So. Let me preface this by saying I AM NOT A PLANE PLAYER. I absolutely suck at them. I main tanks, tanks, and tanks. But not that long ago I realized maybe getting some fighters for low tiers might be good because well spaas aren’t always great to deal with aircraft.
Strike of luck, my gambling addict… I get the FW-190 C in a snow globe. Start grinding a bit of the german tech tree, get the Dornier 335. Plane looks cool, carries bombs (talking about the first one) and paper stats looks really good. quick search and it is supposed to be the fastest prop plane of WW2. Start flying it, no issue, fly performance isn’t great but not abysmal, and good bombs. No comments here, great strike aircraft.
The issue is in plane vs plane combat. As I mentionned, I fucking suck at dogfight. My main tactic is either kite them towards friendly spaas, or pretty much die. What I noticed is way too often, other props catch up to me when returning to the airfield, and effortlessly then gun me down. the slight issue is… I’m supposed to be fast??? According to gaijin themselves, with their video, it is supposed to be extremely fast. Yet today, I go back to the airfield after dropping my bombs, and a KI-84 starts chasing me down. No worries, he’s quite far, and he just turned to get after me. I’m roughly at sea level and going straight, no damage, I should outrun him no problem. 5 seconds later I’m in range and he catches up very fast, killing my front engine. Somehow he crashes, maybe because he dived too hard to kill me (I flew as close to the ground as possible) and i’m like what 400-500m from my airfield. No worries, gaijin themselves stated that with a single engine I can go over 500 with a single engine. Right? Nope. Plane immediately loses lots of speed, going down to less than a hundred kph and I land too far from the airfield. As a sidenote, no I didn’t have any other major damage, it was really just speed loss. And it’s not the first time a supposedly slower plane catches up really easily.
Am I missing something in some parameters or is this plane really scuffed? I mean the main reason this plane is known is because it outran 4 tempests. which were the only allied planes able to intercept V1 bombs, without having to dive to achieve the speed necessary.
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There’s so much more to aircraft gameplay than tanks it’s on another level. In short it’s performing properly more than likely and unless you have some videos there’s really no way to say.
Top Speed vs. Acceleration here.
You have an incredibly high top speed. The Airframe of the Dornier can handle an incredibly high top speed. That said, it is heavy. It takes a while for the engines to get you to that speed.
ON THE OTHER HAND.
The Ki-84 accelerates very quickly. It is a much lighter airframe. That said, it cannot handle going nearly as fast. At some point in time (and I wish I had a graph of this), your speed builds up enough that it outdoes his acceleration, and you can outrun him.
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Which Ki84 and which Do335 are we talking about?
A thing about aircraft “top speed”: It’s the speed that which, if you reach, you can sustain indefinitely. It’s essentially how your aircraft’s drag and thrust interact at a given altitude.
If both of you are above your top speeds (you’re diving), the plane with higher top speed will lose less of it when levelling out.
Now.
If you are both level and NOT at your top speeds - Power to weight&drag becomes more important. This is also called “Specific excess power”; “acceleration” or “climb speed.” Energy generation is how you can look at it
Looking at WTAPC (War Thunder Aircraft Performance Calculator) for Do 335 (all 3) and Ki84 ko Hayate (all 3 ki 84 variants have same energy generation graphs there), it becomes very obvious that at low speed and altitude, the Ki-84 Ko Hayate far out-performs all Do 335 variants
when it comes to generating more energy.
The only situation when that fails to happen is Do335 B2 at 4 km altitude running WEP against Ki-84 running millitary (100%). This advantage quickly disappears and only favours the do 335 above 8 km altitude when it starts to generate energy better than the Ki-84 Ko hayate.
At speeds under 300 km/h, the critical altitudes shift lower and speeds over 300 km/h, they rise higher.
The way you beat a Ki-84 is to study this segment - “Equalizing energy.”
Assuming you are both level, if you enter a dive until you hit your top speed the Ki-84 may be able to follow you for a while but start losing speed until he hits his own top speed and you’re thus home free.
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Probably a mixture of top speed versus acceleration as well as altitude performance varying (DO335 is meant for high altitude)
the KI I have no idea, the DO-335 I fly as of now
is the DO-335 A-1 (the first one with regular loadout + 2 250 and one 500 bombs). The payload was ofc dropped and I always bring minimum fuel
Yeah I figured something of this sort, But my main aspect of being surprised was I was already going in a straight line for a while and he just got out of a turn. What shocked me, as previously said, is that irl a Dornier outrun at sea level some tempests, with ease, tempest that intercepted flying bombs going at 640kp/h and launched from France. and apparently they had no problem doing so, despite the time window being quite short, and them having to accelerate from cruise speed to max speed to catch up. It’s this fact that threw me off. Because basing myself on that, the pfeil should have had a fast acceleration speed. Especially considering that the max speed for the tempest is reachable at 5 000 mtrs, when the KI is at 6 000 and the pfeil supposedly at 7 000. Meaning, unless i’m totally wrong and i might be, that the tempest should perform better at low altitudes.
And the nail in the coffin is gaijin making a video 4 days ago about how fast that thing was, and that it no plane could keep up with it at level flight, and yet here I am getting dunked on not going any faster than 500 at sea level despite being in full WEP for like 4 km.
I also really need to watch some of these videos but holy shit I don’t understand shit as of now
Have you considered the possibility you are not a reliable narrator? Ie, you have gotten details wrong about this story…
Yes I have. The story is without doubt: French Ace pilot Pierre Clostermann and his squad reported sighting a Dornier while in flight, at treetop level. He was at the time part of a unit which role was to destroy jet fighters, and harass AA guns and train tracks. In his book “Le Grand Cirque” he explains the encounter, and how upon sighting them the german pilot made a half turn and then proceeded to outrun them, and resulting in them losing even sight of it. Out of the 4 tempest one did manage a firing position but missed. Clostermann himself was shocked enough to mention it in his book, as when engaging he was sure that the tempest would be faster than anything the Germans had (except jet propelled plane) Not really a lot of details to be missed.
YOU, YOUR story as narrator of the events that took place in war thunder. Did you actually check replay to find out if what you said was true? Or did you just go off your 1st person account?
It was from personal account at first, (seemed weird)and then I checked the replay. I’m at sea level, close to 400 km/h when he starts chasing me, (i’m 2km away) and he just turned to avoid a building. His plane somehow then builds up speed to around 550 and he then catches up very quickly and proceeds to gun down my engine.
When is start to go in a straight line, i was at around 400 kp/h. He’s around, at this time 2.0km from me. He was at a slight altitude advantage (he was at 100-130m) and i’m at sea level, but he’s not diving hard, just pointing his nose at me.
I just find it very weird that in that situation I can’t outrun him. The question is really is the pfeil fast to accelerate as it should in warthunder and from the responses here apparently not. I just wondered if there was something more to it like maybe some settings I have to use to avoid unnecessary speed loss/lack of acceleration.
thanks for the responses i’ll try to understand a bit more about planes, guess the best solution is to try to dogfight instead of trying to outrun ennemies, i’ll treat the Dornier pretty much like a Me-410 without bow gunner, it just felt weird that gaijin advocated for high speed when fighters can catch up easily. Not that it’s unfair, the plane remains a very good strike aircraft, but I shouldn’t expect anything from it in terms of speed unless i’m hard diving
I think that you’re underestimating the Ki-84, because it’s surprisingly fast. It’ll hit 550kmh in a straight line at sea level, and keep that speed.
I don’t think that you were not going fast enough to make your speed advantage useful.
Props in general don’t accelerate at higher speeds in a straight line that well, so anyone diving on you will be able to catch you.
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One thing to add to protogen’s comment is 400 kph is not a lot at the BR range of Ki-84 and Do335.
300 KPH is usually climbing speed, 400-450 km/h is a leisurely cruise at 100% throttle. Randomly checking some of my recordings for what kind of speeds we’re looking at (all speeds in TAS) -
- I was chasing a Yak-1B in a Bf109F4 at 530 kph@3 km altitude
- Highest we’ve hit was 670 KPH@600m when I disengaged to reset the fight.
- We dogfighted at 200-450 KPH @1km (depending on which end of the vertical we were at.)
- Dogfighting Ki-84 and A6M5s in SpitIX had me at 300-400 KPH@500m. This is the speed we were turning, twisting and maneuvering at
- Chasing bombers in SpitIX had me WEPing+MEC ~470 KPH@1km in a straight line
- Leisurely turning around and patrolling in P-51-D-5 was at 590KPH@4km
- Whole dogfight against Bf109K4 in P-51-D-5 occured at 400-550 KPH (we ended up diving in a spiral to keep speed up)
- leisurely cruise + slight climb in F4U4 (no WEP or MEC): 480 KPH@3km
- Dogfighting (maneuvering, turning, reversing) in F4U-4: ~350 KPH@500m
As you can see, 400 KPH is very much in the middle of a lot of mid to late war aircraft’s “this is where I like turning and maneuvering”
One thing that can be a source of confusion when talking aircraft speeds is IAS vs TAS.
Like, the 590 KPH cruise in the P-51? Actual plane spedometer readout is 480 or so.
IAS is: “The speed that your aircraft experiences in relation to the air. It is affected by wind (not modelled) and atmospheric density (temperature, altitude, weather).”
TAS is: “The speed at which your aircraft is actually travelling through the air.”
IAS tends to be much lower than IAS. By default, Warthunder displays TAS. You can make it display IAS or IAS+TAS under options/airbattle settings.
I like IAS+TAS.
TAS gives you kinetic energy.
IAS gives you how well your control surfaces will respond (maneuverability) and when your aircraft will rip itself apart.
