they are known for turning, but that’s not really what makes them relevant The Zeros turn and they’re eating dust 4 out of every 3 matches. It’s the fact they’re among the best boom and zoomers in the entire prop BR’s, with quite high rip speeds, acceptable high speed handling (though not stellar) and the best climb rates among props and their acceleration in dives.
They also climb particularly well, and perform great at most altitudes. And now they also possess the hardest hitting 20mm’s of all props: Hispano Mk2.
You can outdive a j2m, you can outdive a yak3u, you can outdive a 109, but you cannot outdive a spitfire. The aircraft that can solidly reverse them are very few and these cound yaks and 190s in certain occasions like when the spitfire is about to enter high flutter speeds and the 190 is flying at around 500 ias where the takeoff flaps and landing flaps can be tapped without breaking.
There are certain stale exceptions like the spitfire mkVc and mkVb tropical which are particularly overtiered but many of them are amazing and have great flight performance. If something stops them from being slightly higher in BR is the difficulty to aim the guns because as it is with all british aircraft the gun placements are horrible, from the first fighters to the latest british designs… no wonder why they eventually decided to import and codesign their current fleet.
Most british aircraft have excellent weapon placement. Nothing wrong with the wing mounted guns of the Spitfire (you trade having to put a little effort into aiming for far more firepower than nose mounted equivalents in German aircraft)
Most jets have nose mounted guns, and often have greater fire-power or overall performance than era equivalent jets from other nations. Like the 4x 30mm ADENs in the nose of the Hunter which entered service in 1954.
Later aircraft like the Lightning (which was an after thought for much of the fleet of Lightnings) and Harrier (which was more a design limitation) have slightly wierd weapon placement, but they work well but there is nothing strange about the weapon placement of the Jaguar, Tornado or Typhoon.
Spits are out of control, since Hispanos were buffed to be the strongest ww2 gun type. They always had the best FM, but were kept in check by correctly modeled Hispanos + weak ammunition, which historically weren’t stellar. This was changed. Over the last years GB playerbase got more and more influence via several tech mods favoring this nation. All downsides were removed…be it anemic Hispanos or weak post pen damage of their AP tank shells. Now they have in Ground Battles high pen shells + good damage and in Air Battles they’ve still got superior FM over others AND the best 20mm guns.
Yeah, there is real advantages to the weapon placement on the spitfire over the nose mounted guns like that on the BF109.
if I recall correctly. Not only were the wing mounted guns easier to maintain, but the Bf-109 had a very complicated engine that was trickier to maintain due to the gun placements and the need for blade timing thingy. I think the wing mounted guns also created less drag, but I could be wrong on that
But the spitfire also carried far more fire power than era (and BR) equivalent German airframes.
8x 7.7mm with 1.32kg/s of mass vs 4x 7.92mm with a 0.83kg/s of mass.
That was an advantage maintained for much of the war.
In game, the nose mounted guns are better for head-ons, but with a little skill, you wont ever struggle with getting fire onto target with wing mounted guns
You can, and you can abuse its horrid high speed retention and poor cooling to bleed it of energy. Or you can play something from japan and outturn them so hard they think they just saw god himself pulling into their 6.
Yep, and all German fighters will out-dive a Spitfire due to the fact htey are heavier and the Sptifire can struggle due to its float carburetor, which means you have to dive in the right way and not pull any negative Gs
There are countless different Spitfires in War Thunder, you can’t just make such a blanket statement about all of them, especially since not a single one of them is exceptionally good.
The vast majority of them are overtiered and quite poor for their Battle Rating, the only reason they are placed as high as they are is due to their turn advantage, which the majority of War Thunder’s playerbase doesn’t seem to be able to deal with.
The vast majority of Spitfires are generally outclassed by aircraft at lower BR’s than themselves.
Spitfire Mk IIb has 3.0 flight performance but sits at 3.7.
Spitfire Mk Vb has 3.3 flight performance, but sits at 4.0.
Spitfire Mk Vc has 3.3 flight performanc, but sits at 5.0(!!).
Spitfire Mk XVI has 4.7 flight performance, but sits at 5.0.
Seafire LF Mk III has 3.3 flight performance, but sits at 5.0.
etc
Just comparing some of them to aircraft at around their own BR and you get hilarious results:
Yeah nice tab, but everyone knows spits have superior turn times. Combine this with the strongest aircraft 20mm guns + overbuffed fragmentation shells and you know why they dunk on most others.
Like I said, that’s the sole reason why they’re so massively overtiered. The average War Thunder pilot is absolutely awful and thinks that a turnfight with a Spitfire is the brightest idea.
A 1.7 He100D-1 is a full 100 km/h faster at altitude than a 5.0(!!!) Seafire Mk III, let alone anything at 5.0.
You claimed the Spitfires have among the best flight models, in actuality they have:
Awful top speed.
Awful performance at high altitude.
Compresses at high speeds.
Extremely fragile airframes.
Overheating engines.
Poor energy retention characteristics.
Mediocre roll rates.
The Yak series of aircraft are better across the board to a equal BR Spitfire in the vast majority of cases. Even something like the Ki-44-II (that also has overbuffed guns) does practically everything better than Spitfires which are at a higher BR than itself.
I understand your points. But most of the playerbase turnfights. Means for a very high percentage of ingame combat, speed/altitude performance/overheating/energy conservation etc. won’t matter. For most of the fights just turnrate + armament matters. Spitfires excell in both, which is enough to boost the gaming stats. How quickly can I align my guns onto the enemy plane? Thats the key question for casual playerbase.
Its especially worse cause they include Ground RB dogfights into their considerations. There everything is even more crammed. Air gameplay there is directly over the battlefield, a rather confined space. No one climbs and uses energy/speed tactics. Its all about turnfighing. You regularly see brit and jap fighters getting rediculus kill counts vs. P-51, P-47, FW190 etc players. An absolute air massacre. Which s the reason for P-51/47 etc have rather low BRs, while everything which turns regularly gets BR bumps. (Ofc except russian planes :) )
