After reaching the maximum speed, pull the handle towards you and set the lift angle to about 60 degrees. At a speed of 270 km / h on the device, smoothly press the plane with the handle into horizontal flight or turn with a roll of 15-20 degrees in the desired direction. The climb over the hill is about 1000 meters. The execution time is 12-15 seconds.
(“Instructions on the technique of piloting the aircraft“La-5”with the M-82 engine, Edition 1943).
Have you noticed anything suspicious? 1000 meters in 12 seconds means a rate of climb of 80 m / s. Twice as many as in the jet MiG-15. Many of today's experts will definitely state that this is nonsense. Or a simple typo in the text.
For misprints in the 1943 flight instructions, it was possible to "get" the term in places not so remote. There is no typo there. 80 meters per second - this is how WWII fighters climbed if they entered the battle from the correct (advantageous) position in the air.
The choice of this position is a key task in the formation of battle formations and height separation. Exceeding speed and speed provide freedom of action and initiative in battle.
Otherwise it's too late. The fighter will be forced to climb with a "snail" speed of 17, 7 m / s (the same static rate of climb indicated in all tables in aviation encyclopedias). Of course, this is not the whole truth. With an increase in altitude, the engine will begin "oxygen starvation". At an altitude of 5000 meters, the rate of climb of the La-5FN will decrease to 14 m / s.
The pilot, seeing the Me-109, skipping past him at high speed and going upward with a candle, does not take into account that this is achieved NOT due to the flying qualities of the Messerschmitt, but due to tactics, due to the advantage in altitude, which gives a sharp increase in speed and rate of climb.
("Manual on the conduct of air combat", 1943).
0.5 * (V12-V22) = g * (H2-H1)
Crazy “slide” from acceleration, or “falcon strike” from sky-high heights. Fundamental conservation law. The speed is high. Height is speed.
In the middle of the war, diving from 30,000 feet, test pilot Martingale was able to accelerate his Spitfire to 0.92 times the speed of sound (over 1000 km / h), setting a record for piston fighters of that era.
The key word is dynamics. The fighter is not designed for passive defense and straight flight.
It is for this reason that it makes no sense to look for differences in the "tabular" characteristics of aircraft, where static and average values are indicated in conditions of level flight. The extra meter per second of the “tabular” climb rate does not mean anything if the enemy enters the battle with an excess of 500 meters in height.
The first attack is the most productive, giving 80% of victories.
We've looked at a couple of prime examples and teachings from 1943.
In the summer of 1941, there was simply no time to write such instructions. But the same laws of physics were at work.
From the point of view of the design of the I-16 “type 24”, the Me-109E and 109F had equal chances of winning. There was some difference in the tabular performance characteristics, but everything was decided not by minor innuendoes + - 1 m / s, but by the tactics and organization of the battle. Think of the “incredible” 80 m / s.
The most productive air ace of the British Empire - Marmaduke Pattle (native of South Africa, 50 wins) did not manage to fly the magnificent Spitfires. He smashed the German Me-109E on a wretched and clumsy Hurricane. At least that's how this British fighter is traditionally described. On which (like any other) it was impossible to fight if you did not know how to use dynamic modes.
The Soviet Union had its own ace, who equally successfully fought the Luftwaffe on the Ishaks and Hurricanes. Fighter pilot of the Northern Fleet Air Force Boris Safonov.
* * *
Domestic I-16 ("donkey") favorably differed from "Messer" and "Hurricane" by the type of power plant. Its air-cooled motor was less susceptible to combat damage. So, for the guaranteed destruction of the Me-109, one stray bullet was enough, which fell into the "cooling jacket" of the engine. There was no such critical element in the design of the Soviet I-16.
Plus, the wide motor better protected the pilot from enemy fire (frontal attack or defensive bombardment).
The topic of confrontation between radial (I-16, La-5, FW-190, “Zero”) and in-line engines (Yak-1, Me-109, Spitfire) is too extensive and beyond the scope of this article. Let's just note that even the “outdated” I-16 had its own definite advantages.
While "Messerschmitt" had serious flaws. Anyone who is the farthest from aviation, looking at the photo of the Me-109, will say that from his cockpit "it should not be visible to a damn thing." And this is absolutely true. Poor visibility (especially back) was an integral part of the German masterpiece. Until the very end of the war, the Yubermens did not solve this problem.
Armament
As practice has shown, the average time spent by the aircraft in the sight did not exceed two seconds. During this time, it was required to "thrust" a sufficient amount of red-hot metal into the enemy. And taking into account the inevitable dispersion - as densely as possible "seed" the space with bullets at the location of the enemy vehicle.
In this sense, the ShKAS aircraft machine gun with a rate of fire of 30 rds / sec was a very effective solution. And the infernal battery of four machine guns Shpitalny and Komarovsky (standard armament I-16 type "24") gave a density of fire, which the six-barreled "Volcano" could envy.
Weak "rifle" caliber? From the same machine guns, the British during the battle for Britain decided 1, 5 thousand "Messerschmitts".
Of course, the Spitfires were armed not with four, but with a garland of eight (!) Browning rifle caliber. But this is only because the British did not have their own designer Shpitalny, who managed to create the world's fastest-firing machine gun (ShKAS). And even more so, there were no designers Savin and Norov, who designed a monster that spat lead at a rate of 45-50 rds / sec (alas, it was not put into production).
Against this background, the cannon armament of “Emile” no longer looks like a “wunderwaffe” capable of dealing in an instant with any “hopelessly outdated” one armed with only I-16 machine guns.
Two 20-mm Oerlikon MG-FF cannons of the Me-109E fighter were inferior in muzzle energy to the 12, 7-mm UBS machine gun. The scanty ammunition load, low rate of fire (520-540 rds / min) and low muzzle velocity (580-600 m / s) did not contribute in any way to aimed shooting in dynamic air combat. Too great a lead, it is the time during which the enemy could unpredictably change the trajectory.
Despite the fact that the cannons were installed in the wings, and the aiming point was about a hundred meters in front of the course. This further complicated and complicated the attack process.
This is 40% of the Me-109 fighter aircraft fleet on the Soviet-German front in June 1941.
As for the 15-mm MG-151/15 motor-gun, installed in the collapse of the Friedrich's cylinder block (Me-109F), this was a truly outstanding decision. But it could not affect the situation in the air overnight. Moreover, at the beginning of the war there were 579 ‘Friedrichs’ units, of which MG-151 were installed only on the “Messers” of the 109F-2 modification. Fighters of modification 109F-1 were equipped with the same mediocre MG-FF, also installed in the collapse of the cylinder block.
Domestic I-16s also had a lot of modifications, from purely "machine-gun" (which for some reason are considered "hopelessly obsolete") to various versions of mixed weapons from ShKAS, large-caliber UBS and ShVAK wing guns. Unfortunately, there were too few cannon modifications, only 690 units. About the same as all variants of the German Me-109F in the first half of 1941.
80 meters per second. Conclusions and implications
Tabular performance characteristics are meaningful only if you know what is important and what you need to pay attention to. Unfortunately, the numbers and values corresponding to real combat situations are not reflected in most sources. As a result, the comparison of aircraft turns into a meaningless comparison of tabular values, at a time when everything is decided not by tenths, but by multi-digit numbers. Which are unexpectedly born in the heat of dynamic combat.
In the era of piston engines, the main condition for victory was the organization of the battle. In conditions of low thrust (I repeat, this is not a modern jet engine, whose thrust can exceed the weight of the aircraft), fighters only due to their engine could not take a position for an attack in a limited time. All that remained for the air aces was to competently “convert” the reserve of altitude into speed, and speed into a rapid climb.
The purpose of my story is not to sing an ode to the creators of the I-16 and not to groan "Messerschmitt". The Soviet I-16 and Me-109 E / F modifications were equally primitive machines against the backdrop of the formidable La-5FN or La-7, which saw the end of the war. But "donkeys" and "emily" - exactly what our and German pilots had to fly in the summer of 1941.
Taking into account the instructions and instructions of the Air Force about obtaining a climb rate that is 6 times higher than the tabulated one. Examples of Pattle and Safonov, who won in any conditions. Or one and a half thousand downed "Messers" who fell under the queue of "weak and outdated" machine guns of 7, 62 caliber.
All this gives the right to declare that the "Messer" and the I-16 were equal opponents in the air battles of the first year of the war. At least the characteristics cited by the supporters of the "technical superiority of the Germans" are not worth a penny.
We can seriously discuss the quality of training and combat experience of pilots who have passed Spain, Finland and Khalkhin Gol. Or the situation with radio stations, more precisely, with their absence, on most Soviet fighters. But to assert about some advantage in gaining speed or maneuverability on the vertical, without specifying the conditions of a particular battle … This can only be allowed by ordinary people who are infinitely far from technology and aviation.
How and why literally in a matter of months thousands of Soviet I-16s and fighters of other types “evaporated”?
As of 2017, there is no clear and intelligible answer that can explain and link together all the events of that grand catastrophe. Due to the strong politicization of the issue, it is better to leave this topic alone.
Returning to the main idea of this article, the gain of speed and altitude in the dynamic mode of the piston aircraft of the WWII exceeded the static indicators of the first jet Sabers and MiG-15. Comparing statics and dynamics is nothing more than a joke. But in every joke there is a grain of a joke.
And if the "licked" La-5FN with a forced engine, capable of developing a speed of 650 km / h in horizontal flight, could go to climb, every second passing 80 meters of blue, then its ancestor - "donkey" also had a climb rate of tens of meters per second, which many times exceeded all table values.
