Oh, then… I think it’ll be better to specify which 109 variants. It’s going to be confusing and not a good way to compare if it’s too generic. The heavier ones like the G6/14 shouldn’t be equated with G10/K4.
I usually use the gunpods if you want a pure BnZ but…
It’s there and I use it plenty. Just gotta manage your speed and keep it decently high with strategic maneuvers. Slow positioning and then bait them up.
La5/7s? Those things are bricks last I used em. Not too sure about those two but Yaks, 0s and Spits you can easily outdive. Another reason to climb. Can’t outdive em at 2000m alt. You can bank your speed back to altitude at a much safer and further point away from them.
Yaks and Spits are the biggest threats. Yak3u is bullshit everyone knows that. LF Mk.IX is bullshit everyone knows that too. You can outdive the Yak but the Spit… well I bring em to my teammates and hope for the best.
My last point would be; Try to fight the player not the plane. They may be untouchable if they are significantly above you but they can’t kill anyone either. Bait them down and maneuver so they’d have to spend energy. If they don’t turn, waste energy and just pull up to safety? well… they’re not getting a kill and they will get frustrated. This is where you need to be more resilient and play the long game. Wearing them down is an energy fighter’s most trusted method.
If they do turn with you, try your best to avoid shots by rolling out the way or maintain a position above their nose whilst equalizing energy. Spiral climbing, rolling or weaving. You have your superior engine power, you regain altitude better than they do. Especially in a 109, vertical manuevers are mostly better since you are using your engine’s advantages.
The FW190 is um… unsalvageable. You are very much relegated to support fighter pure BnZ-ing opportunities rather than picking a fight and going toe to toe. Maybe FW190 pilots can correct me but other than your 1-2 turns with flaps to get a kill shot, if you miss, well you’re dead slow and worse turning.
Similar experience vs Yak-9. 1 yak-9 immediately exploded into a fireball, other one stayed alive despite repeat hits until I finally got a side-on shot into the fuselage.
That is if u can not get killed whilst doing that. These things can normally destroy u while u dive. Edit:Also I just got out dived by a spit 14 in G14.
Well I currently do fine with that. Cause not like u can win fights anyway, just BZ the hell out of Yaks and Spits with my 2k hp D9.
I can get dive quite reliably. Decent roll rate and predicting where they’d lead shots by where they’re pointing. Guessing when they’d shoot based of intuition, more rolling and acting unleadable. Neg G is something a few struggle with, the plane looks like its going straight but actually going down. They’d shoot in front of you when they should shoot below.
Once you commit to a dive, look at the terrain ahead and keep it in mind with maybe an escape trajectory. Then you look back and keep looking at the opponent to dodge shots whilst glancing at the altimeter. I use keyboard controls most of the time during the dive.
The La-7 is not a brick… not a mistake you want to make ;-). It is also has very little elevator compression. Trying to turn with an La-7 at speed can get you into trouble quickly. Trying to turn with an La-7 at low altitude can get you into trouble quickly. It’s a solid fighter at 4.7, balanced by limited performance at higher altitudes (no WEP) and just 170 rds per gun.
The Yak-3 is also an outstanding fighter at 4.7 - it’s just at 4.3 for some reason. Hilarious to see the proposed BR changes skipped this little guy (again). Out diving a Yak-3 is simple… but it’s not easy. You need enough altitude to dive to high speed and keep going… bearing in mind that as the fight goes lower it favors the Yak-3. The other obvious problem with diving away is that you’ve conceded a positional advantage.
I’m not a good Yak-3 or La-7 pilot by any means (my performance in the A/C is average at best)… but I can tell you that when I do get the occasional good match, it’s often against people that don’t realize how easy it is to follow a dive that only creates vertical, and not lateral, separation. Once you’re down low and the speed has bled off and the Yak/La can still dive? You’re cooked.
Oh yeah, you’re right. I think I mistook the La-7 for another La-5 variant. Didn’t think it was sub 20s turn time on the stat card but I remember the 4.7 one now.
I think i’ll take it out for a spin again. Been a year or two since I touched it.
Didn’t play it too different from the 109 but I do remember it not being as maneuverable tho.
It’s .2 tons heavier and has a lower climb rate than the G-2. The La7 has the power to weight advantage untill 2000-2200m. Above that, especially at 4000m the 109 G-2 has more energy generation making it keep its speed more in turns and therefore turn more than the La7 in a sustained fight. I think that’s what I remembered as being more sluggish.
Prop Air RB is basically a contest of potential or kinetic energy. Climbing and positioning in the better (=higher) energy state has the goal to dominate a fight and / or being able to engage at will.
With your logic “not being able to outclimb good climbers” nobody would use a P-47 effectively - and somehow a hell of rat plane players (A6M, Merlin Spits below 5.0) are able to “ninja” or “stealth” climbing as they have otherwise no chance to catch faster planes.
But:
I do agree that 109s are rather terrible BnZoom planes due to high speed compression and rather low rip speed. Your overheating issue depends on maps, exact model and your ability to use MEC.
There are whole threads dealing with various nerfs (ballistics and SD fuse) and the fact that MG 151/20 is currently the weakest 20mm cannon in the game.
Imho the last good turnfighting 109s are the 109 E-4 & E-7. 109 Fs are still maneuverable but just in certain speed ranges whilst G & K models are pure energy fighters, but good enough to beast faster but way heavier enemies.
Regarding your examples - a good flown F-4 is able to kill a Yak-3 - all he has to do to make them slow. Planes like Spits and A6Ms can be beaten in classic energy traps even by my 410 A-1 - nobody with a clear mind tries to turnfight them - energy fighting is the key.
Imho you overestimate the La-5s and La-7s - the are good aircraft in high speed fights at low altitudes but far away from being unkillable.
Mainly F models, 2.7-4.0 sort of range has a load of issue with that.
I’ve personally never managed that in an even fight, done it in G-2 trop. I think I am getting slower than Yaks cause by that stage I’ve essentially lost wep.
That depends on which model, as u said early spits can be defeated this way, but later models are much better at dealing with this.
I’m not saying that any of them are unkillable but that they all have some sort of clear advantage over 109s, which makes playing 109s very hard. And lmao it’s also made more frustrating that 151s lets off the opportunity u hard fought for.
I dropped a heart on your other comment. To your point - I’ve had more than one match where I lost because one A6M, or similar, spent the time to climb. Yes, they won’t have early match impact, but sometimes that’s the right play to make.
I had that EXACT thing happen yesterday - was playing the P-47D-28 and things were going well. There were 4 of us working together - we took out all of the high fighters (we thought), and were working top down on the rest of the team… except we missed a single 109 (because it was a twilight map with shit spotting). I don’t recall if it was a G-6 or G-14, but they grabbed 4 kills near the end of the match to clutch it - simply because they came in higher and unseen. I never even saw them coming.
It’s not enough to make me want to play the 109s though. ;-)
As written earlier in this thread - i never liked them as have severe skill issues with overspeeding and i am not really happy with the high speed compression and the engine overheating nerfs / wrongly implemented prop pitch handling.
My Italian BP 109 F-4 became a hangar queen as my SM 92 (also 4.0) does everything better - it outturns them, outdives them, has zero overheating with infinite WEP settings, has way less high speed compression and has way less troubles killing P-51 Cs, XP-50s and 4.3 Typhoons - and the air brake “heals” my overspeeding issue 😂
There are a hell of very good fighter pilots in wt playing. The problem is that you see them not often flying 109s - next time i see them mopping the floor i will share the replay.
I’m nowhere the best 109 flyer, and I don’t know how much of a difference flying with vs without instructor does for this particular matchup. However, without autotrim & instructor, I found somewhat consistent success versus Yak-9s and Yak-3s by keeping the fight highly vertical & at ~2-4km altitude (performance chart Yak-9 has least advantage at 2km, while yak-3 gets a big boost in P/W at 3km but dips at both 2 km and 4 km) - exact angles I dunno but maybe like a 20-35 degree inclination and abusing the hell out of your landing flaps to “cut inside” the yak’s turn whenever you’re on top (to the point of almost 90 degree inclinations at times).
Something like you keep your wings “kinda parallelish” while going up in almost the same plane as the yak and point canopy ever so slightly behind their tail to save energy/reduce G forces and when on top you invert to point your canopy in front of them and importantly “under” their wing with a very quick landing flap deployment that you bring back ASAP otherwise you rip them going down. This should sort of look like you’ve increased the inclination of your orbit(?) as you cut inside their turn.
It takes a few cycles of repeating this over and over again to gain position. If you’re lucky, the yak gets frustrated and reverses in front of your guns and ends it faster to avoid getting third partied.
I do get the overall strat but at the start I tend to climb and BZ a little before getting into fights cause I feel like the situation is way too messy down at sort of 1k alt, and up above sort of 3k alt I sort of can bully the other climbers with verticals a lot. By the time I figure it is time to join a fight though my WEP is gone pretty much, and then I have 0 advantage over Yaks even in verticals. I’ve done it with G-2s pretty much because it does still get the WEP for a considerable amount of time even after 10 minutes or so.
The goal is to address that the 4.0 A-4 is basically a free kill at it’s current BR if you see how the average pilots play them.
It would be great to have a German single engine fighter at 3.7 in Air RB. I played at least 250 full uptiers in the last 2 months in the C-3604 - the lack of a German 3.7 fighter is more than obvious - and the 3.7 slots were usually filled with base bombing Bf 110s.
I feel the A4 is a bit like the F6F-5N… albeit from a better starting point. Its flight performance is simply not competitive at its BR and sticking a couple (more) 20mm on it doesn’t make up for that. The roll rate is nice… but I’d rather play Mustangs. ;-)
If there’s room for the P-51C-10 and its variants at 3.7, I am sure there’s room for the A4.
ETA:
At least in theory the Fw 190 A-4 has a superior roll rate, but imho the average wt pilot is unable to use this advantage.
So many pilots just start spinning tight circles… I might not be able to match that roll, but I can let you fly through a stream of .50 cal instead. Break dancing in front of someone won’t get it done if you don’t get out of their guns.
German Bf109s feel underpowered and slow compared to the storys you hear from Real Life experiences- “The Spitfire outturned the Bf109s- the 109s just ran away with their superior speed” It feels like even a Prop could outrun a 109. Same with the 190s. They may be faster than the 109s but they cannot compete with Spitfires or P51s, meanwhile Irl the 190 was the better Fighter of the German Fighter Fleet. It could Turn nearly as good as the Spitfires if not outturn them in some ways but also could easily outrun the 51s and Spitfires. In WT it dosent feel even close to the Real Life Stories and Documentaries
On the eqstern front we got a similar thing going.
The F models were already being used by the time of laggs, mig3s and i16s, Gs against yak1s and so on. Oh and the occasional soviet spit and p39
Against mustangs we be seeing late Gs and Ks while in game it is a battle of moscow/stalingrad era plane (F4) facing off against them.
The outrun thing is true in game tho. The spitfire II and V feel painfully slow. Not as bad as zeros or the re2001cn but if a bf109f4 says they dont want to play with you and they got diving room you wont be catching them. (One thing that skews this imo is rb mouse aim and third person. 600 meter separation is way different in il2:gb, irl (especially irl as most preferred shooting from like 100 meters) and warthundersim vs arb and aab with casual 1 km long snipes (not that it is impossible in sim, just significantly harder esp with wobbly things)
Why do you believe this outright when we have the statistics for the plane and things that are required for good turn rates generally, like wing loading, are poor on the 190?