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?
it is relevant to wt when they make the plane so bad even a Biplane could beat it in every single point. Its Historical Inaccurate, but thats nothing new when it comes to Gaijin and WT (Tiger 2 nerf is the best example)
TBF to him 190s did have the better of spits more often IRL, but then that is out of WT context. In WT only stats matters, IRL stuff like -G dive and specific manoeuvres are much more common which meant the wing load is likely not even a factor considered.
Also the sample size, I myself already have like more kills than any IRL pilot, which means the WT sample size also probably exaggerated the issue.
That is partially true, but with 109Fs the engine overheat is a huge issue. I had no issue outrunning spits in G-2 trop, which is only .3 BR up, but 109Fs seem to just suck with the engine a lot. (honestly IDK how it even overheats when it’s like -50 degrees outside).
You can play with MEC and get some OK mileage out of it.
No need to mess with prop pitch, just ~20% or 40% rads depending on map can give you fairly long MEC. For straightline speed if you’re daring, something like 6 or 5 o clock prop pitch (I cant remember percentage, I was babying it from instruments) at 520 km/h IAS can give very long MEC.
With manuals I can get pretty long MEC with it but then I need to be bothered with it whilst dogfighting which is out of my comfort zone. Not saying it’s impossible, but definitely not sth I would do RN, especially problematic cause the radiators gets damaged more often than not in skirmishes.
Yeah, in active dogfighting (rather than running away/building initial position) MECing PP in a 109 is suicidal. I know some crazier who have enough self-awareness to keep it up by setting it to like 69% or so and enabling manual prop pitch while going into a vertical WEP stall climb and then going back to auto when they roll over onto the enemy but…
More often than not I rip my flaps against sufficiently competent enemies as is lmao. Only takes forgetting during one loop and boom, flapless. Losing engine as well would just be awful.
Radiators tho you can open to 20 or 40% and forget. You can even like toggle between auto and manual there as well to minimize thinking. Manual rads for WEP, auto for combat power. Forgetting to toggle it down from manual only causes issues with drag so not immediately lethal.
I mean with 109G2-trop I just leave it and it’s fine. 109Fs I have to keep watching out for it which is a bit annoying. Couple that with the fact that when I win a dogfight it often comes to nothing thanks to the MG-151 it sucks.