I am new to the game and I struggle against P38s. I know they are much faster than most planes, but when I fight them they somehow outturn me. I once fought a br 3.3 P38 in the BF109 f2 and he managed to outturn me in a horizontal loop. What am I doing wrong?
1 Like
They got a pretty abysmal roll rate, so that’s something you can exploit. Rudder helps improve their roll rate, but the 109 can easily keep and exceed P38s in that regard. You can abuse this by changing the direction of your turn at opportune moments using some sort of scissors (not rolling! Rolling scissors ironically favour the P38.) and their turn will lag behind you.
Furthermore, they’re worse at energy generation than 109s usually, so might struggle to follow you in the vertical with a Bf109F4 but be careful - twin-engines with contra-rotating props give them pretty good low-speed stability and they stall pretty gracefully.
The rudder feels pretty weak in the P-38 at low speeds (150-200 km/h) when I fly it compared to the 109. At higher speeds though, the rudders are quite capable.
As for how it could out-turn you: Flaps. P-38 with flaps is a monster.
Finally, at high speeds they suffer pretty badly with controls locking up and even compression on the elevator until later models with dive flaps (represented as airbrake in Warthunder) and hydraulic boosters.
**Most of my experiences are with Full-Real Controls, some differences due to instructor may change things.
IdahoBookworm flies the P-38 at a pretty high level, watching his matches and studying what he does can help with approximating what the P-38 struggles with dealing. TrainingDays also has some breakdown videos.
4 Likes