Guy's (martin) WW2 "dogfight"

**1lokos** · Jul-06-2021, 10:36

Tiger Moth first flight, Link Trainer navigation etc, up to Hurricane x Bf 109 (Buchón) "dogfight" Battle of Britain TV show.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...1ZyZt2pgK3Iy0q

**Gromit** · Jul-06-2021, 10:53

It's when you watch that kind of thing you realise the rediculous funky chicken style of maneouvers we do in games is totally unrealistic!

**5th Hellrider** · Jul-09-2021, 10:00

I honestly think that everything in the video is very gentle: gentle turns, gentle climbs, few degrees of bank, etc.
Certainly the didn't want to stress the aircraft structures, this is the main reason. Also Guy Martin is a novice as plane pilot, even though he is a great bike pilot (I'm a fan of him and have always followed him).
Any amateur pilot (and with no limits imposed to safeguard planes) would have pushed harder, much harder.

These videos are beautiful to watch, just that. They are part of the "spectacle" of things, typical of the last decades. It's all show now. The show is more important than the thing itself.

Case in point is the current F1: commentator screaming, highlights during the race with background rock music, replay of anything, team radio, etc. etc. Only show, few facts.

**Karaya** · Jul-09-2021, 12:42

Originally Posted by 5th Hellrider

I honestly think that everything in the video is very gentle: gentle turns, gentle climbs, few degrees of bank, etc.
Certainly the didn't want to stress the aircraft structures, this is the main reason. Also Guy Martin is a novice as plane pilot, even though he is a great bike pilot (I'm a fan of him and have always followed him).
Any amateur pilot (and with no limits imposed to safeguard planes) would have pushed harder, much harder.

These WW2 warbirds are precious gems and noone in their right mind nowadays will put them through any kind of hard regime.
As Hellrider says Guy seems like a green pilot, not nowhere near the level of training of a typical WW2 frontline pilot (at least at the start of the war).

There's much less reservation to stress your aircraft when there's hundreds to thousands of them being churned out of factories, like back in the days.
This can also be seen in guncam videos with aircraft doing edge-of-the-stall turns, bunts, reversals, flick rolls, etc.

What we see here in this video has very little to do with a real dogfight.

**Gromit** · Jul-09-2021, 12:52

You will see the same "gentle" actions if you watch ww2 gun camera film, and there's a very good reason for that.

If you look at the roll rates specified in charts for particular aircraft they are maximum rates produced with very high stick forces, in the Spitfire MkV test the US did, used over 55lbs of force at higher speeds.

Whilst this may be achievable for a test pilot with a set routine of tests to conduct and no stress or operational fatigue, it's extremely unrealistic for a pilot on operations who has been flying for possibly and hour or more, in fact NACA when it did it's roll comparison tests with the Spit, Hurricane, P40 used 30lbs of stick force as the practical upper limit, the 30lbs force was calculated by multiple test measurments and was considered by experienced service pilots as a reasonable upper limit.

So whilst it's fine for game players to say " i'll pull harder" you completely disregard human physiology and the effects G force has on your ability to pull anything at all, try strapping yourself into a chair and pulling 60lbs side to side with just your arms and shoulders, then consider how much more difficult that becomes when G force is increasing the weight of your arms, it's not hard to comprehend how quickly you weaken with fatigue, then consider the poor 109 pilots crammed into a tiny cockpit with hardly any room to move, flight sim aircraft are grossly unrealistic as they produce max rate results constantly, as yet we dont have cyborgs flying planes.