S3 Series

<S> Allies! Here is my plane comparison for the new S3.

In Kokoda Trail; New Guinea - we will be flying the P-40E (3 frames) and the P-39D (2 frames). Our adversaries are the A6M3 and the Ki-43-II. This time the enemies bring the buffs at high alt and we need to stop them, altough with planes which are plain awful up high and can't get above 30k . We do have a few strenghts though:

My tactical suggestion:
Pretty much the same tactics whichever plane we fly in or against. We have the guns and speed below 10k, they have everything else. Worth noting is that we can almost match their speed up to 27k though.
If alone: Your only option is to nose down, go WEP and outspeed the enemy below 10k making small jinxes to avoid being shot. You are dead meat if you try to turn.
In wingpairs: Use the tach weave as our guns are better and their airframes are weak. Either do scissors while your wingman is taking shots at the con (DO NOT FLAT TURN... EVER!), or run away below 10k, creating distance while jinxing, while your wingman uses his speed to run the pursuer down.



The airframes:
A6M3: Basically an A6M2 on steroids. Faster, better turner, climbs better. They outspeed us at altitude but not below 10k. You can't dogfight them as they can almost turn two laps around you while you try to complete one lap. Always fight them in wingpairs using the tach weave. Has lethal 2x20mm (200 rounds) but only 2x7.7mm once cannons are out.

Ki-43-II: Similiar to the A6M3 but less effective. A little slower turn-rate, weaker guns and less fuel time. They outurn you easily though, so again always fight them in wingpairs using the tach weave. Has 2x12.7mm mgs.

P-40E: You can't get above 30k. Bad cockpit views, always fly with separation to your wingman so you can check eachothers sixes. The p-40E can turn to get a shot but not dogfight the japanese. Guns are great though, 6x50 cals, so stay in wingpairs and help eachother at all costs!

P-39D: You can't get above 30k. Turns worse than the russian P-39Q and even a C-47 can outturn this plane. Got 4x30 cals + 2x50 cals though and if you can get a few hits with the 37mm, planes are gonna go kaboom. Stay in wingpairs and use the guns.

<S> and good luck all!
/Robert
4th FG - CO 336th
http://echoesmarketing.com/4thfg/

Thach weave for those who may not know what it is. Invented by Wildcats pilots to shoot zero's off each other six. Sort of gives you an idea of how clunky the Wildcats were vs the nimble zekes when their best tactic was "turn toward me I'll shoot him in the face!"

Good info Robert!

Just a quick correction though



P-39Q has 4 X .50 cal + 1 X 37mm

P-39d has 4 X .30 cal + 2 X .50 cal + 1 X 37mm
As far as the 37mm goes, there have been many times where planes have taken multiple 37mm hits and flown on seemingly untouched.
While I agree that if you hit it should go down... that has not been my experience.

ALSO it seems that all the variants of the P39d have the same ammo loadout. Max ammo and regular are 4000 ... 400 ... 30


<S>

Nice illustration =dobs= .

And you are correct coolon, guns are rated correctly in the picture, but was thinking of the p-39Q when writing the text hehe. Thanks for spotting it and it's now corrected. And yes, sometimes it takes more than 1 hit of the 37mm. It has a slow rate of fire and the bullets drop fast so even if one is hitting with bbs it doesn't guarantee the 37mm shells are actually finding their target.

<S>
/Robert
4th FG - CO 336th
http://echoesmarketing.com/4thfg/

As always a nice clear description and good discussion.

I know this sounds kooky guys....but fire either the 37 or the secondary guns. Trajectory outside of D3 way different from each other.

Dobs

Here are a couple of tricks for the old "Iron Dog". Select the "50 cals secondary" loadout in the tower menu. Once you get airborne and separated away from anybody that you might accidentally shoot, use the primary trigger to unload 3,000 of your 4,000 rounds of 30 cal ammunition. This takes 600 pounds of weight off of the airframe (about 10% of the total) thereby improving speed, climb rate, ceiling and turn radius. The 30 rounds of 37mm only weigh 60 pounds so there isn't much to be gained by setting up the loadout so that you can unload them (i.e. selecting the Default loadout, unloading the 37mm and being stuck with the weight of the 4,000 rounds of 30 cal because in the default loadout the 50 cal and 30 cal are on the same trigger so you can't unload 30 cal without unloading 50 cal. There are only 400 rounds of 50 cal split between two guns so by the time that you unload 800 rounds of 30 cal you are out of 50 cal. The "No 30 cal" loadout removes the 800 pounds of 30 cal ammo weight but not the weight of the guns so that one leaves you with empty 30 cals, a useless 37mm cannon and 400 rounds in two 50 cals, a little light even for shooting Zekes.

She is a left-handed single engine but the engine is mounted amidships behind the pilot not in the nose. The prop is driven by a "suicide shaft" that runs from behind the pilot, between the pilot's legs and then through the nose to the prop. Since precession force is related to three factors, weight of the rotating object, revolutions per minute of the rotating object and length of the rotating object this powerplant produces about twice the precession force that you are used to in a regular, nose mounted, inline water cooled engine (like the Pony, P40, etc.) and about three times what you are used to in a radial engine (shorter crankshaft, F4Fs, Jugs, Hogs). So use more "nose down" in max performance left rolls and turns and more "nose up" in right rolls and turns to bring that massive precession force into play and speed up your move. Whatever you do don't go down and right or up and left in a fight because you will "hang in the air" fighting to overcome the precession force for control and the nimble Zero will just use that opportunity to cruise over and shoot you.

Set a hard deck of at least 6,000 feet and if you get into trouble shove the nose down as you roll left (just like the beginning of a Hartmann) and dive straight down at full power. The Zeros compress and lose wings in high g pulls so most opponents won't even follow you into a screaming power dive. If he does, watch him out the back (the view isn't too bad, try pilot position 2), when you get him up over 300 ias roll him 180 degrees out of phase (in the roll dimension point the top of your cockpit in the direction that the bottom of his aircraft is facing) and then do a hard floor transition in the 4 to 5 gravities range back into level flight. He has two choices, try to match you and augur in or throttle back and cross control in the dive to keep from overspeeding or breaking his wing when he tries to pull out. The latter choice puts you out front, moving faster and getting away from him for a safe escape. Keep trucking, don't turn back into him and fight a Zero in a P39 at slow speed on the deck.

It's a difficult matchup but you can even the odds a little bit with good pre-flight configuration choices and smart flying.

trigr=

Great Real world write up..

But the precession forces aren't modeled.

Might be merit in getting lighter...but there is an option for NO 303s in the load out as well.

Me, I'm all about having ammo:)

She is a pig with or without the 303s...with 303s she is at least a pig with sharp whiskers:)

Wingman is your friend...knowing when to exit the fight is your friend....Trigr's description of diving out is most excellent, especially the use of roll.

Don't die with altitude above below you..

Dobs

If you want to see the precession forces and compare their relative strengths in different aircraft put the HUD up, do identical positive and negative 2 g pulls and pushes and watch the input numbers change on the bottom rows in the upper left hand corner of your screen. This is relatively easy to do because the g readout and the input numbers are both in the upper left hand corner of your screen and within 4 or 5 rows of each other.

For FM guys the precession force setting doesn't appear directly in the flight model tables, it is in the formula that accompanies each of the 24 or so wing numbers that are chosen in line 12 of the pps file. This is one of the reasons why choice of wing number is so important in constructing a flight model, you don't want to pick a radial engine wing and build a water cooled inline engine FM from it or vice versa, pick a right handed precession force wing and build a left handed FM from it, etc. At some point in the past considerations relative to choice of wing got lost from the collective Warbirds knowledge base and guys starting building FMs without a good understanding of the consequences of the wing choice. I think that SKYDVR and/or TARGET had some understanding of this because if you look at the FMs that they built they picked Wing #4 for left handed radial engine aircraft and Wing #6 when they built a left handed inline aircraft. The problem there is that if you ignore the other 22 wing choices you end up with only #4 and #6 FMs and you lose a lot of the rich variety in handling.

This loss of understanding is part of the problem that resulted in the porkage of the P38 in SKYDVR's "increased co-efficient of lift" FM revisions. He didn't pick the original P38 wing that included some additional calculations in the formula to account for clean (undisrupted by the fuselage drag that you get in a single engine) blown air over the wings and the P38 was seriously disadvantaged.

The good news for the Iron Dog is that nobody flew it enough to care about it so it didn't get messed with except for the increase in the co-efficient of lift that SKYDVR dialed in. The easy solution to these wing number choices would be to go back and look at Warbirds 2.77 or earlier and see which wing number PYRO and HITECH used for that particular aircraft. They wrote the wing formulas so they had particular aircraft in mind when they did it so all we really need to do is go back and build the FMs from the wings and formulas that they wrote for them. Aside from getting variety in the FMs back this would fix a lot of the weird turn performance issues that are so hard to test for now that we don't have head-to-head mode or a terrain with a "test bullseye" pattern on the deck.

trigr=

Sounds like you need to get pulled into the FM fold trigr.

First I heard of wings tied to engine types...alien way of building FMs. but if that is the hand that is dealt....

Dobs