Developer Diary, Part 190 - Discussion

[TP_Sparky]

6 minutes ago, Panthera said:

Oh, you're one of those. Not even going to bother.

 

I wouldn't go there.  Yes, Germans claimed over 500 kills with the Me-262 but as with claims of all nations when matched with squadron loss records it turned out that only a small fraction of the claims are actual shoot downs.  There are many legitimate reasons for exaggerated claims such as two pilots claiming the same kill and an a/c seen spinning down that recovered and flew away or was damaged and made it back to some friendly airfield.  Me-262's did not shoot down anywhere near the 500 Allied a/c the Germans claimed.

Edited March 9, 2018 by slparker17

[Panthera]

9 minutes ago, slparker17 said:

 

I wouldn't go there.  Yes, Germans claimed over 500 kills with the Me-262 but as with claims of all nations when matched with squadron loss records it turned out that only a small fraction of the claims are actual shoot downs.  There are many legitimate reasons for exaggerated claims such as two pilots claiming the same kill and an a/c seen spinning down that recovered and flew away or was damaged and made it back to some friendly airfield.  Me-262's did not shoot down anywhere near the 500 Allied a/c the Germans claimed.

 

Keep in mind that this went both ways, both sides used exactly the same methods for confirmation, the biggest difference was since the fighting mostly took place over German soil the Germans often had an easier time verifying their claims.  In the end though both sides overclaimed, I am well aware of this. However making claims such as "they didn't shoot down anywhere near x number" I'd be very careful with as you honestly don't know it, not even a little bit.  I've read cross checked estimates of around 300-350 allied aircraft believed to be shot down by German jets. However things like these are very hard to confirm, was extremely hard even back then, so hard that if no'one saw a friendly aircraft get shot down it was usually just written off as being due to Flak fire, i.e. wild guesses - it simply didn't matter at that point, the aircraft was gone but the war was going our way.

 

 

[TP_Sparky]

Many of my father's civilian instructor pilot (under Army contract) buddies at Shell Field near Ft. Rucker, AL, during the Nam War flew heavies or fighters out of England during WWII.  One guy flew an early tour in bombers and somehow wrangled assignment to fighters and flew a tour escorting bombers in a P-51D, to his delight.  I asked them about German jets and the bomber guys said they flew through the formations so rapidly their power turrets couldn't traverse rapidly enough to track and fire at them.  They said the jets were a lot more dangerous than people were led to believe.  

 

That said, Chuck Yeager flew the 262 and compared it to a P-80.  IIRC, he said they performed basically equally well except for the German engine unreliability.

Edited March 9, 2018 by slparker17

[Gambit21]

46 minutes ago, slparker17 said:

  They said the jets were a lot more dangerous than people were led to believe.  

 

 

As I said before, I interviewed Don Bryan (352nd FG, 328th sq) and he always maintained that he never saw a 262 go through a bomber box without taking

at least 2 bombers down.

[Panthera]

16 minutes ago, Gambit21 said:

 

As I said before, I interviewed Don Bryan (352nd FG, 328th sq) and he always maintained that he never saw a 262 go through a bomber box without taking

at least 2 bombers down.

 

They no doubt left a frightening impression on those who were unlucky enough to run into them at fighting altitude. Galland maintained that if just 200 could've been kept operational each day then they could've halted Allied strategic bombing. As it were however there simply wasn't enough fuel or trained pilots to make that happen, and even if there had been it wouldn't have turned the tide, only prolonged the inevitable. 

Edited March 10, 2018 by Panthera

[Ehret]

Four Mk108 have combined rate of fire of 43 rounds/s. Assuming an evenly interleaved firing pattern, the distance between consecutive two rounds is 12.5m and will be shortened by the 262 very high closure rate. No wonder it was deadly for big planes like B-17, as they had no chance to slip through fire.

[TP_Sparky]

I'm afraid the 262 in Bobo will be over-represented in numbers and not have to deal with being bounced as they come off the runway or RTB.  Also, rapid throttle movement should cause compressor stalls which causes turbine blades to break loose and go through the hot section causing the engine to 'shit the bed' (the aviator's technical phrase).  

 

All of a sudden you're on one engine with four P-51's on your six.  Perform an SGLI check.

Edited March 10, 2018 by slparker17

[Jade_Monkey]

Please stop calling it BoBo. It sounds really bad, especially if you speak spanish (means "fool").

 

Plus the devs already stated its will be referred to as BoBP.

[CanadaOne]

5 minutes ago, Jade_Monkey said:

Please stop calling it BoBo. It sounds really bad, especially if you speak spanish (means "fool").

 

 

Imagine how CLoD feels.

 

Anyway, I like BooBs. Everyone likes Boobs, really. I mean, what's not to like?

[TP_Sparky]

I think BoBo sounds better than the obvious BoB and the ungainly BoBp, which sounds like an egg hitting the kitchen floor.

 

Folks call things what they call them.  Good luck with enforcing BoBp.

 

I don't think we can govern terms by insuring they dont have demeaning meanings in other languages, Spanish of otherwise.  That's how they invented Exxon, to find a word that means nothing in any language.  

 

I'm aware sometimes you must change if a product if marketed in Spanish speaking countries as when they tried to sell Chevy Nova cars in Mexico.  Ooops.  They changed it's name to X5000 or something jazzy although that may not be true.  See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dont-go-here/

Edited March 10, 2018 by slparker17

[DSR_A-24]

10 hours ago, Panthera said:

 

perhaps a sliiiight exaggeration of facts there on your part

 

I'd be happy to see 5 times as many players on the Allied side vs the Axis though, that would make things interesting to say the least.

I can only assume your trust in the Me-262 dominating would make you say such things.

So the largest server has 84 player following your ratio the Germans would have 17 aircraft, but lets round it up to 20.  I'll be extremely liberal here and allow you 2 Me-262s. Depsite the ratio of jet to prop would be 40:1. Following these ratios based off of serviceable aircraft during operation bodenplatte. Kurfurst to Gustavs 3:1 and Antons to Doras 1.5:1. This is a rough estimate. That'd leave the Axis players with 6 Gustavs, 2 Kurfursts, 4 Doras, 6 Antons. While the allied players would have 64 planes swarming all of the axis airfields. 

 

10 hours ago, Panthera said:

 

Well they were there in enough numbers to make their presence felt in a big way. That they couldn't alter the outcome of the war is hardly saying much as at that point in time it would've just about taken an Axis nuke to alter the outcome.

 

Finally I don't believe any map will ever see half the players fly Me262's, esp. if a realistic ratio is kept, say 1 jet for every 10 regular piston engined aircraft.

Panthera, I'd like to say you're a fairly reasonable guy, but I'm going to have to call you out on this one. 986 fighters serviceable on Jan 1st 1945, 24 of which were Me-262s. So yeah... your ratio is waaaaay off buddy. Not to mentioned you'd also have to regulate the K4s and D9s as the majority of fighters would be Antons and Gustavs.

Now I understand why you'd make a comment about the allied planes out numbering the axis planes 5:1

Edited March 10, 2018 by DSR_T-888

[Enceladus828]

How is it that it's now March and the cockpit of the P-39 has just been completed, when this aircraft was scheduled to be released 3 months ago back in December?

[=FEW=Hauggy]

Basically a member of the team got sick and new features took more time than planned to be made.

You can go read what was said by the devs.

No big deal now it's only a couple more weeks aways.

[Jade_Monkey]

8 hours ago, slparker17 said:

I think BoBo sounds better than the obvious BoB and the ungainly BoBp, which sounds like an egg hitting the kitchen floor.

 

Folks call things what they call them.  Good luck with enforcing BoBp.

 

Thanks, splarker71! 

 

[Panthera]

9 hours ago, DSR_T-888 said:

I can only assume your trust in the Me-262 dominating would make you say such things.

So the largest server has 84 player following your ratio the Germans would have 17 aircraft, but lets round it up to 20.  I'll be extremely liberal here and allow you 2 Me-262s. Depsite the ratio of jet to prop would be 40:1. Following these ratios based off of serviceable aircraft during operation bodenplatte. Kurfurst to Gustavs 3:1 and Antons to Doras 1.5:1. This is a rough estimate. That'd leave the Axis players with 6 Gustavs, 2 Kurfursts, 4 Doras, 6 Antons. While the allied players would have 64 planes swarming all of the axis airfields. 

 

Panthera, I'd like to say you're a fairly reasonable guy, but I'm going to have to call you out on this one. 986 fighters serviceable on Jan 1st 1945, 24 of which were Me-262s. So yeah... your ratio is waaaaay off buddy. Not to mentioned you'd also have to regulate the K4s and D9s as the majority of fighters would be Antons and Gustavs.

Now I understand why you'd make a comment about the allied planes out numbering the axis planes 5:1

 

Fighters serviceable does not equate to fighters in the air though, so whilst there certainly weren't anywhere near as many Me262's available as there were props the fact that the jets ran on three types of fuel (J2, Diesel or B4),  meant that percentage wise more of the servicable jets probably went flying in addition to more individual sorties too. As for the ratio of  axis vs allied aircraft actually in the air during bodenplatte, there wasn't the dramatic difference normally seen.

 

That said I think we both know that IL2 BoB won't just cover 1 day in 1945, hence why I'd like to see a 5 v 1 scenario with the assistance of AI. Thinking in particularly of attacks on bomber formations.

 

[TP_Sparky]

9 hours ago, Novice-Flyer said:

How is it that it's now March and the cockpit of the P-39 has just been completed, when this aircraft was scheduled to be released 3 months ago back in December?

 

First post.  Hmmmm.  Everything in program developing takes longer than expected and the team has several irons in the fire at once, Bodenplatte, etc.  Plus, haven't they added features they hadn't originally planned on including like career mode or at least many new types of missions?  I always wonder when someone's first post is snarky and critical whether they're a new person (in that case, welcome) or someone who got banned returned to troll.  

 

If you're new to IL2 there are great tutorials to help you out.  I'm new myself.  

[TP_Sparky]

Panthera has a cow as his avatar.  He can use that to tow his 262 to takeoff position as AndyJWest described (above).

[Panthera]

Just now, slparker17 said:

Panthera has a cow as his avatar.  He can use that to tow his 262 to takeoff position as AndyJWest described (above).

 

Everything goes in the quest for preserving fuel

[TP_Sparky]

And real milk for your coffee!  The Americans and Brits probably have canned milk.

[BlitzPig_EL]

True, but the Americans have real coffee, and as much as they want of it, just like fuel, ammo, spare parts, and...  an unending stream of fresh airframes and pilots, mechanics, armorers, support personnel, etc...etc...etc...

[6./ZG26_Custard]

3 hours ago, slparker17 said:

The Americans and Brits probably have canned milk.

Canned milk in an Englishman's brew is unthinkable!

 

[Uufflakke]

Did I miss something somewhere somehow?

 

Has the  Development Diary changed into a Development Dairy? 

[Panthera]

The newly formed Abschlepp Abteilung !  "We'll get those jets lined up and ready to go in mooo time!"

 

 

[TP_Sparky]

The idea of V-2's and  jets being built by slaves (Jewish concentration camp victims) in underground factories, in essence, caves, and hauled to the runway by cattle (not even horses, needed elsewhere to power a fuel-starved army) is just too ironic.  Hitler's 1,000 Year Reich was true, technology of the year 1950, labor relations and motive power from the year 950.

Edited March 10, 2018 by slparker17

[LukeFF]

21 hours ago, Panthera said:

Galland maintained that if just 200 could've been kept operational each day then they could've halted Allied strategic bombing.

 

Galland said a lot of things, most of which were accepted without criticism. If the Germans had ever come close to fielding 200 jets a day, the Allies would have implemented an aerial blockade of all jet airfields and pummeled them into oblivion with their bombers. 

 

It's like the saying goes: the enemy gets a vote, too. It was very much a loser's game for the Luftwaffe by 1944.

[TP_Sparky]

7 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

 

Galland said a lot of things, most of which were accepted without criticism.

 

...the enemy gets a vote, too. 

 

Two excellent points.  First, as with post-war interviews with German ground commanders, their testimony was revoltingly self-serving.  Every victory was their brilliance.  Every failure was Hitler's interference.  Few German generals admitted that Soviet generalship improved over the war to exceed the Germans and reach very high levels of operational and strategic ability.

 

Second, you're exactly on point.  Had the short-ranged German jets made a difference, 1,000 plane heavy bomber raids on relevant airfields would scare the cows off.  Then who would trundle the wunderwaffe to the moonscape concrete tumble that was the runway?

[6./ZG26_Custard]

3 hours ago, Uufflakke said:

Has the  Development Diary changed into a Development Dairy? 

You never know we maybe looking at the next Wuderwaffe 

 

 

[Panthera]

2 hours ago, LukeFF said:

 

Galland said a lot of things, most of which were accepted without criticism. If the Germans had ever come close to fielding 200 jets a day, the Allies would have implemented an aerial blockade of all jet airfields and pummeled them into oblivion with their bombers. 

 

It's like the saying goes: the enemy gets a vote, too. It was very much a loser's game for the Luftwaffe by 1944.

 

It probably wouldn't go down quite like that, but like I said 200 jets a day would have done nothing but prolong the conflict, the end result would still be a German defeat.  Nothing short of a German nuke could've turned the tide.  

[Rjel]

4 hours ago, 6./ZG26_Custard said:

You never know we maybe looking at the next Wuderwaffe 

 

 

That's just a complete, udder disregard for history.

[dani_jgdani_luftwaffe]

Thanks a lot for the update, I really want to play it!!! 

 

PD: The new cockpit looks great!

[Poochnboo]

Wow, the speed! That thing is really MOOOOOving! If they put that in the game people will be cowering with fear! Okay, I'll go now. I think I've milked this enough.

[Livai]

18 hours ago, LukeFF said:

Galland said a lot of things

 

One might as well give orders to call a horse a cow -

[Poochnboo]

As funny and ironic as that picture of cows pulling the flying wing is, it illustrates an important point. All of those who are so enamored by Germany and her wunderweapons fail to see that there were bigger, underlying, issues going on than just getting jets airborne. Yes, 200 ME262's would not have stopped the bombing and won Germany the war. Fuel shortages, manpower shortages, aircraft parts shortages. Those jets couldn't have solved all of those issues. They couldn't have stopped the millions of tons of supplies, weapons and reinforcements coming across the Atlantic in convoys. They couldn't have fed the starving German people. 

  And if the Allies had, at any point, really felt threatened and that victory was in doubt, they would have brought in their own jets. People forget that England had the Meteor and the U.S. had the P-80 by this time. They just weren't in the desperate situation that the Germans were in. They weren't forced to send them into combat against the Luftwaffe. 

   The only way the jets could have made a huge impact on the outcome of that massive conflict, is if the decision had been made to mass produce them in 1942. That's a huge if. 

[BlitzPig_EL]

And don't discount the fact that if they had prolonged the war past 1945, we did have nukes, and we were not shy about using them at the time.

 

Not pretty to think about, but it would have ended the war right now, and also has a side benefit of giving Uncle Joe something to think about with his vodka at the Kremlin.

[TP_Sparky]

4 hours ago, Poochnboo said:

As funny and ironic as that picture of cows pulling the flying wing is...there were bigger, underlying, issues going on than just getting jets airborne.  

 

The biggest bottleneck wasn't even the oft-mentioned Hitler decision to have his own fast bomber, aggravated as he was by Mosquito raids.  The biggest bottlenect were developmental problems with the engines.  Shortages of strategic materials yes, but more so, the immature technology of axial flow turbojet engines.  Even under good quality control (often notably absent) the engines lasted about 10-25 flight hours, or 50 maximum if babied by a skilled pilot.  The odd fuel situation and bizarre material design compromises forced upon the engineers complicated the situation but problems with nacelle position to wing sweep to intake structure to fuselage and empennage design, etc. had to be discovered over the next thirty years.

 

Even had Hitler fully supported the 262 as a fighter earlier the engines were the main roadblock to deployment.

[Panthera]

2 hours ago, slparker17 said:

 

The biggest bottleneck wasn't even the oft-mentioned Hitler decision to have his own fast bomber, aggravated as he was by Mosquito raids.  The biggest bottlenect were developmental problems with the engines.  Shortages of strategic materials yes, but more so, the immature technology of axial flow turbojet engines.  Even under good quality control (often notably absent) the engines lasted about 10-25 flight hours, or 50 maximum if babied by a skilled pilot.  The odd fuel situation and bizarre material design compromises forced upon the engineers complicated the situation but problems with nacelle position to wing sweep to intake structure to fuselage and empennage design, etc. had to be discovered over the next thirty years.

 

Even had Hitler fully supported the 262 as a fighter earlier the engines were the main roadblock to deployment.

 

Quality control wasn't really the problem as far as I've read, the main problem was the lack of heat resistant metal alloys, as demonstrated by the prototypes which ran 100+ hours at full throttle reliably without issue because they featured these metals. 

 

The fact that they in the end managed a 50 hour TBH without these metals however is a testament to the incredible ingenuity & excellence of the design team which were behind many pioneering design measures such as hollowed out turbine blades with internal cooling channels. 

 

Overall the entire 262 design was quite a bit ahead of its time, as evidenced when compared to the contemporary allied designs such as the Meteor or P-80. The Germans were probably less than a year away from producing an F-86 like aircraft, as evidenced by prototypes such as the P.1011.

 

Edited March 11, 2018 by Panthera

[busdriver]

On 3/9/2018 at 11:53 PM, Novice-Flyer said:

How is it that it's now March and the cockpit of the P-39 has just been completed, when this aircraft was scheduled to be released 3 months ago back in December?

 

Life happens grasshopper.

[TP_Sparky]

3 hours ago, Panthera said:

Overall the entire 262 design was quite a bit ahead of its time, as evidenced when compared to the contemporary allied designs such as the Meteor or P-80. The Germans were probably less than a year away from producing an F-86 like aircraft, as evidenced by prototypes such as the P.1011.

 

The F-80, even with its centrifugal flow jet engine was equal in performance to the 262 (Chuck Yeager flew both) except the F-80 flew higher and had more range while the 262 had heavier armament, six slower firing 30mm cannon vice six .50 cal. MG.  So the a/c were pretty equal while the early model Meteors lagged behind IIRC.

 

The Germans were NOT a year away from producing "an F-86 like aircraft".  The P.1011 and the Ta 183 et. al. bear outward resemblance to the Sabre and MiG-15 in the same way I bear outward resemblance to Tom Cruise (upright posture, bipedal method of locomotion, bilateral symmetry) but saying the P.1011 shell US soldiers discovered would have flown, let alone reached F-86 performance is untenable.  They jumped over several developmental stages to build the variable-swing (on the ground) wing P.1011 before completing the previous steps in a futile attempt to outrun the tide of war.  

 

Given free access to strategic materials like chromium, etc., and given industrial-technological-scientific support, and given high priority by the German government (but they always found resources to support their inhuman concentration camp system) then under those conditions Germany could have developed practical jet engines and a/c earlier.  But none of those preconditions existed and they didn't.

 

Notice that the Spitfire, P-51 and Hurricane also might never have been the Merlin-powered great performers they were.  The British government decided not to support the development of the Merlin engine so Rolls Royce had a critical decision to make.  It was during the Great Depression so a private venture was catastrophically risky, yet Rolls Royce decided to proceed with the air-cooled "PV" engine ("Private Venture") .  At first it was a failure but salvation came from the USA.  Rolls Royce engineers went to the US and brought back already developed antifreeze-based liquid cooling aircraft engine equipment they fitted to the engine we now call the Merlin and with American liquid cooling they had a superlative engine that eventually equipped fighters and bombers.

 

We all know the risk North American Aviation took in getting permission to produce their own design instead of the P-40's the Brits initially requested, and when matched with the Packard Merlin-  

 

Most folks don't know it was a gutsy, risky and patriotic move by Rolls Royce to produce the Merlin as a private venture when the government wouldn't fund it and almost nobody knows it was mature American aircraft glycol liquid cooling equipment that saved the Merlin when it had failed early in its life as an air-cooled engine.

 

So there, Germans didn't go out on a limb to develop their aviation despite their head start.  We took some risks and look how it worked out.

Edited March 12, 2018 by slparker17

[TP_Sparky]

1 hour ago, Panthera said:

"...as demonstrated by the prototypes which ran 100+ hours at full throttle reliably without issue because they featured these metals. 

 

The fact that they in the end managed a 50 hour TBH without these metals however is a testament to the incredible ingenuity & excellence of the design team....

 

Yeah, they designed plywood aircraft with jet propulsion and hauled them to takeoff with cows.    

 

They had to work with substitute materials for a/c, engines, fuel, etc.

 

Two things, though.  It's easier on a jet engine to run it 100 hours on a laboratory hardstand at full throttle.  It's changing throttle that puts strain on the engine.  The bearings and compressor blade angles love a constant speed.  The early German jet engines, especially, suffered compressor stalls frequently with rapid throttle changes.  Fifty hours was the maximum they got between hot sections.  More normal was 5-10-25 hours.

[Panthera]

1 hour ago, slparker17 said:

 

Yeah, they designed plywood aircraft with jet propulsion and hauled them to takeoff with cows.    

 

They had to work with substitute materials for a/c, engines, fuel, etc.

 

Two things, though.  It's easier on a jet engine to run it 100 hours on a laboratory hardstand at full throttle.  It's changing throttle that puts strain on the engine.  The bearings and compressor blade angles love a constant speed.  The early German jet engines, especially, suffered compressor stalls frequently with rapid throttle changes.  Fifty hours was the maximum they got between hot sections.  More normal was 5-10-25 hours.

 

That cows were needed to tow aircraft due to a general lack of fuel can hardly be blamed on the aircraft designers now, can it?  

 

Also a compressor stall does not a broken engine make, and it was a problem with most early jet engines, incl. both the F-86 & MiG-15. The actual design of the Jumo 004 was great as far as I can tell, it just suffered massively from the lack of the proper heat resistant metals.

 

Quote

The F-80, even with its centrifugal flow jet engine was equal in performance to the 262 (Chuck Yeager flew both) except the F-80 flew higher and had more range while the 262 had heavier armament, six slower firing 30mm cannon vice six .50 cal. MG.  So the a/c were pretty equal while the early model Meteors lagged behind IIRC.

 

Well the F-80 and Me 262 were actually compared post war with the conclusion that the Me262 was superior in acceleration and speed, whilst climb rate was found to be similar. But keep in mind this was a post war (1946?) F-80 vs a 1944 aircraft. By the time the war ended in 45 the Jumo 004D engine was past its prototype & testing phase and ready for production. This engine increased performance from 8.8 kN to 10.3 kN.

Edited March 12, 2018 by Panthera