Belly landings with fighters and bombers are acceptable but must be improved!

[IckyATLAS]

After having heard so much on various posts about so many people getting killed with belly landings I decided to really test by myself.

So I used the Kuban and the Rheinland map. I tried with various planes like P51 and Tempest that have underbelly scoops, spitfire, various Yaks, P40, P38 etc. I have not tried with bombers. This is my next test, but the first series with fighters is worth sharing.

 

I did multiple belly landings with engine stopped or engine idle at landing. I did it on perfectly flat land or on sloped land, hilly land with each of these planes. Never been killed or injured except only one with light injury. Conclusion this sim is perfect and I would say somewhat forgiving if I have to say. 

 

So my message to developers is do not change anything. My message to pilots, train until you are good at this.

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer, I am a former pilot and I trained for this kind of landing even if I never had one down to the ground. But in the training we go very very very low and engine idle. I did also train with engine stopped completely, propeller fixed in level flight and engine restart. But this was done at 5'000 feet above an area where in case the engine could not be restarted there was enough nice crop fields to do an emergency landing. I have also done over 250 landings in the snow on glacier slopes with skis.  I say this because I know how to have a plane set according to the ground and the slope to the right attitude, speed etc.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by IckyATLAS

[[CPT]Crunch]

Wonderful, now try in a populated server and get back to us.

[THERION]

I'm not a pilot in real life (alas!) and by far not the best virtual pilot, I very often had to do some emergency
landings. And although it is quite tricky, I do not get killed very often, to be honest I survive most of the time.

I too like to tell the developers not to change anything on this matter. I think it is spot on.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

7 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

After having heard so much on various posts about so many people getting killed with belly landings I decided to really test by myself.

So I used the Kuban and the Rheinland map. I tried with various planes like P51 and Tempest that have underbelly scoops, spitfire, various Yaks, P40, P38 etc. I have not tried with bombers. This is my next test, but the first series with fighters is worth sharing.

 

I did multiple belly landings with engine stopped or engine idle at landing. I did it on perfectly flat land or on sloped land, hilly land with each of these planes. Never been killed or injured except only one with light injury. Conclusion this sim is perfect and I would say somewhat forgiving if I have to say. 

 

So my message to developers is do not change anything. My message to pilots, train until you are good at this.

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer, I am a former pilot and I trained for this kind of landing even if I never had one down to the ground. But in the training we go very very very low and engine idle. I did also train with engine stopped completely, propeller fixed in level flight and engine restart. But this was done at 5'000 feet above an area where in case the engine could not be restarted there was enough nice crop fields to do an emergency landing. I have also done over 250 landings in the snow on glacier slopes with skis.  I say this because I know how to have a plane set according to the ground and the slope to the right attitude, speed etc.

Personally, I agree with you. I too have done multiple belly landings without any trouble. The only time I can remember I was killed (I think I died one other time, but I can't quite remember what happened then), it was in a badly shot up 262 on one engine, on final with gear and full flaps deployed, when I had to shut down my one remaining engine because it suddenly burst out in flames. Despite immediately diving I lost too much speed and got into a stall at 50m altitude or so, crashing down with considerable vertical speed. Although the landing gear held up, I don't think my spine would have liked the landing very much and I'd think I'd at least have had to spend quite some time in hospital. I'm quite OK with the game counting it as a death.

 

That said, there's so many complaints that I think there's really something going on here. I still think it's something netcode related - I fly almost completely offline these days, which would explain why I haven't had much problems.

[oc2209]

19 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

 I have not tried with bombers. This is my next test, but the first series with fighters is worth sharing.

 

I will be shocked if you don't encounter numerous, inexplicable deaths and injuries in bombers, no matter how good your technique is. Offline included.

 

My fighter experience is similar to yours. But things varied wildly with bombers.

[IckyATLAS]

Ok now here my test results with twin engine bombers on slightly sloped terrains to make it challenging. 

 

A20 perfect everybody fine on board

BF110 perfect everybody fine on board

HS129 perfect everybody fine on board

HE111 excellent one injured in one case

 

Pe2 my first try I got killed because I stalled near the ground as I am not used to its stall speed here as well as the right visual attitude.

Second try injured but again coming too slow so I hit vertical a little high. Third was excellent. With this plane you need to train as the position of your head and view when near the ground is not so natural let's say.

 

Now comes the JU88C this one is a bitch to belly land without engine. I had to do four tries and in the last I had engine idle and it was perfect nobody injured. 

I tried it to land with the landing gear, on sloped hilly surface no problem, I took off from there to train the belly landing.

I would say the JU88C is the trickiest but clearly here I lack training. Maybe one reason is that it has the underbelly guns which hits the ground first. So I tried having a little nose up attitude so that it would not plough in the ground. Anyway I do not know if the sim does consider this but it went perfectly well.

 

In all cases you have to now perfectly the specs of your plane, landing speed, stall speed etc. If you do not know the stall speed, fly high enough and try, so you will also know how it stalls. It can be vicious or nice. 

 

Good training.

 

 

Edited April 8, 2022 by IckyATLAS

[Strewth]

24 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

Ok now here my test results with twin engine bombers on slightly sloped terrains to make it challenging. 

 

A20 perfect everybody fine on board

BF110 perfect everybody fine on board

HS129 perfect everybody fine on board

HE111 excellent one injured in one case

 

Pe2 my first try I got killed because I stalled near the ground as I am not used to its stall speed here as well as the right visual attitude.

Second try injured but again coming too slow so I hit vertical a little high. Third was excellent. With this plane you need to train as the position of your head and view when near the ground is not so natural let's say.

 

Now comes the JU88C this one is a bitch to belly land without engine. I had to do four tries and in the last I had engine idle and it was perfect nobody injured. 

I tried it to land with the landing gear, on sloped hilly surface no problem, I took off from there to train the belly landing.

I would say the JU88C is the trickiest but clearly here I lack training. Maybe one reason is that it has the underbelly guns which hits the ground first. So I tried having a little nose up attitude so that it would not plough in the ground. Anyway I do not know if the sim does consider this but it went perfectly well.

 

In all cases you have to now perfectly the specs of your plane, landing speed, stall speed etc. If you do not know the stall speed, fly high enough and try, so you will also know how it stalls. It can be vicious or nice. 

 

Good training.

 

 

As Crunch says.
There does appear to be a difference on MP servers.
It would be interesting to have someone with your experience and approach now make a comparison.

Thanks in advance.

[SCG_motoadve]

Been saying the same and  shown videos in many threads, belly landings are more forgiving in game than real life if done right , have had no problems offline or online.

 

Many people complain they want a realistic simulator , but once things get a bit more challenging they also complain its a bug.

Belly landings the way the are currently punish lousy flying, and rewards good technique so instead of complain, practice until you get them right. 

[oc2209]

48 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

Pe2 my first try I got killed because I stalled near the ground as I am not used to its stall speed here as well as the right visual attitude.

Second try injured but again coming too slow so I hit vertical a little high. Third was excellent. With this plane you need to train as the position of your head and view when near the ground is not so natural let's say.

 

I'm wondering what should be done differently in this case:

 

Spoiler

 

 

And this case:

 

Spoiler

 

 

I try very much to keep sink rate low. I don't know what else I could do to make these landings safer.

[Lusekofte]

One do not need to be a trained pilot to operate anything in this game.

I care less about this issue in SP and mp. But in coop I do care.

It is no pattern , nor a rule.

It is random, I stalled 4 meters above ground wingtip hit first leading the front right in the ground.

I got 4 days sick leave on a obvious death.

Later I made a perfect flaps down landing sliding in the snow. No damage . I got 54 days sickleave 

And endless unexplained death due to objects hitting a wing in flight

Edited April 8, 2022 by LuseKofte

[oc2209]

@Firdimigdi asked me to do this in another thread, so I finally did. I recorded everything, including the G meter in the HUD.

 

Anyway, without further ado:

 

Spoiler

 

 

This was 1 of 1 attempt today. I'm not going to do my marathon testing anymore.

 

I just don't see the logic in the above outcome.

[BlitzPig_EL]

A 4+G spike right when your virtual life ceased.

[oc2209]

3 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

A 4+G spike right when your virtual life ceased.

 

And yet I could get away with this:

 

Spoiler

 

 

So, go figure. I guess I should do a 200 MPH landing with the G meter recording, just to put this to rest. If there's no G spike, then it looks like we have the culprit.

[THERION]

1 hour ago, SCG_motoadve said:

Many people complain they want a realistic simulator , but once things get a bit more challenging they also complain its a bug.

Belly landings the way the are currently punish lousy flying, and rewards good technique so instead of complain, practice until you get them right. 

 

Exactly! The same thoughts I always have when reading this forum about supposedly "porked" DM or FM... some kind of schizophrenia? Who knows...

[CUJO_1970]

Was this "good technique" ?

 

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/small-plane-crashes-on-cobb-parkway-highway-blocked

 

This happened today - dude walked away. It would be a fatality in the sim, 100% of the time.

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by CUJO_1970

[YouBet]

2 hours ago, SCG_motoadve said:

Many people complain they want a realistic simulator , but once things get a bit more challenging they also complain its a bug.

Agreed.

 

Not everyone will win.

 

For the rest of you... Grab your participation trophy and go home.

[oc2209]

I didn't land at 200 MPH this time, but I still landed stupidly fast:

 

Spoiler

 

 

There's a G spike about equal to the Pe-2's; 4.6 for the Thunderbolt, 4.7 for the Pe-2, from what I can tell. So that doesn't appear to be the deciding factor.*

 

All I know is, to survive landing at these speeds, I pull back on the stick to keep the nose from digging in. That appears to save me, because when I don't pull back, death/injury typically occurs at speeds above ~160 MPH.

 

But nothing I do in the Pe-2 can make landing reliably safe. That's the key word here: reliable.

 

I can make fighter landing reliable; I can't do the same in bombers.

 

*Edit:

 

Okay, wait a minute. The Pe-2 went +4.7, then negative about 2.6, in quick succession.

 

The P-47 went negative 4.6 and never had a big positive spike. Nothing over about 2.5. And no rapid change between large positive and large negative forces.

 

Maybe there is something to this after all. Maybe sudden positive/negative changes are what's causing the damage.

Edited April 9, 2022 by oc2209

[oc2209]

There's two things I'd like now:

 

One, for @IckyATLAS to please add a '?' to the end of his thread title; and two, for anyone to explain to me how a P-47 pitching forward during a belly landing generates negative Gs, while a Pe-2 doing the same thing generates positive Gs.

 

There's a 9G net difference between the two planes.

 

That sounds... weird.

Edited April 9, 2022 by oc2209

[oc2209]

I wanted to see how much G a pilot could take and survive, during a crash landing. This was the best result:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Looks like +11.2 after the pilot had already been injured. So a simple G spike is not fatal, evidently.

 

Which means it's either a rapid change between positive and negative, or it's nothing at all to do with Gs.

 

What I don't want people to lose sight of in all of this, is how there are other inexplicable crash behaviors not limited to bellying planes in.

 

Like this:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Impact speed is quite low. Yet one of the Ju-52's pilots is killed or injured so badly that he's knocked unconscious. My pilot isn't injured. Other Ju-52 pilot evidently isn't seriously injured.

 

The question: does the above scenario make any kind of sense? In my opinion, no. And it's this same inexplicable behavior that's happening on the ground for reasons no one can determine.

[IckyATLAS]

6 hours ago, oc2209 said:

 

I'm wondering what should be done differently in this case:

 

 

And this case:

 

I try very much to keep sink rate low. I don't know what else I could do to make these landings safer.

I have not tried on a winter map. And yes the Pe2 is tricky. I will give it a try on the Stalingrad Winter map.

[oc2209]

19 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

I have not tried on a winter map. And yes the Pe2 is tricky. I will give it a try on the Stalingrad Winter map.

 

For the record, I don't believe snow matters. In a following recording after the post you're quoting, I had everyone die on regular dirt.

 

I have managed to land the Pe-2 without incident. But the problem is consistency. No fighter presents the same level of difficulty as trying to consistently belly land an He-111, Ju-88, or Pe-2 without incident. I haven't tried the A-20 enough to really form an opinion on it.

[Art-J]

@IckyATLAS Did you watch test results oc2209 posted further in that thread?

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/77971-belly-landings-contrary-to-the-rl-guys/

 

Things don't seem to be as clear as you think.

[Lusekofte]

 

57 minutes ago, Art-J said:

@IckyATLAS Did you watch test results oc2209 posted further in that thread?

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/77971-belly-landings-contrary-to-the-rl-guys/

 

Things don't seem to be as clear as you think.

This is what I try to say, they talk like it is a algorithm deciding when you die. 

It is not, at least not in coop. 

It is totally random, it is not the landing   nor the speed. It is something else. Because they really do not make sense.

But , to me this discussion is over. One have to fight all in a report of something odd. It is really not that important

[firdimigdi]

The more I look at videos like the one @oc2209posted in the other thread of the P47 sliding smooth-as-can-be and the pilot just dying (from boredom maybe? thirst? hunger?) with no deceleration or bump to be seen the more I think this is possibly some desync between game threads. For example the collision detection might be run at a lower frequency (maybe there's another thread running with pilot physiology simulation as well?) than the rest of the physics and in some cases just makes the wrong assumptions. Or perhaps there's simply a predictive algorithm at work which gets to the wrong conclusion.

 

That could account for weird inconsistencies and also the oddities we see in non-ditch-related fatalities.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Firdimigdi

[Hitcher]

 

Yes pilot health system is fine bro

https://streamable.com/8fnr90

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by Hitcher

[dureyo]

9 hours ago, Firdimigdi said:

 

Posted it in the other thread but it likely needs repeating:

 

Btw, let's not get nasty over this.

Krup's landing looked much better than this (about 10 mph less speed, better sinkrate, better surface)and his pilot died. This landing in il-2 is 100% death every single time. Bottom line. No further discussion.

 

*EDIT anyone defending it by saying they can ditch reliably safe is either braindead or trolling. The issue goes far beyond ditching, it is affecting ground vehicle's crewmen, mid air collisions and deaths from collision with light debris. 

 

 

  

9 hours ago, Hitcher said:

 

Yes pilot health system is fine bro

https://streamable.com/8fnr90

 

 

I just can't help but to call anyone a *EDIT who after seeing this says pilot health system is fine... it just goes way beyond any reasonable common sense to discredit people's reports about this issue. 

 

 

[firdimigdi]

22 minutes ago, dureyo said:

Krup's landing looked much better than this (about 10 mph less speed, better sinkrate, better surface)and his pilot died. This landing in il-2 is 100% death every single time. Bottom line. No further discussion.

 

That's precisely why I posted this video, it's quite a bit more violent especially as far as deceleration goes.

 

So while I agree there is an issue here I do not agree with personal attacks or unilateraly declaring there is no need for discussion. How about we tone it down and stick to constructive arguments?

 

@oc2209 thinking a bit more about the possibility of a predictive algorithm getting it wrong: it would explain why as long as the yoke is pulled back there is no fatallity when compared to a smooth ditch with neutral yoke like in those p47 videos you posted. The prediction, if it exists (and likely does), would take both control surface angle and current plane rotation in to account so if the plane pitches down with no yoke input it thinks that the motion will continue downwards.

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by Firdimigdi

[AEthelraedUnraed]

1 minute ago, Firdimigdi said:

I do not agree with personal attacks or unilateraly declaring there is no need for discussion. How about we tone it down and stick to constructive arguments?

Well said.

 

There are clearly two camps who appear to have a quite different experience. I'm part of the "lucky" ones who are quite happy with the new system and think it's a definite improvement from the auto-survive it was before. I just landed a Ju-88C and a Pe-2, and although I rarely fly any of those planes, I survived an engines-off belly landing somewhere in a field (I did get wounded though, as well as one crewmate for both landings, but they were *very* rough landings (especially the Pe-2 was a definite whiplash) so I'd be fine with that).

 

However, I have also seen videos that show apparent issues. It's clear there are some people for whom the system doesn't work as intended, and some people for whom it does. I think that at this stage, it's foolish to deny that your side of the argument is the only truth. There must be some reason (netcode? some game setting? hardware-related?) why the results aren't the same for everyone and I believe that until it's discovered what that reason is, we should act restrained and just make the best of it.

[CountZero]

2 hours ago, Hitcher said:

 

Yes pilot health system is fine bro

https://streamable.com/8fnr90

 

its not just fine, its perfect lol

 

i guess ts fake news that this 2 pilots servived this crash 

[IckyATLAS]

Maybe a disclaimer here:

I do not contest that many of you have strange experiences and feel there is a bug.  I just share my experience here and it is in certain conditions. On my machine and using the quick mission builder that comes with the sim so that it is not dependent on personal campaigns and mission designs.

I am not playing on servers nor coop. So I cannot say if that has an influence. But why? At least in theory not. The physical model and flight model should not change if you play a campaign, coop, server MP or whatever else. The map may change and the number of planes (players) and objects on the map, but the rest of the sim should be the same.

 

However they may be one only possibility I see that could explain why there are too many strange deadly landings is as follows:

When a server/player machine combination is overloaded then maybe the physical model calculations are not fast enough and frames are skipped. Which means that transitions from flying to touching ground are not smooth and you pass from a frame you fly above ground to a frame you are on the ground skipping the intermediate ones. This will create artificially high speeds and g's which then in the model are interpreted as crashing on the ground with all the visual effects generated automatically like plane disintegrating etc. This is the same effect as in a multiplayer environment when you see other planes making instantaneous jumps of 50 meters or more in flight because the intermediate frames are lost. 

This is impossible to solve in a simple way because then you have to restrict the number of players according to the server processing power and machine power of each player and the connection speed to the server that will refresh the data, in a way as to guarantee a minimum physical calculation time step. But as I do not know how things are coded this is totally speculative, and in any case if this is the root of the problem then there is no solution. It is impossible to expect that all players on the MP will have the same top speed connections with very low latency like 4-5 msec and the similar very powerful computer. It will be a mix with someone on an old laptop to the top of the line tower, and connection speeds and latencies of any kind.

As you already know you may have nice FPS but as we know this does not mean there is no time dilation as an example, and so maybe it creates also a problem with physical calculations. I cannot consider my rig as typical as it is a very expensive and powerful one. So I can only talk about what I experiment on my system.

 

In real life it is a completely different story. You cannot crash planes to train. Chances you get killed or heavily injured with a damaged plane are very high. But in the sim you can. In the sim I do belly or dead stick landing with perfectly functioning planes. If I had my ailerons damaged, one engine dead etc. it makes it all more complicated because you have asymmetric power you must compensate supposing your hydraulics works without too much delay etc. etc. so here it is a completely different story. Those of you trying to save his life in a badly damaged plane I perfectly understand that you have 80% chances to die. This is why you must always jump if you have enough above ground altitude (over 300mt or 1'000 feet) and some control on your plane (to put it in a jump friendly attitude) than try a belly landing.

 

Here are my comments related to the Pe2 in the Stalingrad winter map:

 

I did now a few Pe2 belly (with engines running) and dead stick landings (engine dead). After a few tries (where I was injured not killed)  I was consistent enough. 

I have put a few pictures here of the dead stick landing on a surface with gentle slopes. As you can see i have targeted to land sideways of the slope and not frontally. I can land frontally but the slope of the hill is short and you may jump on the top and crash below after. As you can see nobody injured every body singing Kalinka in the plane and drinking vodka.

 

So happy that we even did not open the canopy to get out. In fighters just before touch down you should always open the canopy to get out as quickly as possible and take cover, this to avoid in case it jams due to the hard grounding, to be trapped and maybe burn alive, or be shot at by the enemy fighters that want to flame your aircraft and maybe think you are toast anyway (let put aside deliberate killing of pilots). 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pe2 must be belly landed with landing flaps fully down. Even if you have your landing gear up they slow you down a lot. The plane stalls very quickly at stall speed. You have visual buffeting to warn you of stall but it is too late you must not be at that speed because you cannot recover and this will get you killed. Doing a successful belly landing with engines running is easier  because you control perfectly your descent as you can use the power to keep the right speeds. 

If you do a dead stick landing then it is a one shot no chance to make a go around. In this case watching your speed is absolutely paramount you must have enough above stall speed but not too much. This means that you have much less flying distance to the field, and that you have to go down steeply to keep the speed. It is a different landing profile. 

 

Unfortunately here it is like when learning to fly on old timers. Your brain may process the visual cues and physical sensations, you may feel the plane and be one with it and so all is fine, and you will catch what cannot be explained with words. For others they will never be good even after tons and tons of detailed explanations and hours of training. 

 

We are all different and for what mother nature has given to us, we will excel in different things but rarely in everything. So if you die in a belly landing or can't make it right next time JUMP! ? 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by IckyATLAS

[IckyATLAS]

12 hours ago, CUJO_1970 said:

Was this "good technique" ?

 

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/small-plane-crashes-on-cobb-parkway-highway-blocked

 

This happened today - dude walked away. It would be a fatality in the sim, 100% of the time.

 

I looked carefully at the video, and you are right. In the sim you would be dead 100% and this would be normal by the way.

Here frankly the pilot is lucky, you can see that the plane starts rolling and big luck here the wing touches and breaks absorbing a lot of energy, and the plane ploughs into the grass maybe with a not too hard soil and so more energy is absorbed. The plane does a lateral roll which is more dangerous often compared to a frontal impact (where you have a four or five point safety belt to hold you)  as your head will impact laterally the canopy which is much nearer to your head and you have no helmet in those planes. The violent lateral motion of the head is also dangerous as your are ill prepared for it. In that situation you do not control anything and so your life is now put up as a lottery prize. And luckily he had bought before flying the winning lottery ticket of the day. However he did not walk away singing. 

[69th_Panp]

18 hours ago, CUJO_1970 said:

Was this "good technique" ?

 

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/small-plane-crashes-on-cobb-parkway-highway-blocked

 

This happened today - dude walked away. It would be a fatality in the sim, 100% of the time.

 

For sure you would have died in the sim 

Heres another one. one bump on landing short of the field and call the mortician LOL ?  everything is just fine with this feature ?

Edited April 9, 2022 by 69th_Panp

[MisterSmith]

Hid some entries and issued a ban. Personal attacks will not be tolerated. Tone it down and discuss the matter at hand as if you were speaking with friends in public.

[Lusekofte]

To not sound like a the bitter old man I am.

I like to say, I enjoy the effects of a force landing, and the wreck there after

 

It is damn cool. It is not like I do not enjoy the crash,  I do.

Edited April 9, 2022 by LuseKofte

[oc2209]

9 hours ago, Firdimigdi said:

 

@oc2209 thinking a bit more about the possibility of a predictive algorithm getting it wrong: it would explain why as long as the yoke is pulled back there is no fatallity when compared to a smooth ditch with neutral yoke like in those p47 videos you posted. The prediction, if it exists (and likely does), would take both control surface angle and current plane rotation in to account so if the plane pitches down with no yoke input it thinks that the motion will continue downwards.

 

 

The only thing that makes me disagree with this point, is how widely variable fighter survival is to bomber.

 

When I pull back in the P-47, it seems effective. When I pull back in a bomber, it has no effect on my survival chances. That's what's hard to explain.

 

8 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

Maybe a disclaimer here:

I do not contest that many of you have strange experiences and feel there is a bug.  I just share my experience here and it is in certain conditions. On my machine and using the quick mission builder that comes with the sim so that it is not dependent on personal campaigns and mission designs.

I am not playing on servers nor coop. So I cannot say if that has an influence. But why? At least in theory not. The physical model and flight model should not change if you play a campaign, coop, server MP or whatever else. The map may change and the number of planes (players) and objects on the map, but the rest of the sim should be the same.

 

I only test offline using QMB, just like you.

 

8 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

The Pe2 must be belly landed with landing flaps fully down. Even if you have your landing gear up they slow you down a lot. The plane stalls very quickly at stall speed. You have visual buffeting to warn you of stall but it is too late you must not be at that speed because you cannot recover and this will get you killed. Doing a successful belly landing with engines running is easier  because you control perfectly your descent as you can use the power to keep the right speeds. 

If you do a dead stick landing then it is a one shot no chance to make a go around. In this case watching your speed is absolutely paramount you must have enough above stall speed but not too much. This means that you have much less flying distance to the field, and that you have to go down steeply to keep the speed. It is a different landing profile.

 

I disagree about flaps. I found they made the touchdown much more--and needlessly--dangerous.

 

Watch this recording closely:

 

Spoiler

 

 

No flaps, no dangerous sinkrate, no danger of stalling. I don't consider a touchdown speed of ~110 MPH to be excessively dangerous. Especially on terrain that's perfectly flat.

 

What are your typical touchdown speeds in a Pe-2?

[IckyATLAS]

Find here under the tracks of three belly landings made with the P51-D on the Rheinland summer map nearby Bruxelles. Two are Dead stick and the one on the road is with engine running.

The three landings are on three surfaces: one is hard concrete surface, one is in a cornfield, and one is on a countryside road.

There is no problem and all landings are perfect. I keep the canopy closed because the P51-D canopy during strong deceleration will slam shut if open. So I open it after having stopped to show all is fine.

 

I would have liked to try on a stone road but they seem to be all with trees on both sides with distances between trees smaller than the wingspan. 

If you can tell me where I can find one straight leg without trees I could make a try.

 

Belly Landings.zip

 

[oc2209]

With full flap, I lowered my touchdown speed to 98 MPH, which is 157 KPH, well within the prescribed Pe-2 landing speed of 155-165 KPH as listed in the game.

 

Spoiler

 

 

As everyone can see, it had no impact on survival chances.

 

I can either make a slightly higher-than-recommended touchdown (at 110 MPH, or 177 KPH) with flaps up, but with far better, smoother control of the plane, or I can make a more unstable touchdown at lower speeds. The end result is still largely the same.

[150_GIAP-Red_Dragon]

ALL my belly landings in the singleplayer were successful and safe (Yak 9, P 51 and P47). And ALL my belly landings in multiplayer were  fatal

Edited April 10, 2022 by -332FG-Red_Pilot

[IckyATLAS]

8 hours ago, oc2209 said:

With full flap, I lowered my touchdown speed to 98 MPH, which is 157 KPH, well within the prescribed Pe-2 landing speed of 155-165 KPH as listed in the game.

 

  Hide contents

 

 

As everyone can see, it had no impact on survival chances.

 

I can either make a slightly higher-than-recommended touchdown (at 110 MPH, or 177 KPH) with flaps up, but with far better, smoother control of the plane, or I can make a more unstable touchdown at lower speeds. The end result is still largely the same.

 

I see. But first let me say that your approach is not very stabilized. You have your engine running and you come fast.

In Russian and German planes I use km/hr speeds and others I use Knots. So my references for each plane are of the type used for that plane.

Anyway that's me so the best way is to look at what the instruments say. So please find here below a track I have made of a Deadstick Belly landing on Pe2 on a field on the Kuban map. 

 

Pe2_Deadstick_Belly_Landing.zip

 

I say dead stick because I killed the engines off. You can see on the flap angle instrument that I go a full 45 degrees. Then look at the speedometer and you will see the speeds.

My approach angle is very steep compared to yours to keep reasonable speed. I have no engine traction my touchdown is more gentle because I bleed off strongly the speed near the ground due to my full flaps and so I land well nice and on a short distance. As I said after landing I open the window and myself and my team sing Kalinka and drink Vodka. Vladimir the rear gunner had brought with him his balalaika and so we played music, drank and sang to our good fortune. ? 

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by IckyATLAS

[oc2209]

1 hour ago, IckyATLAS said:

 

I see. But first let me say that your approach is not very stabilized. You have your engine running and you come fast.

In Russian and German planes I use km/hr speeds and others I use Knots. So my references for each plane are of the type used for that plane.

Anyway that's me so the best way is to look at what the instruments say. So please find here below a track I have made of a Deadstick Belly landing on Pe2 on a field on the Kuban map.

 

I say dead stick because I killed the engines off. You can see on the flap angle instrument that I go a full 45 degrees. Then look at the speedometer and you will see the speeds.

 

My approach angle is very steep compared to yours to keep reasonable speed. I have no engine traction my touchdown is more gentle because I bleed off strongly the speed near the ground due to my full flaps and so I land well nice and on a short distance.

 

 

I can't watch that file. Or I don't know how. There's no TRK file in it.

 

Just going by your description, I honestly fail to see how anything that you mentioned matters. I think the same ends can be accomplished by different means.

 

The salient points, as I see it, are that my speed is low enough and that my sink rate is under control.

 

Does it make sense to you, that everyone in the plane should die in this scenario:

 

Spoiler

 

 

As I said, the landing speed for the Pe-2 is listed as 155-165 KPH. I'm touching the ground at 177 KPH in this recording. I don't see what should be fatal to everyone on board.

 

Especially as I've proven that other planes can be landed at much higher speeds and still be survivable.

Edited April 9, 2022 by oc2209