We may try it, IMO it will outrate Bf 109 consistently. That’s my experience of spamming XP-50.
As someone who flies Thunderbolts consistently, the the only issue I have with the P-47s is the limited WEP time because they’re incredibly ineffectual without it, especially anything other than the D-28 model because the D-28 is the only P-47 that gets boosted military power (100% throttle) which is ~2400 HP. You have 12 minutes of WEP on the P-47D-28, N-15, and the M-1 variants. Every match, you spend roughly 4 minutes of that WEP sideclimbing which leaves you with only ~8 minutes for combat, and as it turns out, if you’re actually boom and zooming and flying the plane right, half of that 8 minutes is going to be used simply for setting up by extending and reclimbing, leaving you little left for actual dogfight and ACM maneuvers which can get pretty protracted against certain planes where you really have to set up each encounter and drain them of their energy like with Yaks and Spitfires. All this really sucks because in real life, a P-47 would not have had to use WEP to rush climb up to altitude. This ultimately means you don’t have much of any real endurance in a battle: you climb in a P-47 and can maybe get into 1 decent fight before your WEP gets too low to risk another dogfight without you running out (it even happened to DEFYN in this match). Unless you’re flying the aforementioned D-28 with ~2400 HP on mil, you can’t use military power to fight either because it’s only 2100 HP (so, useless, basically, on a fat pig plane like the Thunderbolt; try it if you don’t believe me) while WEP is ~2800 HP. This matters so much because a ton of planes in the 4.0 - 6.7 range where the actually fun Thunderbolts fight is full of tons of serious threats that you’re going to need every ounce of HP against to even stand a chance.
The D-28 isn’t actually as good as people say too because its main advantage as a supposed high altitude fighter doesn’t even exist. Using War Thunder Real Time Information, we can see as we fly that the D-28 is the only P-47 which has a critical altitude of ~6.5km after which it starts to lose horsepower incredibly fast, making it food for Bf 109 K-4s, I-225s, Yak-3Us, Yak-VK-107s, the Spitfire LF Mk IX, and especially Griffon Spitfires which will utterly clown on you in every way. Comparatively, the P-47M and N-15 only start losing power around 10.5km, a huge and meaningful difference because many planes still function reasonably well at 6.5km although they are often on their final supercharger gear. It’s only once you get to 8km and up that you have enough advantage to use the P-47 on equal terms as a dogfighter and energy fighter rather than in pure Boom and Zoom.
Case in point, see how I dogfight this Yak-3U in this video. After all the climbing and setting up I did to enter the fight, I came out with only ~2 minutes of WEP left which isn’t nearly enough to try and engage anything else.
3 Likes
The D-22 and D-25 should receive an airspawn or at least a low airstart over the runway to give them speed. They are irrelevant in air RB now, because no one plays at high altitude anymore. No one cares about preserving their plane anymore except statpadders and the very rare prop enjoyers, who have been driven out of prop-BRs by the combination of airfield AA and terrible balancing.
So what you end up with is about 10 guys taking head-ons and groundpounding at low alt. First 5 minutes of the game decides everything in most cases - then, if the match lasts longer, the team that won the low-altitude fight then gets to groundpound, with maybe 5 guys draining the tickets compared to the 2-3 dudes that would’ve been groundpounding before we got 4 extra players per team. Gaijin has also added more AI, meaning AI ticket bleed will end the match by 10 minutes on prop maps if one of the teams has groundpounded enough.
Countering this requires the losing team to have a few guys left at altitude, who then team-wipe the guys down low. This was very fun to do back in the old days of props, but it’s now impossible due to the short time given to you, as well as the airfield AA and secondary bases on every map that will provide a free chance to reclimb so that people with no early-game patience can cover their asses.
Additionally, countering a P-47 who is above you (but still at low alt) is as easy as running away and waiting for him to run out of energy. As long as you are not stupid and flying meta plane like La7 or Yak-3, the P-47 has about one pass on you at low alt before he is out of energy and shvaks will rip him to shreds.
We should be going back to the 12v12 matchmaker and reworking the maps, but until that happens I think the P-47D-22 and the P-47D-25 should receive an airspawn; it’s the least we can do for planes whose low-alt performance is about on par with the P-61, yet don’t receive the airspawn and firepower to go with it.
And RIP any plane with .50 cals now that 2 FI-T shvak rounds can break the wing off an AM-1. The one thing that the P-47 was legitimately good at was cleaning up a lot of people in a short time with the large firepower.
Now, an La-7 can do the job just as well.
4 Likes
Additionally, countering a P-47 who is above you (but still at low alt) is as easy as running away and waiting for him to run out of energy. As long as you are not stupid and flying meta plane like La7 or Yak-3, the P-47 has about one pass on you at low alt before he is out of energy and shvaks will rip him to shreds.
Facts. Any good player will just dodge the initial high speed pass and then extend to equal energy states or force certain attack angles for an easy reversal. This strong counter to the P-47 is made worse by ground targets being obviously at ground level so they can just farm them while you are at altitude and force you to come down whether you want to or not. There’s simply little to no room for the P-47 in the current meta without recon planes or some sort of bomber or aerial targets at high altitude. If you had periodic fleets of bombers at high altitude that affected tickets, the P-47’s escort role might actually become relevant. Other high altitude fighters could become relevant too.
I think the P-47D-22 and the P-47D-25 should receive an airspawn; it’s the least we can do for planes whose low-alt performance is about on par with the P-61, yet don’t receive the airspawn and firepower to go with it.
I’d like to add that there’s also an argument to be made for giving the P-47N an airspawn as well. It climbs incredibly, incredibly slow for 4.7 and its performance feels lackluster at anything but the most extreme altitudes. Does anyone actually enjoy this plane? If other high-alt fighters like the Ta-152H can get an airspawn, I think the P-47N should get it too. It’s one of, if not, the worst P-47.
2 Likes