strip off all fuel it screws up the center of gravity that will make u turn properly.

of course the best thing to do is to fly a real plane try a spit or tempest

Many WWII pilots agreed with you...they felt that the B was a better plane than the D.

The fuel comment is correct...the 'Stang has a fuel tank behind the seat that pushes the CofG too far to the rear for manuevering. Drain some of the fuel out and the 'Stang should fly fine.

See August 2003 Flight Journal, The Best WWII Fighter, by Corky Meyer.

Corky Meyer was a Grumman test pilot F-4F-3 - F-14 and lived to write about it.
He rates the P-51 no 4 of 7 Europe.  "but they had two rather outstanding vices: poor lateral stall characteristics give them a strong tendency to enter snap rolls when in a landing-condition final turn and during gunnery runs in the clean condition. If you pulled hard at the wrong time, it was all too willing to snap over the top of the turn into a spin."

The 51 had a laminar flow wing. At least the first foot or so was laminar.  Get to Angle Of Attack where the flow is not laminar and nasty things happen.

Keep speed up as much as possible and careful of G.

It is a poor flyer in CFS3.  Better in CFS2.

Drain the P51 fuel load to 30% to make it really fly. I think with the Fw190 you've just got to treat it carefully and not pull a turn to suddenly.

Woodlouse

You are right on fuel and performance effect.

I set 50 percent in the 3US-P47D 2 ton truck and it made the fighter a 1 ton truck.

I had the CFS2 F4F-4 full fuel for 1 v1 Zero.  Reset to 50% and now their slim chances are slim to none.  That isn't realistic but this is a sim.

50% fuel is reasonable for dogfights 1 v 1.  Gives 5 min at combat power and bug out.

codered

Describe your use of physics pls.

On 1 v 1 dogfighting:

It's a sim; not the real deal so stay and play.  Otherwise, what's the point?

CFS3 AI is pretty weak on tactics. CFS2 is better.

Going to 30 percent on fuel, for example, is an indication of how poorly the CFS3 US fighters, with exception of the Spit,  fly given weak AI.  Even after the significant improvement in the AvHistory models.

One of the problems I have is poor pitch control, pitch slider full left, and frame rates 30 - 40.  The problem is in the design and not in the system.

pliabos

You must be very busy with a slide rule using math and physics in a dogfight.

Not being a sim expert in dogfighting tactics this is the way I see it.

Modern, not WWII, theoretical fighter tactics is the use of kinetic and potential energy better than the bandit to achieve a firing position.  Translation is the skillful use of the vertical.  It is also the coordinated tactics of a section to concentrate on a single bandit for a few seconds to achieve a kill.

John Boyd, a Korean War USAF fighter pilot, is credited with defining the concept.  "Gengis John" The Figher Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, Amazon and other places for you fanatics.

Serious application of his theory were the essence of Top Gun and USAF Fighter Weapons School.

The CFS3 P-51D is a dog.  Av History a much better dog than the MS dog but still a dog.

The CFS2 P-51D 1 percent is a very nice flying fighter.  No stall problems, handles well, and accelerates very well in dogfights vs the 1 percent Zeke.  Only downer is that the guns don't shoot into the pipper center at 1 G.

I used the Jerry Beckworth Aim It to harmonize the guns at 700 ft and 10 ft elevation.  Better, but not as it should be.

Ok, so you SH types prefer 200 ft harmonization. So be it.

The P-47 CFS3 is a super dog.

Haven't tried it in CFS2.  Zeke would eat it alive 1 v 1.

Wildcat is not a "heavy" fighter, reality or sim.

F4F4 my fav in CFS2 for dogfighting Zekes.  Major deficiency is lack of power. 

Real world not a match to the Zeke.

What if: F4F4 w/2 20mm Colts plus 200 rounds each.  A killer combination.

CFS3 P-51Dog flys good at zero fuel I'd wager.

nickle i mean, try to imagine what enemy will do and use geometry in the air to gain advantage on him. most pilots r just follwing the target cone instead. i am flying in real life and i think u can learn emergencies, systems, prosedures etc. but FEELING it , is different . (sorry about my english )

And, if you properly apply the kinetic energy in the P-47D, amazingly enough it becomes very deadly.  Ask me how I know, I have the screen shots to prove it. 

I think that a drastic increase in pilot skill is needed for the majority of combat flight simmers, who have never flown a combat aircraft, or any aircraft for that matter.

Yeah, please tell us.  Are you a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Fighter Weapons School or something?

The P-47 in CFS3 is the worst of the Allied fighters.  It is just too slow and unmaneuvareable.  When flying a German plane, I always view the P-47 as just target practice.

KE doesn't mean anything.  It's power to weight that makes a fighter good.  P-47 has good power, but also very high weight.  You could have all the KE in the world, but if the airplanes you are dogfighting can out-climb you (and pretty much all the fighters in the game can, as they have better power-to-weight), you can never get near enough to use your guns, so KE doesn't mean anything.  All the P-47 can do it run away by diving.

KE is just the energy of movement, not position.  I believe "energy management theory" also includes the energy of position, or potential energy.  KE by itself is meaningless, since speed is the only thing that matters (mass isn't going to make much of a difference.).  So saying using KE properly just means using speed properly is rather simple--faster=better, or don't go slow--wow, amazing insight.  But the P-47 is the slowest fighter.  It can only go fast if it dives--but that is taking advantage of PE, not KE, or rather, converting PE into KE.

The P-47 may have been good in real life, but only because it could dive and run away easily.  This severly limits when it is useful.  Escorting strategic bombers was the most important use of U.S. fighters in World War II.  So if all your escorts can do is run away, they are worthless.  The Allies didn't dominate the air when only the P-47 and P-38 were available.  It took the Mustang to do that.  The Grumman test pilot is probably just speaking in terms of strictly dogfighting, not the strategic necessity of certain fighters being able to fight it out and not run away.

Anyway, in the game, diving and running way is almost worhtless because AI/you is basically omniscient.  They will almost always catch up to you eventually--you can't hide, and you can't run for long.  Since you can select/target enemy airplanes, they can't hide from you either.

I don't see what all the fuss is about.  I have the defualt FDs installed and I recently made myself up a mission as an escort to Germany and back.  I ended up in a dogfight with about 80% fuel.  I still managed to drive off a formation of 109s and even destroy one.

It's all about what you can do with the plane and your wingmen.  Never forget that WW2 pilots never flew alone in a dogfight!  There wingman was always with them.  Also, dogfights as such were best avoided.  The idea was to get more altitude and speed than the enemy and dive out of the sun, picking off a couple of planes before you were even seen, then bug out.  Remember this won't be possible in Quick Combat because it's an actual dogfight.

All this physics nonsense... ...really, pilots in WW2 were usually young boys, barely into there 20s.  They couldn't care less about lectures and stuff like that.  If they got killed it meant they were bad fighter pilots, but there's no such as a bad fighter pilot, therefore if they got killed, they weren't really a fighter pilot at all...get my drift?

What I mean is that if you can't shoot down a 109/190 before they get you and then you go blaming it on the plane, you must suck at the game. 8)

Why do you think you always get told to use your wingmen wisely before each mission?  And why do two always peel off when you give the order to attack?  Understand now?

And who says I cant climb with the 109-10's

Quote:


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.

Quote:


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"