Because i bet that Me-163 will keep the crown, in both departments. And by a mile! :)
I’ve just posted a video of my new Me-163 top speed and altitude records, in reddit, together with detailed comment about it. This comment is copied to this post, for readers’ convinience. Sadly, i know no way to embed a reddit video here, so if you want to see the video - it’s here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/1prl7f9/new_world_speed_and_altitude_records_4683_kmh/ .
My reddit comment about it:
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This is my new top speed and maximum altutude records: 4683 km/h at 4.40 Mach, 42,944 meters. I did it in test flight, in vanilla War Thunder, December 20th, 2025, and recorded “live” (not via replay - replays are broken when flying above certain altitude). I am not aware about any War Thunder player ever flying faster than this, nor higher than this, ever before. So, this is probably new (vanilla) War Thunder world records.
“Vanilla” War Thunder - means that i did not use anything created by WT live authors: no user-made map / aircraft / tweaks. Anyone who plays War Thunder can do this.
These new records became possible due to recent changes Gaijin made to test flight map - one of recent Gaijin updates increased maximum allowed altitude: previously, it was 26300 meters (blinking message saying “Return to the battlefield” was appearing at 25500 meters, but it was possible to maintain level flight at up to 26300 meters without being teleported back down to 25500 meters). New limit in test flight - is 35300 meters (blinking message appearing at 34500 meters altitude).
Maximum speed of 4683 km/h was achieved by 7:13 mark of the video. Maximum altitude of 42944 meters was achieved in near-vertical climb by 8:17 mark of the video, and is the last barely-visible altitude reading during screen’s fading-to-black “teleporting the player back to allowed altitude” process. The video is raw live gameplay, with most of climbing and a part of returning to airfield flying - compressed to 4x playback speed, with game sounds muted (for the sake of music clarity), otherwise unaltered. No cuts, no omissions.
It is worth noting that this was done in “custom” game difficulty, as visible at the start of the video. There are two key settings to achieve this: 1st is disabling “arcade boost” setting (paradoxically, this aircraft goes way slower with it enabled, and harder to pilot through unstable IAS tresholds as well), and 2nd is disabling “flutter” effect (with it enabled, aircraft body disintegrates long before it’d reach 4.4 Mach). Basically, this is a mix of Realistic and Arcade game settings.
It is also worth noting that another relatively recent change, made by Gaijin few major patches ago, is test flight map’s feature of keeping current aircraft speed whenever the player goes beyond map’s edge horizontally. This is not the case in other Gaijin maps (random battles, custom battles, etc), and is obviously of key importance to fly that fast and that high, given test flight map’s relatively small size. There is at least one 256x256 km map in the game, which is much larger than test flight map - but sadly, its altitude limit, as of now, remains at 27300 meters.
And of course, this can only be done with unlimited fuel setting enabled (as, again, visible at the start of the video). Without it, Me-163 (and any other rocket-powered aircraft) would run out of fuel long before these speeds and altitudes would be reached.
P.S. Yesterday, Gaijin published this page: [Development] Winter Concert: MiG-25PD - News - War Thunder . In it, Gaijin tells us, i quote: “the record-breaking MiG-25PD jet fighter! … The fastest aircraft in the game!”. Well - as you can see, it is not true! ;) While Mig-25 will certainly be the fastest jet aircraft of all we have in War Thunder, i don’t expect it to be able to reach 4683 km/h and Mach 4.4. It shouldn’t be able to. Mig-25 is a jet, which means its engines need dense enough air to remain near their peak power. And Mig-25 wings need dense enough air to maintain sufficient lift, as well. But at ~35 km altitude, which is now cruisable, air is WAY too thin for it. Me-163, on the other hand, is a rocket powered aircraft, which means its engine actually keeps producing 100% of its thrust even when there is no air whatsoever. Same way space shuttles do so, in space. While Me-163’s relatively large wings generate sufficient lift even at 35 km - it needs some 800+ km/h IAS at this altitude to be fully controllable, but this IAS is perfectly within Me-163’s design limits. Near sea level, those same wings generate enough lift even at some 200sh km/h IAS, which is how they remain good enough even in times-thinner air at 35 km altitude. And of course, this same rocket engine allows to loose speed far slower than any jet aircraft would, resulting in easy near-vertical climb to over 40 km, as this video demonstrates. Which, once again, beats Mig-25 easily - quoting that same page, “the MiG-25 is also the holder of the absolute altitude record for a jet aircraft of 37,650 meters!”. Better yet, as can be seen in this video, Me-163 still maintains over 3200 km/h speed at 42 km altutude, while in near-vertical climb - meaning, this aircraft would be able to easily climb even way, way above 50 km mark, if only test flight (or, any other) map would allow to fly that high. 37,650 meters or similar Mig-25 would do, in the game - is pretty lame, in comparison, eh? :) Sadly, though, for reasons not perfectly clear, Gaijin still does not allow to fly for more than few seconds above 35.3 km. Shame! Shame, because the game’s engine seems to work perfectly fine even at over 40 km altitude, as can be seen in this video: the sky turns completely black (as it should be), stars can be seen despite the map being set to day time (as it should be), we can even see real-world constellations in this video (Cassiopeia, Ursa Major, even Polar Star is visible, being properly northwards). Even Earth’s curvature is clearly visible. Perhaps, one day, there will be a map which allows to fly at 50 km and even 60 km altitudes. It “only” took Gaijin some 11 years to increase cruisable altitude limit from 17300 meters (as it was back in 2014) to 35300 meters. So, perhaps some 15…20 years later, we’ll finally be able to go to 60 km, or perhaps even higher? Those of us who wouldn’t die of old age by then, anyway… :D
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