Aircraft-Speed vs Manueverability

#90

In our technological world speed is far more important in air combat than agility, generally speaking. the classic example of this was in the Pacific in WW2 where once the Allies fielded fighters like the F6F and the P-38 and refused to dogfight with the agile Japanese aircraft like Type 0. Faster air superiority fighters can choose to engage or not to. There never seems to be enough of an agility difference to allow the slower aircraft to refuse an engagement by maneuvering out of the way.

I am not certain this will still hold true with flying creatures vs flying machines. The intrinsic ability of a flying animal to quickly change direction and to not have the time lag required by the man/machine interface.?

If creatures like Flying Lancers, Skrill riders, Bestial High Martians, the goofy critters from Pandora and suchlike can dodge and stunt their way away from aircraft will human-piloted aircraft ever be capable of effectively engaging them with fixed forward firing weapons? I can easily see things like the turrets on modern attack helicopters being very effective, but something like a Spitfire or P-51 might be at a serious disadvantage.

Thoughts?

Terry Sofian
tsofian@...

Ron Hunt

#91

In WW2 a huge number of enemy planes were destroyed not by plane to plane dogfighting but by maneuvering into a position to "bounce" the enemy. So I would have to say there are to many "what if's" to really make a solid case for dogfighting or not.

That said, I don't see an old aircraft having much of a chance at anything that might be out there today no matter what the pilots could do.

I do recall an article of one US Navy pilot talking about the Russian planes that can stop in mid air while maneuvering ... it went something like this: The last thing I want to do is stop moving with a missile on my tail! LOL

Ron

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#93

Hey Terry,

I agree with your sentiment at this point in time, but I think that fairly soon auto piloted drones will be able to out maneuver piloted aircraft as drones aren't susceptible to the same stress as a human body. Just my musing.

- Tim

#95

Greetings Terry and All,
I would think that the Combat Environment would be the chief dictator in any military weapons evolutionary development. Aircraft of WWI, II, Korea, etc and even today's most high tech machines were/are designed to respond to the threats posed by what the enemy might field at that point of time in history, and to neutralize those threats with extreme prejudice. --- But those are still HUMAN engineered threats.?With your HQ&C Bugs the humans would not be facing the same combat environments as our pilots did in WWI or II. I would think that both the pilots and the engineers of HQ&C would be forced to develop their approaches to What Works For Them very differently than we did in our Real World Human vs Human universe.?
A couple of things that I think might carryover are the Two Man Fighter concept of WWI & II with the rear facing Navigator/Gunner operating a swivel-mounted machine gun while the pilot controls the forward facing guns/cannons. (Way lower tech than a modern chopper's chin gun, but . . . ) --- Not sure if you've "evolved" your tech to include guidance systems. If not, you might take a look at some of the air-to-air rocket barrage systems used by early straight-wing jet fighters. Not very accurate for targeting single small highly maneuverable flitters, but a barrage could put a world of hurt on a big critter, or destroy one of comparable human fighter size, or clear some air space if fired into a swarm. Being an area effect weapon, a barrage ~ might ~ even be able to catch a flitter if the pilot's any good and lays down a good spread. Or just gets real lucky.
What the heck. They're Only Bugs. How tough could they be??? LOL

Keep It FUN!
Dan G

开云体育

Aircraft-Speed vs Manueverability