at sea level, cannot turn, has to hope his wingman can clear his tail, hide behind his armor and pray

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVUt_L6T ... ure=relmfu

a miltary channel show that seems to tell the truth.. for once [:)]

[Commander Stormwolf]

AE can't be everything.

Almost is [;)] Well done developers

[mdiehl]

most us fighters (even 1943 onwards) were pretty helpless at low altitude

That claim is unsubstantiated and generally counterindicated by the results. Many US fighters were capabale of greater speeds at low altitudes than their opfor. You yourself posted performance envelopes from a source that you claim to trust. Take a look at the performance envelopes that you posted. The US fighter is faster at ALL altitudes than the Japanese one. I suspect that was generally true from 1943 onward.

Japanese radial engined fighters did not have particularly excellent coefficients of drag. They were on-par with US radial designs. Nor did they typically have greater power output.

[Commander Stormwolf]

Okay instead of Tony, I can find one for the Frank

P-47 is similar in speed to the Tony at low altitude,
but Tony has way better Mvr than P-47 or corsair

140 kg/m2 means you will run circles around 240 kg/m2 P-47 or 200kg/m2 Corsair

and at low altitude, there is nowhere to dive.. except into davey jones locker

[Commander Stormwolf]

Altitude performance was important at high altitude

if you could BnZ from 30,000 feet down to 5,000 feet then Mig-3 would
have been the best fighter in the world

on the eastern front, all that mattered was your top speed at sea level

i am convinced the same was true in the pacific theatre during carrier battles when you are trying to shoot down torpedo planes

where poor altitude performance matters is during interceptions of B-29s
most japanese fighters would have trouble climbing fast enough, and their top speed
at 30,000 feet would make them slower than the B-29s so you get a message
"fighters cannot catch up" just like a P-26 peashooter cannot catch up to a Ki-21-II sally [:)]

[Commander Stormwolf]

I think what the original poster was asking was about the max altitude advantages,

you can set your fighters to sweep at 42,000 feet and they are practically immune

so I make a recommendation, since the idea of altitude performance is too complicated
for the code (as the developer said),


im playing with the idea of a set max altitude of 30,000 feet for all aircraft
and then the code simply uses the different speed and Mvr variables to calculate the result

(and US fighters still dominate, because the max speed variable is constant for all altitudes, which is okay, at least they don't have the altitude bonus too)

To me, the old carrier strike / pacwar code seemed to generate pretty accurate results

[mdiehl]

and at low altitude, there is nowhere to dive.. except into davey jones locker

The lesson from WW2 was that it was better to have a greater maximum airspeed than your opponent, rather than lower wing-loading.

From your claim that US a.c. were "pretty helpless" at low altitude, one might get the impression that they were easy to shoot down or generally underpeformed Japanese a.c. So let's just look at the data.

F4U-1 corsair at war power at sea level tops out at 348 mph. It climbs at 2800 feet per minute.

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/ ... 2155-b.pdf

The Ki-61's BEST climb rate was about 2900 feet per minute. Not appreciably different from the F4U-1 and only a little bit better. At sea level the Ki-61's top speed was 461 km/hour or 289 mph. Vastly slower than the F4U-1 to the tune of about 60 mph. So unless the F4U expends alot of energy turning, the Ki-61 will only have a shot at the F4U if it attacks the F4U from the front.

[mdiehl]

By the way, the Frank does a better job at all altitudes than the Tony. At sea level the Frank is only about 25 mph slower than the F4U-1, and has a substantially superior climb rate. Natcherly the relative merits shift if you look at 1944 period F4Us rather than the F4U-1. The F4U-4 outclimbs and outspeeds the Frank at all altitudes.

[Commander Stormwolf]

The lesson from WW2 was that it was better to have a greater maximum airspeed than your opponent, rather than lower wing-loading.

No, the lesson was the combination of

a) higher top speed
b) greater firepower
c) armor and self sealing tanks

is greater than

a) more maneuverability

It took 3 or 4 times as long for a Zero to shoot down an F6F than for the F6F to
shoot down the Zero (one burst was usually enough)

can compensate for slightly lower top speed with a lot more MVR,
like how the A6M2 did against the P-40 and P-39

but naturally, having high MVR means you will carry less weapons
and no armor

so the idea of a lightweight fighter that dances in circles, but is shot down easily
became extinct

[mdiehl]

Of course the armor and durability mattered. But in the end, faster aircraft controlled the fight. A faster a.c. got to choose whether the fight would be engaged, and when to disengage. All a slower, more maneuverable a.c. could hope to do was ambush the faster plane, or hope the faster plane would bleed off lots of energy in a turning engagement. Late war allied pilots were trained to avoid turning engagements.

[mdiehl]

can compensate for slightly lower top speed with a lot more MVR,
like how the A6M2 did against the P-40 and P-39

How did the A6M2 do against the P-40 or P-39? Got any detailed numbers?

[Commander Stormwolf]

If we believe the Japanese claims, they scored a 20-1 kill ratio [:D]

If we believe the allied claims, 95% of P-40s made it home safely [;)]


general consensus is A6M2 tore them apart during Philipines / DEI campaigns
and during a big part of 1942 over New Guinea

BUT.. as I am not saying the tactical performance of the A6M2 was superior to the P-40

It was able to compensate for being slower with a better turn rate

And really in the hands of equal pilots, they probably were equal performers

but besides the AVG, good pilots were in short supply on the allied side