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The P-47 would never have gotten the opportunity to roam if the Luftwaffe hadn't already been beaten down by P-51's.  The Allies needed to achieve air superiority before going into France.  However, the Luftwaffe would just hide unless strategic bombers attacked the refineries and factories.  However, the bombers would get slaughtered without a great long-range escort.  So that's why the P-51 is more important, and thus "better."  It took the P-51 to give the P-47 a chance to shine.

How can you say the P-47 has speed when all its contemporaries are faster?  It's the slowest!  All it can do is dive.

Unless you get a good head start (start fairly high), or the enemy plane is tied up in another dogfight or damaged, he will catch up to you most of the time.  And often you think you have lost the enemy when in fact you haven't.  Sometimes I fly away for 15 minutes to my base, then as I am landing, the German fighter catches up and shoots me down on final.  If you are playing the German pursuer, it's quite easy to catch up to a fleeing P-47.

For the guy who posted pics of himself shooting down German planes with a P-47, that doesn't prove anything.  I can dominate Germans with a P-47, or dominate P-47's in a Bf-109 (I personally dislike the Fw-190 and don't like to fly it).  The point is its about 2-3 times as easy to dominate as the Bf-109.

The P-47 may have been good in real life, but in CFS3 its just a dog because its slow.  And due to the way you can select targets in the game, if they dive they can't run away and hide because (1) you always know where they are, and (2) you will catch up to them eventually, since they are the slowest fighter.

Hello Nickle, it is always nice to talk with a Tailhooker!  Am I right to assume that you are a veteran of the Vietnam era?

I posted those screenshots only to refute an earlier comment by Whiskey-Zulu who claimed it was impossible to get within gun range of an enemy plane with the P-47, and that all the enemy plane had to do to get away was climb.  As you can see by the screenshots, I got within gun range ,even as the german plane tried to climb away. 

KE and PE mean everything in dogfighting.  Having PE (altitude) and diving (converting PE to KE) means you have energy to maneuver, or regain altitude, therefore restoring your planes PE.  Maneuver properly and you have a kill.  This is a simple example, but I am using it to show that energy, whether potential or kinetic, is very important to dogfighting.

Maneuvering "uses up" kinetic energy, you need KE to maneuver.  Look at it like this, when you say that all you can do to get away is dive, what you are really saying is this, "I have no more Kinetic energy to maneuver, so I am going to dive to convert Potential energy to Kinetic energy (speed) and get away, or maneuver some more."

But all this is all fine and good, but what it comes down to is this, the P-47 can be a very effective dogfighter, it comes down to how you apply the principles of maneuver and energy management.

But, remember this is only a game, so have fun. thats what it is all about.

Snake good response.
Tried the online stuff.  Couldn't get more than 3 G on the machine. Not worth the hassle.
General Stuff
Got a new computer spring of 2002.  Later saw CFS2 on sale for practically nothing so tried it.  Stick too.  Wife objects but too bad.  My interest was in Pacific WWII esp our fighters vs the Zeke.  Original CFS2 fighters were real bad.  No way we would have beaten the J. AvHistory a/c quite good in general. My time machine in a limited way to Guadacanal era.
CFS3 is great for eye candy but marginal flighter flight characteristics.  Spit and Typhoon best and ok.  Cockpit presentation is poor compared to CFS2.  MS tried to emulate IL2 and cross it with CFS2.  Ok for the air to mud crowd.
Stuff the sim does not do:
Inverted as in over the top of a loop, pulling 2 G, real world the turn radius is 3 G thanks to Mother Earth. But not in the sim.
Unload at zero G (reducing induced lift drag) and extend. Sim doesn't compute the decrease in drag.  Really important to our heavier, faster fighters.
Yuks: Pull the nose up 15-20 degrees, roll inverted, keep 1 G and fire the guns.  Watch the tracers arc upwards.
On the unload and extend: What was the pricipal diff Hurri/Spit to the 109 in that manuver real world?
You did change all 3US XDP General Allegiance to "2"? Otherwise incorrect gun ballistics.  The G's are "1" and were ok except for one.

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First I want to say I can't believe real fighter pilots play this game.  It just seems that after the real thing, this would be pretty lame.  I have commercial and instrument ratings in single & multi-engine planes myself, but I've played flight sims for many years, and don't fly real planes anymore.  Anyway, I thought real flying wasn't fun--the flying wasn't exciting, and all I did was worry about scewing something up.  All I liked about flying was looking at houses as I flew up and down the Florida coast, dreaming about which one I would like to own someday, practicing short-field landings (but not doing them on check rides), and spin training.  In fact, spin training was the only time I can honestly say I had fun in an airplane.

I shouldn't have said you never can (Bf-190-G6 seems easier to kill than G10), but it's pretty tough.  What I usually have to do in a P-47 is spend a minute or two climbing to get above the enemy, then dive into them.  Otherwise you just don't have enough speed/power.  On the other hand, if you are in a 109G10, all you have to do is put in full emergency power, and you can just climb right with the P-47 no matter what it does.  That isn't the case with the P-47--you have to be a lot more intelligent to plan your attack run.  It's just more difficult, more difficult than any other fighter in CFS3.  That's why I say P-47 is the worst fighter.  Maybe you could call it "most challenging"