F-16 Zero's...

[Nikademus]

And the award for the best mangling of Eric Bergerud's name goes to: Cap n Gown [:D]

Award to be presented by Nikademus who was last year's winner of the best mangling of this name.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

And the award for the best mangling of Eric Bergerud's name goes to: Cap n Gown [:D]

Award to be presented by Nikademus who was last year's winner of the best mangling of this name.

The presentation will be made where?
A. On an Alien spacecraft
B. Germany (?)
C. Virginia
D. None of the above

EDIT: Inquiring minds want to know![:D]

[Lemurs!]

Testarossa,
You probably already know this, I think you meant 700km/h not 600 as the A6m2 could safely dive above 600km/h.

The A6M3a did not have a weaker skin and had a better dive performance than the early production A6M3/32s. The range was gained on the A6M3a by adding two hardpoints to the wings to accept wingtanks.

The safe dive speeds were:
A6M2: 390mph
A6M3/32: 410mph early, 460 late
A6M3a/22: 460mph
A6M5: 490mph
A6M8: 540mph~

As a point of interest the P40 of course did have a high dive speed and was a good diver but it was not the only allied aircraft.
The Wildcat's dive speed was virtually identical to the A6M2.

Kadrin,

Several people have recomended good source material to help you learn a bit more so don't froth and say no one is offering anything except anecdotes.
According to memory, as i do not have my books in front of me, the Japanese lost something like 9 land based zeroes between 8th dec and 28 Feb. to air combat.

That being said i did lower zero mnvr value in the CHS to 33.

Mike

[CapAndGown]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

And the award for the best mangling of Eric Bergerud's name goes to: Cap n Gown [:D]

Award to be presented by Nikademus who was last year's winner of the best mangling of this name.

Oh, my. I wasn't expecting this at all. I was just happy to be nominated. I never thought the judges would actually pick me. I am so honored. I don't know where to begin. Let me just say thank you to all the little people that made this honor possible.

[Nikademus]

The Answer is: A

award ceremony to occur right after the Anal Probe.

[X(]

[bradfordkay]

" And the award for the best mangling of Eric Bergerud's name goes to: Cap n Gown

Award to be presented by Nikademus who was last year's winner of the best mangling of this name. "

He's a Virginian... any name with a spelling close to that of a Confederate general's usually gets corrupted into the latter. Forgive him... it's not his fault.

[testarossa]

ORIGINAL: Lord_Calidor

I'm no expert in air tactics...

You asked for this...[:D]

Barrel Roll
Similar to a roll, but you apply back pressure on the stick while you are rolling to the left or right. This makes your plane fly in a corkscrew pattern and is often used to make the enemy overshoot.

Chandelle
Flying a plane in a large climbing spiral, staying at a fast speed. It is a good way to drag slower enemy planes up higher without venturing too far away from your present location.

Energy Fighting (BnZ)
Fighting with the objective of keeping an energy advantage (speed / altitude) over your opponent.

Extend
To get separation (distance) from your opponent, usually with the purpose of gaining altitude and coming back above them. Often used in Energy Fighting.

Flat Scissors
Most fights degenerate into a flat scissors fight when both planes reach ground level. The winner is usually the person with a better roll rate and turn rate.

Hammerhead Stall
This maneuver is performed by flying straight up, then just before your plane is about to stall you apply full rudder so the nose falls to the side and you point straight down again. If an enemy chases you in a climb, this is a good way to get every last inch of altitude then reverse on him.

High Yo-Yo
This is often used to prevent an overshoot. When you are chasing someone in a turn and you are catching up too fast, raise your nose above the horizon so you are climbing as you are turning. This will trade your speed for altitude and ensure you stay behind the enemy. The opposite of this maneuver is the low Yo-Yo.

Immelman
Named after the WW I ace Max Immelman, this maneuver is the opposite of the Split-S. You pull back until your plane is flying level and upside down, then you roll your plane right side up. This is the most efficient was to gain altitude and reverse your direction. Do not fly this when the enemy is anywhere near since it leaves you slow and vulnerable.

Low Yo-Yo
This is used to catch up to an opponent while turning, and to keep your speed up while turning. If you notice you are getting slower and not catching up to someone in a turn, lower your nose below the horizon do you are descending while turning. This has two effects - you keep your speed up and you can cut inside the opponents turn.

Out of Plane Turns
These are used for evading the enemy. The concept is that you position your plane so your opponent must roll his plane to follow your turn. He will have no choice but to continue flying straight until he can roll his plane in the proper direction to pull back and give chase.

Snap Roll
A snap roll occurs when one wing of the plane stalls before the other. This causes the plane to spin quickly around the wing that has not stalled (much more quickly than a normal roll). The snap roll can be a useful evasive maneuver but it can put a lot of strain on the plane so you have to watch your speed and weapons load when you perform it. Pull back the stick hard and rudder to the side you want to roll.

Split-S (Split Esse)
This maneuver is named since it looks like the bottom part of the letter S. You roll your plane on it's back and pull back on the stick until you are flying level again. This is a good evasive maneuver if someone is closing on you fast from above and you need to evade. The opposite of this maneuver is the Immelman.

[CapAndGown]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

The Answer is: A

award ceremony to occur right after the Anal Probe.

[X(]

I have decided to skip the award ceremony in a symbolic protest against the treatment of native Americans. (and, conveniently, to avoid the pre-ceremony festivities. [X(])

[Nikademus]

aw com'on.....it'll only hurt a little.

[testarossa]

ORIGINAL: Lemurs!
Testarossa, You probably already know this, I think you meant 700km/h not 600 as the A6m2 could safely dive above 600km/h.

Proves 1000th time, that one should never trust his memory giving tech data.[:D] You are right of course.

Here is my source:
Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War
by Rene J. Francillon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books

Cheers.

[rhohltjr]

ORIGINAL: pad152

Playing against the AI the game always ends (game over) at the end of 1943?

No, it doesn't always end at the end of 1943. Perhaps most of the time, but depending
on play preferences it could go on much longer than that(before you get the option to continue).

[Lord_Calidor]

Thnx to everyone for sheding some light on BnZ, I could've used Google, but I was being rather lazy - Thursday late afternoon, hot, humid day... [:)]
So, basically, it really means that pilots have small time window to open fire. If enemy reacts, they haul a$$. I don't get how can that be usefull against escorted enemy bombers, or when escorting friendly bombers into enemy CAP? In both cases, they don't maintain contact with bombers for long. Quite puzzled, I am...

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: Lord_Calidor

Thnx to everyone for sheding some light on BnZ, I could've used Google, but I was being rather lazy - Thursday late afternoon, hot, humid day... [:)]
So, basically, it really means that pilots have small time window to open fire. If enemy reacts, they haul a$$. I don't get how can that be usefull against escorted enemy bombers, or when escorting friendly bombers into enemy CAP? In both cases, they don't maintain contact with bombers for long. Quite puzzled, I am...

Even if the enemy doesn't react, they still continue the dive. The point is that Boom and Zoom was the only tactic that worked against Zeros at the beginning of the war, because they didn't dive very fast, but they could turn on a dime.

[testarossa]

Me-109 was an ideal BnZ aircraft with good diving and climbing speed.

German Ace Hartman got something like 300 victories. He was shooting down Russian planes up to the very end of the war. He dove from above on the victim, blasted it with cannon fire from 100-150 m and zoomed away. No matter how many fighters were opposing him, this tactic was very successful.

There were situations where he had to get into the level fight, where rolling/turning and sheer numbers are essential, and he got shot down a couple of times.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: testarossa

Me-109 was an ideal BnZ aircraft with good diving and climbing speed.

German Ace Hartman got something like 300 victories. He was shooting down Russian planes up to the very end of the war. He dove from above on the victim, blasted it with cannon fire from 100-150 m and zoomed away. No matter how many fighters were opposing him, this tactic was very successful.

There were situations where he had to get into the level fight, where rolling/turning and sheer numbers are essential, and he got shot down a couple of times.

I'll interject this information again, for what it's worth.

Awhile back (May 1997) on the Usenet an interesting thread developed in which Erik Shilling took part. Following is a snippet from one of his posts:

     About 5 years ago while Saburo Sakai was in Los Angeles I had the
     oprotunity to talk to him. One of the question I ask was what was the
     Zero's top speed with full armor.

     His answer was 309 mph. He also said tht Japanese pilots would not dive
     above 300 mph IAS, becasue the skin on the wings started wrinkling and
     caused the pilot great concern. He also added to this that above 300 it
     was almost impossible to roll.

For a fuller account of the technical aspects of the Zero fighter, with a lot of detail going into the problems which beset the plane's early development, get a copy of Eagles of Mitsubishi by Jiro Horikoshi, the gentleman who led the design team.

[testarossa]

Why would you quote my post about Me-109, to argue about Lemur!'s info about Zero's safe diving speeds? Oh, well...

I don't have that book on hand to prove my data, so i didn't contest his info.

Furthermore, knowing him, I'm pretty sure he had documented proof to his claims.

In general actual performance of Japanese and Russian airplanes was worse than designed, production models were worse than the test ones. So your info is most likely true too as to aircrafts of Sakai's unit, or that particular production batch.

Than there was a pdf posted here with captured A6M2 test results. There was diving speed and speed at various altitude listed. I don't remember any numbers, but still A6M2 was pretty useless above 20000 ft or something. Which is not modelled in WitP btw.

[CapAndGown]

ORIGINAL: Lord_Calidor

Thnx to everyone for sheding some light on BnZ, I could've used Google, but I was being rather lazy - Thursday late afternoon, hot, humid day... [:)]
So, basically, it really means that pilots have small time window to open fire. If enemy reacts, they haul a$$. I don't get how can that be usefull against escorted enemy bombers, or when escorting friendly bombers into enemy CAP? In both cases, they don't maintain contact with bombers for long. Quite puzzled, I am...

For attacking enemy bombers, you simply attack the bombers and ignore the escort. That is, if you can ignore the escort. If they attack you then you need to deal with that as a first priority.

As for escorting bombers, the tactic involves flying high above the bombers and waiting for the interceptors to show up. Then you dive on them.

And no, on any one pass, you don't maintain contact for long. The idea is to break away from the enemy, regain altitude, and do it again.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: testarossa

Why would you quote my post about Me-109, to argue about Lemur!'s info about Zero's safe diving speeds? Oh, well...

I don't have that book on hand to prove my data, so i didn't contest his info.

Furthermore, knowing him, I'm pretty sure he had documented proof to his claims.

In general actual performance of Japanese and Russian airplanes was worse than designed, production models were worse than the test ones. So your info is most likely true too as to aircrafts of Sakai's unit, or that particular production batch.

Than there was a pdf posted here with captured A6M2 test results. There was diving speed and speed at various altitude listed. I don't remember any numbers, but still A6M2 was pretty useless above 20000 ft or something. Which is not modelled in WitP btw.

It isn't my information but what Shilling wrote regarding what Sakai said to him in conversation a number of years earlier--we're talking eight years ago now, about three years before Sakai died.

There's lots of confusion and rumor out there. Like the results of the test in San Diego from that captured Zero early in the war. Sure, those results were fairly impressive . . . but no one bothers to mention that 1) the guns had been stripped out of the Zero so there was even less weight to contend with and 2) it was running on 100 octane fuel, something the Japanese didn't happen to have.

The Zero was an all-right fighter in its own way, a pretty good escort plane up until the middle of 1942, anyway. After that it became increasingly obsolete, and quite frankly dangerous to drive in traffic. The rest is myth. The Wildcat was quite equal to the challenge on balance once its pilot learned how to get the most out of his plane and avoid the strengths of the Zero. And so, per the norm, it really just boiled down to pilot savvy and service doctrine. United States Navy pilots were quite savvy, learned very fast, and their service enjoyed much superior doctrine (2-plane sections, for openers) than the Japanese almost from the start. The game has pilot savvy all screwed up, and doesn't begin to address doctrine.

We're not just talking Sakai's Zero here, or the "batch" his unit might have had at any given time. The Zero had all sorts of design issues, and if anyone would bother to read the book written by the man who designed that airplane they might wise up. It's when people don't do that sort of research but instead rely on myth that confusion reigns.

Above 20,000 feet the Zero became feeble. Indeed, I posted the comments of a Japanese Zero pilot a couple of years ago where he described the problems that plane had at higher altitudes (anything much above 18,000 feet as I recall) because of the inferior prop it used--it couldn't bite enough of that thin air. I then went on and posted a detailed report on the variable-pitch propeller technology from Hamilton-Standard, which was either misundertood and/or ignored. At the time I couldn't find that interview with the Japanese pilot when asked, but I noticed about a month later someone else in the forum had run across it and provided a link to same. The result? No result. That was the result.

The Zero was called a pretty good climber, but in fact it was only a bit better (about 400 feet/minute better) than a Wildcat (well, there were a number of "Wildcats" but I don't wish to get into that argument here and now--let's stick with the F4F-4) at lower altitudes in a sustained climb and not as good above 20,000 feet. The Wildcat had an excellent two-stage supercharger that gave it the advantage over the Zero at higher altitude, not to mention a much higher service ceiling. But altitude doesn't come into play much. Speed? The game has the Zero rated at 332 miles per hour. And so on.

I guess people believe what they want to believe.

Why did I respond to your post instead of the other? Beats me. Maybe I was tired.

[Lord_Calidor]

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn
Why did I respond to your post instead of the other? Beats me. Maybe I was tired.

Great post, TJ. Get tired again, and post some more! [;)]

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, Read the USN report following the battle of Coral Sea in May 1942. The USN still did not know what a A6M2 was. They reported after the battle that they had encountered ME-109's

And those were flown by Germans of course (i.e. white man) because, as everyone in USA knew then, the Japanese were just verey small men with poor eyesight (i.e. all of then wearing thick glasses)...


Leo "Apollo11""