OMG, impossible happened, Microprose has been revived and team up with IEN to create Warbirds 2020 !

Discussion in 'Warbirds International' started by kemioz, Jun 10, 2019.

  1. -ALW-

    -ALW- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2001
    Messages:
    2,096
    Location:
    Minot, North Dakota, USA
    Well, like I used to keep telling you guys....it's about the pilot, not the plane. Anybody can climb to 40kft and jump another plane. Just ask hezzey. He would take the little bi-planes way way up and would get bloody nose bleeds you could see running down the sides of his plane, and dive after me.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2020
  2. -ALW-

    -ALW- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2001
    Messages:
    2,096
    Location:
    Minot, North Dakota, USA
    When I made the case for the P-38, the programmers made it worse, and then fixed it later. They realized there was a problem after nobody was flying P-38, including me for nearly 2 years. I was even given the task of remodeling the cockpit after doing MONTHS of research. I REALLY worked hard on proving the case for the P-38. But then, after I started flying it again, folks started complaining again. When I flew the P-51, to me it was like a 190/F4u on steroids, along with the spit. But, a person had to be aware of the quirks and work around them, rather than against them. That's why I'll keep saying, over and over, it's the pilot, not the plane, when the "plane" is killing everything. :)
     
    looseleaf likes this.
  3. -ALW-

    -ALW- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2001
    Messages:
    2,096
    Location:
    Minot, North Dakota, USA
    I used to get into TnB fights on the deck, lose an engine, and my P-38 would really go crazy and I had to use that strange flying behavior to "gain" an advantage. For a very limited amount of time I might add. This was always better as you know with more alt. But, the one thing I always capitalized on was when the attacker would get over-confident seeing the dead engine, smoke, as I played hurt and out of control then I would nail him. :D
     
  4. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2003
    Messages:
    5,330
    TBH - the sole thing you that were always able to scare the shit out of me with, was the Bf 109F, and not the P-38 :D
     
  5. -ALW-

    -ALW- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2001
    Messages:
    2,096
    Location:
    Minot, North Dakota, USA
    Hahah! :) I always thought it was great fun flying Axis planes....they were so much better than most Allied planes, in WBFH that is! But, honestly, the reason that was the case was because I knew the weaknesses and strengths of Allied planes. People forgot that I flew Axis planes just as much as Allied. I just never let anyone know. Secret is out, so yes, I did fly 2+ years non-stop Axis planes. But, I flew all Allied planes for 20+ years, beginning with Air Warrior on AOL, for 4 years and ending with Warbirds. Used to fly 7 days a week, 3-5 hrs every night. I was nuts!!
     
    madvad likes this.
  6. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2003
    Messages:
    5,330
    I always thought it was great flying both sides. That is what made WBFH so special. Even though there was a clear division of both sides, the RPS made it worth it.
    And I always liked the usual, high risk dogfighting, over the tiresome and tedious vulching with E-fighters (some, like [warning, a curse word ahead] pietas, excelled in).
    There were few really good dogfighters, who could gain an upper edge even starting in a seemingly "lost" position.
    You, and your 109F were among them. More? haupt, helrza, 2 or 3 Russian guys, spuint...maybe some more, but it's long since I (and everyone else) ceased playing WBFH.

    As far as my skills are concerned - I was young, puny, and impatient. But I did like the game, and did enjoy it, albeit lacking the patience to really make any real progress in it (IIRC my longest streak was less than 50). But I found nothing like it ever since.

    Ever since I flew in the 302nd I was switching sides every ToD, and I must admit there were "Uber" planes on both sides. It's not that the golds or reds had an advantage all the RPS long. It varied over the whole ToD.
     
    -ALW- likes this.
  7. madvad

    madvad Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 24, 2006
    Messages:
    28
    Location:
    São Bernardo do Campo-SP Brasil
    Weeeehaaaaaa
     
    -ALW- likes this.
  8. -ALW-

    -ALW- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2001
    Messages:
    2,096
    Location:
    Minot, North Dakota, USA
    On this note, I have to say..."It's not the plane, it's the pilot" I had many people who said the P-38 was "uber" but, wouldn't fly it. I would challenge them P-38 vs P-38 in the "TA" and they would SOON find out what it was all about. .......the PILOT I sure loved and miss the TA arena. ;)
     
  9. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2003
    Messages:
    5,330
    Same here... but I was always keen to test the "novelties"... like the Mc.205, which I used to score 7 kills in one sortie (huge success for a dweeb like me) - still - none of the victims, so loudly complaining about my "cheating" in open CH100, ever visited the TA, following my invitation for them to do so.

    Was the Mc.205 uber at that time? It most certainly was, although it lacked some qualities.
    But was it OK to go rampant about it, or me, without even checking?
    It most certainly was not.

    We (the 302nd) rarely flew the P-38, since there was the Jug to support us in our field capturing missions, when we're flying red (later to be supplemented by Pony D), so I can't really say much about flying WBFH P-38... been there, done that, nothing special... I guess I had more kills with the 37mm gun using the P-39, the Russians loved so much :)
     
  10. looseleaf

    looseleaf Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 11, 2006
    Messages:
    5,031
    Back in the day, the P51 was a dog. I tested the sea level acceleration and the Spit was slow and the P51 was slower. I found the P38 to be a great plane and a few Dora jocks complained,
    But then again almost all the Dora jocks complained when anyone got the best of them !
    Yes, I remember you're remodeling efforts on the P38. That was an awesome job. Even though I didn't think the nose shading and seat height was correct and unfortunately I wasn't able to get some first hand opinion from a relative who not only flew both in WW2 air combat but stated he liked the P38 of all the prop planes of WW2. Being a test pilot too, he was
    "lucky" to have test flown many of them. BTW, if I ever get to sit in a P38, I will definitely take pics and send them to you!
     
  11. looseleaf

    looseleaf Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 11, 2006
    Messages:
    5,031
    Hahaha.. Frog! Yes, the Russians loved the P39 very much, but they liked the 20mm more, and the P63 even better. They also liked the I-115.. ahemmmmm......

    The TA was the great neutralizer and proved that the person who knew the features better of the plane and who was able to capitalize on those features and first to do so was usually the winner...
     
    -ALW- likes this.
  12. -ALW-

    -ALW- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2001
    Messages:
    2,096
    Location:
    Minot, North Dakota, USA
    Yeah! I forgot about some of those details. The pilot perspective was one of the most important changes of all and I spent many many hours looking over hundreds of pictures from modern pics to vintage pics getting the correct perspective, calculating angles. I realized that my suspicion was correct in the incorrectly illustrated huge horizontal bar that caused a major blind spot. It goes without saying that Lockheed designed the cockpits to be as visually unobstructed as possible. Horizontal bars on the canopy were positioned to follow the boom. I spent weeks and weeks building my case.
    Measuring viewing angles, heights of airmen, myself, and reviewing other simulators gave me the results you saw. They didn't recruit midgets.
    The other thing I wanted to see implemented was a clear-unobstructed rear view. Not a full screen mind you but, a view provided by the rear view mirror on top of the canopy.

    Many years ago, back in 2004? I was able to talk to a former WWII P-38 pilot while in
    WWII Weekend at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, PA
    who performed reconnaissance. I asked him specific questions about performance and I was pleasantly surprised. He told me the plane he flew had no guns, just a camera. He said when enemy fighters would show up, he would simply give it full throttle, and pull away easily. He said there were no German planes that could catch it. He told me of a story where a 190 followed him back to a USA home field. He was making passes over the base, thinking the 190 would give up. The guys manning flak seeing his P-38 knew the could not dare deploy. I asked him about WEP....he said...."you didn't need it"! Thrust was amazing! The 190 ran low on fuel I think and left. Reminded me of many times in WBFH when I ran out of ammo, or jammed guns and was having to evade enemy fighters back to base. Except flak didn't care about me! haha!

    I was just shaking my head thinking...wow. That's one thing the WBFH design team just would not address because the P-38 would have then been king in the arena. Power to weight ratio, thrust acceleration vs drag coefficients, counter-rotating prop qualities, thrust steering, massive control surfaces, very slim design, it was indeed an underestimated and unappreciated aircraft when modeled here on WBFH. The one thing I did was to illustrate a real life video of a P-38 in modern flight performing maneuvers and there was no doubt it's performance. The fuel weight was a big thing and they wouldn't correct it. In WBFH the P-38 flew horribly nearly empty or full of fuel. That was intentional. Probably because the ones I shot down were developers, defying their logic.

     
    -frog-, -Shai- and Archer like this.
  13. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Apr 7, 2005
    Messages:
    4,401
    Now, what we really needed were cockpit cameras. Check out the guys in the film, see how many cameras they got. That's why none of them was cheating.

    That's a FACT!

    It was the same during the war. Of course, the Russians cunningly tweaked their cockpit cameras so they could win. The nazis didn't, so they lost. The Americans didn't do it, but they've always had Trump. The Brits didn't do it, so they lost too, but, in the end, everyone pretended they had won. The smaller nations never had any cameras, but they were fair and noble, except for the Poles and Romanians. The Poles were corrupt, but never had any technical skills, except for plumbing. The Romanians, well, they were just... you know...
     
    -frog- and Red Ant like this.
  14. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2003
    Messages:
    5,330
    You are not far from the truth.
    Polish armed forces prior to WW2 were corrupt, ran by idiots (or former friends of the late Marshall Piłsudski), and ineffective.
    We had 10 cavalry brigades we did not need for a defensive war, but they looked nice, and the Uhlan's were sort of "gentry" among the military ranks, so no one ever thought of dissolving them.
    And we had 1 armored brigade... against 7 german Panzer divisions.
    Guess what?
    According to Polish military budget standards, a cavalry brigade was some 10% more expensive to equip and run than an armored one.
    The airforce was using dramatically outdated fighters, cause our high command followed the French doctrine that the "bombers shall always pass". So we had modern medium bombers (which Romania used until Spring 1944, after stealing them), but not a single modern fighter (the command relied to much on the failed P.38 and P.50 programs, and did not even care to re-arm the outdated P.7 and P.11 force with the newer, heavily armed P.24... and thus in 1940 Greeks were scoring victories on Italians in their P.24s, Romanians developed their IAR 80 and 81 using the tail section of P.24 fuselage... and the Poles fought using P.11s... which were slower on deck than even the Ju-87Bs they were intended to chase).
     
  15. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Apr 7, 2005
    Messages:
    4,401
    I knew about the Polish military equipment left during the retreat through Romania of the Polish army and the Polish gold. Most of the Polish gold was loaded on a ship in Constanta, which left for Istanbul. A smaller amount of the gold was deposited in the Romanian National Bank (and at some point hidden together with the Romanian gold in a cave!) and then returned to Poland after the war.
    About the transfer of the military equipment, the Romanian net sources say it was an "agreement". I expect it would have been hard to load all that material on ships, there were 41 R35 tanks, lorries and small arms also. t these
    Anyway, I expect quite a bias in the Romanian and Polish views of certain historical facts.Most of the time, talking to people here about these makes me sick. Especially when it comes to the denial of the genocide of Jews by Romanians. They're so fucking indoctrinated with nationalism - and this goes back to the communist era - that they can't accept that their country ever did something bad against "others". Or they believe that these "others" deserved it anyway.
     
  16. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2003
    Messages:
    5,330
    You're right about the gold.
    Poland managed to evacuate 80 tons of gold to Romania (and it did evacuate some 20 more to London and New York prior to the outbreak of war).
    Gold was then captured by the French, who took their part, then recaptured by the British, who took 11 tons to "cover their expenses", most was returned to the communist Poland till 1954 (9 years after the war!), some 10 tons are still missing, and no one really knows what happened (part of the "French batch" vanished in 1944 on the route from today's Mali to Dakar).
    What is of note here is that the Romanian Foreign Minister played dumb, when confronted by the then German ambassador, facilitating the evacuation of gold by Poles.
    Hitler hoped to "repair" his budget a bit with the Polish gold, but the outcome was very disappointing. Germans only captured some 2-3 tons of gold in total, deposited in the minor branches throughout their part of occupied Poland (Polish złoty was a gold standard currency, so every branch had to keep some gold to support the credibility of the currency). Immediately prior to the outbreak of war most of the gold though was deposited in Warsaw, my home city (Lublin), and the towns of Zamość and Brześć - which made it easier to evacuate it to Romania, than in any other direction.

    As far as military equipment is considered the Polish government in exile insisted that the Romanians return only the PZL.37 bombers (and pay a fraction of the price for the remaining supplies left in Romania). Romanians declined, stating that this would mean they're no longer neutral (which is right). But - instead of just leaving the planes, they used them (which, as they joined the Axis, was a clear violation of Polish rights). Anyway - some of the PZL.37's were still used by the Romanians after the war (up to early 1950s to tow gliders), and they even asked the commie Poland if it wanted them back. Those commie bastards did not - there's not a single survivor of that type of plane (there were repeated rumors that there are still planes left in the former USSR or in Near East, but none were ever confirmed).