Dev's, for pete's sake do something about the P-38!!

well, i tried P38F vs. 190A4 today...will surprise you; it IS still a decent plane, capable of outturning Fockes either in vertical or horizontal. It practically doesn't stall in for ex. quick vertical 90 deg. climbs, when u have to point your nose up on the enemy, it can literally 'stop' in the air without nasty spinning, can turn quite well with speeds of 190-200 kph when rudder is used correctly...elev response is rather slow, so trim usage is a must, same applies to flaps (very efficient btw.).
All tests were performed on equal terms (cold merge on same alt etc.).
Focke accelerates and dives better, has also higher initial climb ratio, but when u got advantage...
As was written and said: it's all pilot dependent IMO...

 

ok. keep flaming. i wash my hands.

 

Yeah, I know. But I felt I couldn't let Maksimenko's post go unanswered, and as far as the overall handling of the plane is concerned, the F, J and L models all share the same problem. And Glas, I don't think of the P-38F as a 'great fighter'. IMO it could sort of holds its own under certain conditions but it wasn't particularly uber. My previous rant was aimed more at the J and L, both of which I do think were truly great fighters.

What's more, the report you referred to did concede that at very low speeds the P-38F should out turn the Fw, which is counter to my experience on FH.

 

Good job ignoring anything I've said in my post.

 

You are correct in so far as that the 38's in the ETO got a lot of bad rap. However, strangely most of the pilots who flew the Lightnings loved them and many were not happy when they had to trade their P-38's for the new P-51's. The later J models and the entire L batch could mix it up with the best of the Luftwaffe, as they fixed virtually all of the haunting problems of earlier Lightnings (except the issue of poor cockpit heating ... that one was never really solved adequately). Think about it, if the Lightning's in the PTO could humble the agile Zekes, Oscars and what have you, then why should they be helpless against 109's and 190's, which were arguably a lot less agile than the Japanese planes? Speed and climb rate were certainly not a problem. The Lightning was a fast as many 109's or faster and it climbed better than all other American fighters of the day (and from all that I've read it could also out turn the other two work horses of the USAAF - the P-47 and the P-51).
I totally understand you're not going to be specially impressed by my hearsay tales, which is why in the coming days and weeks I'll try to collect as much data on the P-38 from as many sources as possible.

Yes, that should be fun.

 

Hmmm, for the most part that's pretty much the opposite of what I have observed on FH. IMO the current P-38 has a very strong tendency to depart controlled flight even under relatively low G-loads, and that's with 60 percent fuel or less. In a turn, from the moment your airspeeds drops below 300 mph, the plane will constantly try to break out and enter a spin.

Here's what __I__think__ should happen if a Fw-190 on a Lightning's tail trys to follow the P-38 into a hard turn (initial airspeed at around 300 mph). The 38 jock pulls hard on the stick and the plane responds pretty much immediately (nowhere have I ever read of the Lightning taking a second or longer to respond to pitch input) with full nose-pointing authority (the P-38 certainly didn't suffer from compressibility problems at 300 mph IAS!). Due to its much greater induced drag, the P-38 bleeds off airspeed much faster than the 190. Pulling hard on the stick at 250 mph does NOT RESULT IN THE LIGHTNING wanting to spin out of control. Instead she smoothly maintains her flight path and airspeed quickly drops to below 200 mph, at which point the pilot drops his flaps one notch and continues to pull on the stick as hard as he can without causing the plane to stall. Naturally this means decreasing stick pressure a litte bit. Meanwhile the Fw-190 will not be able to maintain a lead pursuit on the Lightning as it bleeds airspeed less quickly than the P-38, causing it to overshoot. The Focke will still have its E advantage - now more than ever actually. It can choose to disengage or it can zoom back up to higher altitude and then reposition itself for another attack.
If however, the 190 driver opts to keep turning he will overshoot and eventually lose just as much airspeed as the Lightning. The only problem is, he will now be slow and in front of the Lightning, and the latter is a much better turner at low speeds.

That's what it should be like. Here's how it's modelled in FH1.62. Again the Fw-190 is on the P-38's tail and both have 300 mph or better on the speed-o-meter. Now the P-38 tries to go into a hard turn (emphasis on TRY). Slowly and reluctantly the P-38's angle of attack will increase, and only if you trim your elevators all the way up. The 190 drivers sees that and also pulls on the stick. Only in his case the plane will respond immediately, buying him valuable time and giving him a nice head start in terms of degrees per second. The P-38 on the other hand isn't abe to pull more than 5 G's, give or take a half. Even if the Lightning driver attempts to pull near the edge of a blackout, he won't succeed. I don't know where this lack of nose pointing authority comes from but at only 300 mph it's pure rubbish IMO. Anyway, the only way for the P-38 to defeat the 190 in a turn is (as described above) to take the fight into the low speed regime, so the 38's objective is to pull hard and bleed off airspeed quickly. In practice this isn't easily possible, not with FH1.62 anyway. At 300 mph you can pull the stick to the point of breaking your joystick, but the plane will barely exceed 5 G's. Ironically at 280 mph you need to decrease stick pressure to stop the plane from wanting to stall and spin! So you're faced with a strange dilemma, on the one hand you need to turn hard and lose airspeed. On the other hand, you are forced to widen your turn, which of course means less AOA and therefore less speed bleed and also less turn rate. So now as your nose pointing ability goes down the drain you're quickly becoming a more predictable target and you're STILL NOT IN THE LOW SPEED REGIME! Instead you airspeed dribbles away ever so slowly and you're stuck in that gray area between 250 mph and 150 mph. The 190 of course has no such problems and can pull his nose ahead of the Lightning. Speed bleed be damned. The 190 driver only has to maintain this AOA for a second or so anyway before he can ease stick pressure and revert to level flight after his guns have shredded the Lightning to pieces.

 

Well, it really hard to make it 10mph less, while keeping turn speed and radius realistic.
WB Flight model cant apprehend that kind of difference.

I will try to do anything about stall speed again, but i will not promise anything.

 

Some of you may have already been to this site, but for those who haven't, I will post a link. It has a few pages from the original training manual, and if you have the time, the 34 minute training video is well worth watching. The capability of this aircraft at all speeds is a damn site better than modelled on FH, even on 1 engine.

Here is the link.

regards, Oz

 

u know most planes are modeled slightly off, for balence and game play isues imop, this is why exec ignor all xx plxne vers xxplane data and want historical flight data for how said plane should fly. its all good and weeel to say p38 should outtrun 190 low, but if 190 turn abuilty is modeled high( witch i believe to be the case sine in yak 9- low altitued supremissy fighter fighting 190 lo on deck i coulnt hold flat turns that 190 took without torck snapping, or having to fight nosing up into stall. went from holding 6 to trying to evad 190 and not crash.... and all i hear in hear for the last year is how yaks under 1k outperform all german planes.) so really u cant say xxx should be better then xxx becasue xxx you compairng tomay be all fucked up and your xxx relistic to irl.

 

@exec

stall speed.. just take a look into the link to the discussion 1,5 year ago.. data were produced (and are posted there).. nothing changed.. it's still 10 mph too high

 

I tell ya Im guilty of one quick to bitch, but you have a valid point. About a year ago I thought I learn some game dev. so I could then teach my son, so he could do something productive with all the hours a kid can play games ,ya know. I had no idea, I dont remember Law or Chemistry being this complex. Just to do the simpelist thing is another whole ball of wax. And I havent even worked on anything that flys yet. So i feel for ya. Maybe get some to help? If take to small parts. What I think everyone wonders is when theres an erro of over FM it always seems to be a gold plane. Iknow the variables are limitless, and who knew 1 change here will change that over there. This last update, I notice if your vulching in a red, you better not miss. Diveing in at 500mph wont help you, better get your 63 50cal. to hit or they soon be at your six gunns a blazeing,lol. Or that ju i seen fly over f21 through full up acks, 3 x's at 200ft and no damage, bombing the hell almost closed it. He did die though, I put 101 50cal. and killed himself while ditching. ha. Keep up good work, still the best combat sim around, try to spread over modeling around a bit. PS Cockpit air conditioner in my F4U stops cooling in climbe, while i see 190 windows are frosting over, this is bull&%%$. Please fix ASAP

 

Is there any forum section where i can post some things/ideas about fh? Where i can be sure that somebody read my post and think about it min 10 sec ?


imho is bad that

• p47c can fly 450km/h with lowered gears w/o any strange sound.
• 410 have very weak pilot-armour (worse than mossie)
• 410 and p38 have very vulnerable elevator to g-damage with holes
• as i remember b24j have bug when fly with 30% or 50% fuel, 1600lbs climb speed set to 135
  

 

p38 used to be a sweet ride. I do know that the last TOD we had pre-tampering I was flying a p38f and downed rgreat twice in his 109f in the same sortie. Now I'm not one to judge anyone, or try to pretend that I had any influence with it's demise I just thought it was interesting.

I do know that now the p38 is definetly a challenge to fly and if you are at an alt disatvantage you are done, unless of course it's a tactically challenge agressor who decides to HO you.
Glas posted that he flew once and got two kills in it. Good for him, awsome, superb, but he is an experienced pilot who will be succesful in most planes. I got 3 kills flying a ju87 the other night using the 7mm front guns. Does that make the ju87 a uber dogfighter? hell no

There is a reason the p38 is a mult 20 fighter. It's because some smart ass turned it into a plane that stalls like a jug and turns like a b25.

Aside from that....... FH team ur doing a great job, keep up the good work

 

I dont care about p38's future because sometime ago it was the plane i was afraid most of all (and 1st FM of La5fn) I dont miss this p38 But i miss u -thug-
I thought u ve leaved FH. Now it seems that u still on duty - what hours(or days) do u fly usually?

 

you can kill me around 10 pm eastern standard time zh old pal

 

Im only comparing to TR p-38 (which is no means perfect yet), but IMO it feels like FH p-38 is a DOG.

At low speed it should be excellent turner with very gentle stall. (no torque and propwash over both wings which creates lift even when plane stands in air.) For comparison in TR you can take off p-38 in under 100m of runway which is even better than most light japanese planes can do. This feels quite realistic as airflow from engines is deflected by flaps and creates sort of hover effect. with throttle down its a brick...at speed its a brick too. But at low speed it can make some really nice climbs and tight turns without any fear of flipping over like in single engined planes.

I think FH p-38 misses exactly this. It's not as stable as it should be at low speeds and it stall speed seems to be too high.

 

Yeapp, you are right illo

Propwash, flowing over wings increases lift signinifically

But i guess it is hard to model in WB because it doesn't affect high-speed turning - there as you noticed TR P-38 a brick too, and single engine aircrafts in WB doesn't have lots of torque to denie them low speed turning ability

This feature of can be and was used as defensive manoeuvre, but you have to deaccelerate rapidly to slow speeds, they usually achived this by climbing turn (so called "clover leaf")

But a clever con wouldn't try to deaccelerate with P-38, he will just extend and turn to hit slowed down P-38

 

Probably. Then again not all cons are clever all of the time, and it would be nice to have this option when tangling with one who (momentarily) isn't.

 

Well, we have to ask --BW-- then to try to do something
Cause every bit of perfomance counts in fight

 

http://www.kazoku.org/xp-38n/articles/p38info.htm

thought this might be of interest