Corsair vs. BF 109G,K or FW 190's

[drgondog]

If I had known beforehand that Bill's dad was a WW2 fighter pilot I wouldn't have said what I did now would I Renrich ? I don't read every new post on this forum everytime I visit, I simply don't have the time, so even though I do try to check every day I far from read every new post.

The reason for my confusion was in part Bill's response to the stall speed table I presented, and that I never before had heard his father was a WW2 fighter pilot so I thought it abit late to come forth with - but he came forth with that from the beginning of his membership I just learned, so nothing odd there.

Soren - we are fine. Let me summarize what I think I learned from my father's experience as Mustang pilot, an ace and a Command pilot with close to 9,000 hours in 40 different a/c.

Relevant to my discussions with you, he a.) flew the two seat 109 and 190 at Gablingen - post war when he was CO of the 355th, b.) flew the 'resident' Fw190D-9 with about 20 hours both in familairization and rat races with P-51s, c.) shot down the second highest total of Me 109s in the 355th, second only to the top ace Henry Brown, had 2300 hrs, highest in 355th FG due to long experience as instructor.

His comments were Anecdotal as he flew no test profiles, and his experience with the 109s were 'I won and here is why', not that Mustang was far superior. In fact he would be first to tell you that he capitalized on 51 strength and 109 weakness in his six victory/one probable/two damaged record.

My experience in a 51 does NOT qualify me as an expert, but I do have more time in one than a young fighter pilot flying his first combat mission. In the case of my father he shot down his first a/c on D-Day after completing a grand total of 2 1/2 hours in the aircraft prior to that day - maybe 6 hours total.

Hopefully, you don't feel a need to apologise and I don't need to justify my 'impressions' or recollections as long as I preface them with the factual background.

Regards,

Bill

 

[Crumpp]

after completing a grand total of 2 1/2 hours in the aircraft prior to that day - maybe 6 hours total.

Bill,

I am certainly not looking to have you justify your memory.

Am I misunderstanding this? Surely you don't mean your father had 2 /12 hours time in Operational type aircraft. According to the USAAF training regiment, fighter pilots sent to operational units received between 125-200 hours experience flying operational type aircraft. IIRC, the P40 was the most common Operational Type Training aircraft with some P47's and P51B's spread around. Are you sure your Dad was not meaning he flew in either the P51D or that particular aircraft for his 2 1/2 hour experience?

It would be interesting to know if your father experience was different and how that came to be.

Sounds like he might have had a similar experience to Oskar Bösch. He flew the Bf-109 from the beginning of the war and had several hundred hours experience in them by the time he transferred to an FW-190 equipped unit. There he received 40 minutes of ground instruction and a 20 minute flight doing three touch and go's. He then flew his first combat mission in the type.

This is contrast to the post - 1943 Luftwaffe pilots who received 25-35 hours total flying time in operational type aircraft before being posted to a combat unit.

All the best,

Crumpp

 

[Glider]

Al, Many thanks for your posting, much appreciated

 

[Soren]

Bill,

Glad to hear it, as I was way too quick to pull the trigger back there for which I definitely feel the need to apologize.

And Salute to your father and all the other brave souls the world over who risked their life for their country loved ones back then

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I think he was referring to Soren Chris, not u...

Yeah I figured that out, and we worked it out in a PM. This Flu has been killing me and I have not been able to shake it for the last week.

 

[drgondog]

Bill,

I am certainly not looking to have you justify your memory.

Am I misunderstanding this? Surely you don't mean your father had 2 /12 hours time in Operational type aircraft. According to the USAAF training regiment, fighter pilots sent to operational units received between 125-200 hours experience flying operational type aircraft. IIRC, the P40 was the most common Operational Type Training aircraft with some P47's and P51B's spread around. Are you sure your Dad was not meaning he flew in either the P51D or that particular aircraft for his 2 1/2 hour experience?

It would be interesting to know if your father experience was different and how that came to be.

Sounds like he might have had a similar experience to Oskar Bösch. He flew the Bf-109 from the beginning of the war and had several hundred hours experience in them by the time he transferred to an FW-190 equipped unit. There he received 40 minutes of ground instruction and a 20 minute flight doing three touch and go's. He then flew his first combat mission in the type.

This is contrast to the post - 1943 Luftwaffe pilots who received 25-35 hours total flying time in operational type aircraft before being posted to a combat unit.

All the best,

Crumpp

No BS on this Gene. He had 1755 hours in Training Command, volunteered for AVG, etc before finally getting out into a B-26 outfit - was ready to go to (th AF as a replacement when his application for Fighters (same time as B-26) came in. He had 160.15 hours in P-40 and 40.55 as a/c in B-26 by time he went to England on May 25, 1944. Zero time in 51. He was a Captain at the time.

Fighter school in P-40's at Tallahassee, ETO replacement pool at Goxhill and Clay Kinnard intervened and had him transferred after 4 hours (i missed 1.5 in his logbook) to 355th FG after 5 days total elapsed time at Goxhill. He and Clay went to school together and were extremely close friends. Clay puuled some stings to get dad into 355th.

On D-Day he flew his first mission of 3.15 hrs Area Patrol, then flew the second Area Patrol when he got his first score on same day. So in all, 4.0 and three landings before xfer and 3.15 on first mission.. I should have looked more closely so I missed the extra 1.5

He was still Captain but 354 Squadron CO after 55 days, a major for six weeks, and Lt. Col and Group Exec of 355FG on October 26, 1944

He was not typical.

Regards,

Bill

 

[Crumpp]

Thanks Bill for the reply on the board and the emails. I have enjoyed corresponding with you.

Here are the other estimates I promised.

Here is the Nzmax estimates that were requested on the Spitfire Mk IX and the Bf-109F/G/K series.

All the estimates are at take off weight, clean configuration overloaded fighter variant.

Here is the Spitfire Mk IX Merlin 61:




Here is the Bf-109F4 1.42ata:




Here is the Spitfire Mk IX Merlin 70:




Here is the Spitfire Mk IX Merlin 66 +18:




Here is the Bf-109G2 1.42ata:



Here is the Bf-109G6 1.42ata:




Here is the Bf-109G14ASM 1.8ata:




Here is the Spitfire Mk IX Merlin 66 +25:



Here is the Bf-109G10 1.8ata:




Here is the Bf-109K4 1.8ata:



Here is the Bf-109K4 1.98ata:



Enjoy!

All the Best,

Crumpp

 

[Kurfürst]

Great stuff, Crumpp, it looks very reasonable values to me ! 8)

Is this for SL or?

 

[Soren]

Excellent Crumpp, very good work!

The figures look very realistic and corresponds with what I expected. (Did an analysis myself which agrees very much with your charts as-well)

Again thanks!

 

[Soren]

I think its at 10,000 ft Kurfürst, looks to be so.

 

[lesofprimus]

Wow, some serious work Crumpp.... Now, what I'd like to see, is a composit of all the graphs u made, different colors representing each plane... THAT would be huge...

 

[Soren]

That would indeed be great Les.

 

[Crumpp]

The speeds are Knots Equivalent Airspeed so they are easy to convert to any altitude. The engine is data is good up to 1st stage/gear FTH.

The engine data is easy to change to whatever altitude we want.

Glad to be of help!

All the best,

Crumpp

 

[Crumpp]

My charting skills in xls are not the best. I need to figure it out and then I will combine the lift lines and multiple charts.

Then it will be very useful!

All the best,

Crumpp

 

[HoHun]

Hi Crumpp,

>My charting skills in xls are not the best. I need to figure it out and then I will combine the lift lines and multiple charts.

I'd recommend Gnuplot. It's free, and it works just like you'd expect. You could do it in Excel, but that's hundreds of clicks in an awkward interface.

gnuplot homepage

Here is an example script:

set terminal png
set output "test.png"
set xlabel 'Speed [km/h]'
set ylabel 'Altitude [km]'
set label
set xrange [500:700]
set yrange [0:10000]
set xtic 20
set ytic 1000
set grid xtic ytic
set key box bottom spacing 1 samplen 1
plot \
'F4U-1D.txt' using 2:1 w l lt 1 lw 2 title 'F4U-1D',\
'F4U-1D_2.txt' using 2:1 w l lt 1 lw 2 title 'F4U-1D 2nd sample'

Here is the content of the F4U-1D.txt file (note the "using 2:1" applied to this file, meaning speed is on the x-axis and altitude on the y-axis). The file "F4U-1D_2.txt" is basically the same but supposed to contain different figures.

---cut-------------

0.00 576.02
579.12 567.98
4693.92 648.43
5273.04 640.38
6065.52 658.08
7620.00 637.16
9144.00 614.64

---cut-------------

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Crumpp]

Thanks Henning!

I downloaded it and will play with it. I like some of the features it has especially the error range plots. You could show the normal performance variation of a design.

All the best,

Crumpp

 

[HoHun]

Hi Crumpp,

>I downloaded it and will play with it. I like some of the features it has especially the error range plots. You could show the normal performance variation of a design.

Glad you like it

Be warned that there is an error in my sample script: I left an extra "," behind the second line that will mislead Gnuplot to expect more graph specifications that I actually provided.

I'll edit that out, but only after I have mentioned it here so you know about the changes. It could be terribly confusing if you had already copied the flawed script and I'd make the edit without telling you!

Regarsd,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Crumpp]

Thank You!

 

[Soren]

Another great fighter to add is the Ta-152 H-1, with its highly efficient high AR wing it was a formidable turnfighter. The high AR made sure that the L/D ratio was very high, and coupled with the high CLmax of the NACA 23000 series airfoil this made for a lot of lift for a minimum amount of drag.

Ta-152H-1 wing AR: 8.94.

L/D ratio = Lift to drag ratio.

The more lift you have pr amount of drag the better, and the less your energy loss is going to be in maneuvers, and the higher the AR the higher the L/D ratio.

Higher AR wings also have the advantage of producing a higher amount of lift pr. area in the first place - forgetting about the L/D ratio.

L/D ratio at an AR of 4:

L/D ratio at an AR of 9:

As you can see the wing with an AR of 9 has over twice as high a L/Dmax and optimum CL.

 

[Glider]

One question about the TA152H as a high altitude fighter. Those wings could I think have been a significant problem as very high altitudes.

I have only flown a glider a couple of times at high altitude and I was briefed about the absolute requirement of being careful about the airspeed I flew at. The difference in airspeed between encountering a stall and a shock stall was very small, around 10 knots and the VNE was also impacted. For obvious reasons any form of manoevering had to be very smooth and slow.
I know that this isn't specific issue with gliders, the Lockheed U2 had similar problems and I would have thought the 152 must have followed as there isn't a magic cure for this, even today.

I have no access to any tests undertaken by the 152 and was wondering if this problem had ever some up.