Looking at the official datasheets for both aircraft the D-9 is comfortably faster than the Spitfire XIVe on the deck.
Spitfire max speed at SL with WEP: 358mph
190D-9 max speed at SL with WEP: 385mph
Time to climb to 20,000ft
Spitfire XIVe: 5.1 minutes
190D-9: 4.9 minutes.
So judging by this the XIV doesn’t even have the climb advantage. The only advantage the Spitfire has is horizontal manoeuvrability. It loses out on speed, roll, dive speeds and climb. It has the advantage in energy retention in turns due to the lower wing loading. As long as you stay fast and use the vertical you hold every advantage.
Also a Mustang (except the H) is absolutely not out accelerating a Griffon… except maybe at higher speeds… it’s heavier than the Griffon and has less engine power to go with it. Before drag becomes the overwhelming factor the Griffon should be comfortably faster.
**"In theory, that’s exactly right — the FW190 D9, D12, D13, and TA152 C3 should accelerate faster than a Spitfire at least in the initial moments at low or medium altitudes. But in practice, that turns out to be completely false. I have many hours in the simulator and I almost always fly variants of the FW190, whether it’s the Dora, TA, or Anton, depending on the BR. And I can tell you, with certainty and clarity, that you simply can’t even manage to distance yourself a few meters from a Spitfire with the same energy and speed as you.
Even if you force the opponent to overshoot multiple times and lose energy having to turn back to get behind you again, the Spitfire is still capable of catching up and matching your position. Even in an overshoot scenario, when the Spitfire passes you due to a mistake, it’s impossible to turn and catch it — it’s not about skill, it’s simply impossible given the game’s physics to outturn a Spitfire in any situation, unless you’re flying a TA152 H1.
Like I said, obviously the Spitfire was indeed able to outturn most aircraft, and that’s not wrong — but the flight model implemented in WT is flawed. There’s no way an aircraft could make such a tight turn and still retain enough energy to be right on your tail again within seconds. It could perform a repositioning maneuver, yes, but the aircraft ahead should have a real chance to effectively gain distance — which simply doesn’t exist in WT’s gameplay. Just watch some IL-2 gameplay and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
I’ll say it again: the only real chance against a Spitfire is starting the fight with at least twice its speed."**
Not true, when it comes to acceleration you need to look at the power to weight ratio (also prop efficiency).
The Spitfire Mk XIV: 0.258 hp/lb
190D-9: 0.250hp/lb.
(Takeoff weight for both aircraft)
So before drag becomes a factor the Griffon absolutely could out accelerate the D-9 even though as you can see it’s very close. That said the Dora is faster by almost 30mph once they get to speed so if you stay fast (as the Dora should) the Griffon can’t touch you.
Plenty of Japanese aircraft outturn the Griffons and as mentioned you also have the TA-152. If you’re on the deck and the Griffon overshoots especially if you’re slow he can catch up if he trades that excess speed for altitude. If the Dora can’t dive and isn’t at a high speed it’s in trouble.
It’s similar to how I fly the Sea Fury. If I go slow against a 109G/K I’m dead especially down low. He out turns me, out climbs me and has better acceleration at low/medium speeds I’d bet as well. But I’m faster top end and I dive much much faster. If a K4 gets on my tail (which is faster than the Griffon) I drop my nose and watch him disappear.
The first thing I’ll say is never use another game to make a point no matter if it’s DCS, IL2 or Falcon 4.0. They’re still games and they can catastrophically get it wrong.
There’s also a ton of variables at play, did the Spitfire do a flat turn with equal speed or was it faster, did it drop its nose during the turn to maintain speed or did it yoyo to come back down to you?
The Spitfires if the rudder is mismanaged dumps energy worse than anything else. In comparison other aircraft are on rails as you can fly them completely ham fisted with little drawbacks.
So a quick edit doing some geeky testing as I have zero better to do on a Friday night I did some acceleration tests from 200-300mph using RB mode with autotrim as the FM’s are the same. The only caveat is that I’m using AEC. Tested at sea level.
So the Spitfire is the slowest of all of them and is even slower than the 5.0 Ki84. It’s slower than the K4 by a comfortable margin.
That said something IS wrong with the D-9 and that’s that with auto engine controls at least I can’t reach anywhere near its top speed. It’s still faster than the Spitfire but only by 4mph. The most I can get out of it is 362mph compared to over 380mph on the datasheet mentioned earlier. It could be the aircraft getting screwed by AEC or it could be far too much drag modelled. It’d be great if someone else could check.
Looking at it again I still don’t have an issue with the Spitfire being 5.3, it’s worse than all 5.7’s at something or other and is even outran by 5.0’s.