Why so nitpicky?

[Warpig]

Sometimes on WoL, when I pick a Bf109-F4 for example, there's no option to remove the headrest. Why is this?

 

Was removing the headrest some kind of technological feat that wasn't present in earlier battles?

 

As far as I'm concerned, that option should always be available.....

Edited January 19, 2018 by Warpig

[9./JG27DefaultFace]

Obviously German wrenches used to undo the bolts could not cope with harsh Russian winter.

 

Best is when it’s not allowed on the F-4 but F-2 and E-7 can remove them.....

[-=PHX=-SuperEtendard]

I guess it's in the early maps to encourage use of the F-2, kinda like a trade off. Performance vs better visibility.

[Trooper117]

Probably because they are trying to represent real life?

No pilot could just decide to have his head armour removed... There would be a strict Staffel set of rules that should be followed.

[Warpig]

Probably because they are trying to represent real life?

No pilot could just decide to have his head armour removed... There would be a strict Staffel set of rules that should be followed.

But they did remove them in real life. So what am I missing?

[Herne]

It's the server admins train set. They make the rules, we just get to play with it

[FuriousMeow]

But they did remove them in real life. So what am I missing?

 

Temporarily, that didn't last long.

 

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/19004-complete-romoval-head-armor-109-e-7/

Edited January 19, 2018 by FuriousMeow

[Trooper117]

But they did remove them in real life. So what am I missing?

 

You are missing the fact that pilots got killed after removing them... that was quickly stopped and strict rules put in place.

[9./JG27DefaultFace]

But only for F-4 pilots... F-2 and Emil pilots never had these issues apparently.

[von-Luck]

I would be willing to bet most aces took that plate off. Given the greatly reduced his visibility I imagine unless strictly overseen these would end up being taken off very frequently.

 

That said most pictures of 109's appear to have the armor which is quite at odds from what I would have expected. This must have been perceived as very important to high command for it to have been enforced. I hate the blasted plate but I suppose there is some justification for its presence.

 

von Luck

Edited January 19, 2018 by von-Luck

[BlitzPig_EL]

I suppose there is some justification for its presence.

 

von Luck

 

I would think the ever decreasing ability of the Luftwaffe to replace experienced pilots has a lot to do with it.

 

The most expensive and difficult part to replace on a combat aircraft is the pilot after all.

[Guest deleted@83466]

Temporarily, that didn't last long.

 

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/19004-complete-romoval-head-armor-109-e-7/

 

After reading that discussions (with the pilot anecdotes) I think that instead of the removable headrest being more available, it should be significantly less available than it is.  Don't get me wrong, I hate the armored headrest, even to the point that I will sometimes either fly something else, or I will sit and wait for one to become available if they are all taken;  but I also do care about historical accuracy, and I think the only conclusion you can draw is that a BF-109 with the armor plate removed was much more rare in real life than it's availability on a server like WoL.

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

I would be willing to bet most aces took that plate off. Given the greatly reduced his ability I imagine unless strictly overseen these would end up being taken off very frequently.

 

I bet there were less aces able to talk about it if they didnt have had it.

[InProgress]

And that's why armored glass one is the best :] protection and visibility

[Max_Damage]

One of the notable historical disadvantages of me109 is its poor cockpit visibility, especially the me109g. It should be reflected in the game.

 

IRL they werent allowed to mod the plane and so shouldnt they in game either.

 

This is why plane modifications is not always a good thing in BOS. They added unrealistic mods and they have become viral online, completely out of control. Headrests should be strictly fixed in me109s.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Max_Damage

[von-Luck]

I would think the ever decreasing ability of the Luftwaffe to replace experienced pilots has a lot to do with it.

 

The most expensive and difficult part to replace on a combat aircraft is the pilot after all.

Yes this would be the impetus behind such oversight. Too bad the plate rarely if ever seems to save you in BoX - most pilot kills are executed with weapons exceeding the protection of the plate and you're left with a slab of useless blocking you ability to check six. Again what I find it interesting that most pictures of aircraft still have it despite the proliferation of threats that could easily penetrate it.

 

von Luck

[von-Luck]

Makes sense - just very much contrary to what I had expected for the period. Pilots are famous for being willful and I would have expected less stringent oversight due to wartime conditions. In my mind a bunch of cocky kids would have torn it out and never given it a second thought. Again this speaks volumes about the perceived importance of this in my eyes.

 

von Luck

[Trooper117]

High velocity rounds enter your cockpit hitting the armoured plate behind your head... you eventually get back to your airfield badly shaken but alive.

You get to fight another day, plus the Luftwaffe does not have to replace some pilot who thought he should have the right to make up his own rules.

Seems like a win win situation for all round!

[Mac_Messer]

Maybe my old back is stiff and my eyes just suck, but sometimes I think visibility directly to the rear is a little overrated IRL compared to 'in game' via TrackIR etc.

 

By which I mean that it is very difficult to rotate one's head and upper body around far enough to bring the area directly behind the airplane into the part of our FOV where focused distant vision is even possible. Using perpheral vision, a contact that has closed in to attack may be visible as a shape but that is about it. So...clear view to the rear or not, detecting an enemy early enough to be useful would still require deliberate clearing turns and/or teamwork. With that in mind, the protection offered by the shield becomes more valuable than it would otherwise seem compared to the little bit of additional visibility gained by removing it.

 

Obviously the armored glass offers the best of both worlds.

In era of TrackIR it`s not that big of a problem IMO. In "IL2 Sturmovik :1946" the rear view is just the headrest, the only thing you can do to see is to yaw around or roll.

 

Now in this game, leaning in and out, left and right circumvents the problem partly. Needless to say it is still troublesome but doable, and as the rest of pilot`s abilities - more effective the more you do training on it.

[Mac_Messer]

Yes this would be the impetus behind such oversight. Too bad the plate rarely if ever seems to save you in BoX - most pilot kills are executed with weapons exceeding the protection of the plate and you're left with a slab of useless blocking you ability to check six. Again what I find it interesting that most pictures of aircraft still have it despite the proliferation of threats that could easily penetrate it.

 

von Luck

Well, it`s not like after landing/pk the game shows you exactly which projectiles killed you and which were stopped by the plate. Without protection even low calibre fire is often lethal, but you can`t tell if the plate helped you.

 

From personal experience I did notice the difference through being shot down. Most of the time I had the headrest, my plane got shredded to pieces but still I could bail.

[Feathered_IV]

Sometimes on WoL, when I pick a Bf109-F4 for example, there's no option to remove the headrest. Why is this?

 

Was removing the headrest some kind of technological feat that wasn't present in earlier battles?

 

As far as I'm concerned, that option should always be available.....

 

You often see this sort of thing.  Servers start out well, then the server admins gradually introduce a conga line of roadblocks to try and corral people into doing what they want.  Ostensibly in the name of realism, but usually it is more in some misguided pursuit of an unattainable "balance".  Before long they make the server such an irritating experience that people move on to the next newest server.

 

So it goes.

[Trooper117]

Another consideration is that in real life, if you are in combat experiencing 5 to 7 G's, you would be securely strapped in, and the ability to lean right out of your straps to see further around your seat armour may be curtailed anyway...

[Mac_Messer]

Maybe generally, but in a 109? That thing is as cramped as can be, right?

[FuriousMeow]

Another consideration is that in real life, if you are in combat experiencing 5 to 7 G's, you would be securely strapped in, and the ability to lean right out of your straps to see further around your seat armour may be curtailed anyway...

 

They weren't. Lap belt, yes. Shoulder straps, no. This is a common repetition, commonly with the "sit in your seat and be completely rigid, you can't rotate to see your 6" to artificially limit 6 views. They weren't wrenched down, shoulder straps were left a bit loose so they could look around. There's modern day fighter pilots on these forums saying that.

[Trooper117]

Ah yes, I forgot, the good old Sutton Harness etc...

[FuriousMeow]

SBD pilot, not locked rigidly in place by shoulder straps.

[[N.O.G.F]_Cathal_Brugha]

Maybe generally, but in a 109? That thing is as cramped as can be, right?

I read that the top of the pilots head touched the canopy, and many pilots got head and neck injuries from bad or crash landings. One reason the spitfire had a slight bubble or convex curve in it. 

[LukeFF]

Where in gods name do you read that thing? That was fully up to the pilot if he wanted it or not, doesn't matter if he was a Hauptgefreiter, Feldwebel or Leutnant or Hauptmann...

The german army was never that strict in such things. Your plane, your life, your problem. 

 

 

Umm, well, there were these two pilots named Galland and Steinhoff - you may have heard of them.

 

"The Spitfire had turned tight into me, and he had me good. Only the protective armor plate behind my head kept me from being killed by a 20mm. I used to inspect all of the aircraft, as some men would take this plate out. It reduced rearward visibility by about twenty percent, so they removed it. I ordered all the plates replaced, and I made it clear I would court-martial any man who disobeyed. Three more of my pilots had a similar experience, and they were believers."

- Johannes Steinhoff 

 

 and

 

Galland in his memoirs mentions he was very unhappy when this plate was installed, the extra weight reducing performance. The next day he went up with this unwanted ballast, and he got hit by a Spitfire. Some projectiles were stopped by the armour plate. Needless to say, he changed his opinion about the plate that day.

 

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/19004-complete-romoval-head-armor-109-e-7/

Edited January 21, 2018 by LukeFF

[Hoots]

Where in gods name do you read that thing? That was fully up to the pilot if he wanted it or not, doesn't matter if he was a Hauptgefreiter, Feldwebel or Leutnant or Hauptmann...

The german army was never that strict in such things. Your plane, your life, your problem. 

 

I think you've probably misunderstood how the military works. It wasn't their plane, they borrowed it. It wasn't their life either.

[Hoots]

Oh yeah. Actually i am in active service in an armored unit of german military. I probably understand very well how the military works here. And I tell you another thing. We remove or add some operational things to our APC's as well.     

 

Your comment "you don't know how military works, in military everyone has the same equiptment and all look the same .. AND NO ONE TOUCHES A THING" is simply not true!

edit: our military looks more like a mercenary army with all that private and ASMC stuff we carry with us...

 

errrr... that wasn't what I said was it...

 

Couple of things, it was 70 years ago, things change. The quotes from people at the time say otherwise.

 

But I'll bow down to your knowledge, I'm sure you've got evidence for it.

[Solmyr]

 

 

Galland in his memoirs mentions he was very unhappy when this plate was installed, the extra weight reducing performance. The next day he went up with this unwanted ballast, and he got hit by a Spitfire. Some projectiles were stopped by the armour plate. Needless to say, he changed his opinion about the plate that day.

 

 

Absolutely. He says this in "Until the end in our Messerschmit". When he saw the impact on the armoured rest, he was shocked. He thought it was a 20mm impact if I remember correctly.

[=EXPEND=Tripwire]

Exactly...TrackIR offers a crystal-clear view at long range behind me that is much better than what I get out of the corner of my eye IRL. My point was that because of this, having a headrest blocking the view has more of a negative impact in game than IRL (compared to the protection it offers) because the quality of the view that you would lose IRL is not that good. Enough to notice that something is there at close range but that's about it.

 

Just IMO, but I'm 46 and wear glasses...maybe these young guys could twist around a lot farther and actually see well when they did.

Yes with Owl View (TrackIR) there is quite a substantial visibility loss.

 

In VR, there is a loss but it is no where near as significant due to the physical limitations of checking 6 already making rearward visibility tough.

I actually get a little claustrophobic watching people fly the 109 on youtube...having their body encased by the fuselage and plexiglass right up against their head looks way too tight to me LOL.

At first in VR it feels that way too. You get used to the size and eventually it feels perfect sized, fits like a glove. Jump in a P-40 and it feels like way too much room.

[LukeFF]

There is your evidence for it. "as some men would take this plate out." But since Steinhoff was a killjoy, he ordered to keep the plate.

 

Did you even bother to read the rest of the quote? Three other men in his unit were saved by the armor plate and thus convinced of its usefulness.

 

But no, I guess Steinhoff was just a killjoy who wanted to keep his men alive.    

Edited January 22, 2018 by LukeFF

[Dakpilot]

What point in the war were the Galland and Steinhoff quotes/actions made?

 

 

Cheers, Dakpilot

[LLv24_Zami]

WoL is not aiming for a very strict historical accuracy. Armor plate of 109 is a one thing, other quite obvious is the large number of VYa 23mm armed LaGGs flying around. So...

[Hoots]

I used to inspect all of the aircraft, as some men would take this plate out. It reduced rearward visibility by about twenty percent, so they removed it. I ordered all the plates replaced, and I made it clear I would court-martial any man who disobeyed. Steinhoff

 

There is your evidence for it. "as some men would take this plate out." But since Steinhoff was a killjoy, he orderd to keep the plate. So there was NO existing order to keep that.

While the Luftwaffe had over 64 Jagdgeschwader(Fighter Squadrons) back then. I really don't think that all kommandore of those were like Steinhoff. Everyone of them had their own experiences and priorities.

Ok, last post. Your evidence backs up my (and other's) claim not yours. There was probably no order to say remove the seat belts either so lack of an order is not evidence. The rest of your "evidence" is all your thoughts and what you feel, that's not evidence. As soon as you used the word "killjoy" you lost credibility. I sit in single seat gliders and I can assure you rearward visibility is not as you see in this game (see the VR posts above also).

 

So yeah, guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Hoots

[CIA_Yankee_]

Sometimes on WoL, when I pick a Bf109-F4 for example, there's no option to remove the headrest. Why is this?

 

Was removing the headrest some kind of technological feat that wasn't present in earlier battles?

 

As far as I'm concerned, that option should always be available.....

 

Mission designers will often use mod restrictions in order to better balance their scenario, or simulate a kind of historical accuracy while allowing players who don't have all the planes to still fly something they own.

 

For example, on many '41 missions on WoL, the Yak-1 is still flyable even though the series we have is a later one. The mission devs resolve this by forcing the Yak-1s to have rocket racks, which serve as a rough way to simulate earlier Yak series (you just fire the rockets, and then cope with the speed loss from the racks).

 

In this case, the headrest is there to degrate the F4's performance, as the F4 we actually have in the sim is not accurate for that particular map/date. Odds are, every map with the F4 with no headrest probably also has the F2 available, which is likely more accurate.

Edited January 22, 2018 by 71st_AH_Yankee_

[Warpig]

Mission designers will often use mod restrictions in order to better balance their scenario, or simulate a kind of historical accuracy while allowing players who don't have all the planes to still fly something they own.

 

For example, on many '41 missions on WoL, the Yak-1 is still flyable even though the series we have is a later one. The mission devs resolve this by forcing the Yak-1s to have rocket racks, which serve as a rough way to simulate earlier Yak series (you just fire the rockets, and then cope with the speed loss from the racks).

 

In this case, the headrest is there to degrate the F4's performance, as the F4 we actually have in the sim is not accurate for that particular map/date. Odds are, every map with the F4 with no headrest probably also has the F2 available, which is likely more accurate.

Well that makes some sense at least.

 

Thanks for your input.