I want to make sure this isn’t just me. The P61 seems to have a bug where the tail takes critical damage but shows no indication of it. The plane acts like both tail booms have been cut away and will fly sideways and flop around, but all tail surfaces look intact. The plane damage indicator will show damage as low as yellow when this begins happening. I just played ~10 RB battles and i was able to replicate it 3 times. Is anyone else encountering this? It doesn’t seem like it can be intentional.
Fully possible you lost the rudder controls, though the chances of having it happen 3/10 times is quite low
The tail control lines are modelled with hitboxes but are like one pixel wide. So if those are damaged then you will lose control authority even if the surfaces and tail structure seems fine.
If the control lines were damaged, the plane would still fly straight. I’m having the plane slide sideways as if the entire tail boom was cut. Thats why i find this specific instance weird.
Common misconception, they function based on tension, so if they are damaged, they will likely break, severing the cable and the ability to control them
A P61 will stop flying entirely if it lost it tail booms. The game simulates loss of control surfaces by flopping around.
So i figured out what it is. If the P61’s vertical control surfaces or cable are destroyed, the plane will spin out regardless of the rest of the tail boom being intact. Both the booms should be stabalizing the plane, even if there are no control surfaces. Thats rather strange, since i haven’t seen the same behavior in the P-38. And i’ve landed many bombers with no vertical control surfaces.
Also, it seems like the cable controls are one module. Despite being duplicated across both booms. So if you get hit in one boom, the other goes too.
Maybe, maybe not - IRL they are considerable forces on control surfaces and they are prone to all sorts of random movements with no way to control them - such movements are known to result in things like spiral dives, uncontrolled climb to stall, conversely uncontrollable dive, various oscillations.
Here’s a tragic example - Japan Air Lines Flight 123 - Wikipedia
How WT handles it I don’t know, but you could only get continued straight flight if that is exactly what you were in the instant you lost control.
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To start, thats a pretty poor example. Passenger jet vs military interceptor. I’d counter with this
If you don’t want that example, find the dozens of other ww2 damaged bomber landings. Many of them don’t have tail controls.
Also, this isn’t a plane with a small vertical component. You have two booms that are providing a lot of vertical stabalizing even without the surfaces. Finally, even if both vertical surfaces were maxed in one direction, you woludn’t be able to slide sideways.
According to the U.S. Air Force records, “the crew along with Boeing engineers decided that a combination of altering the center gravity by moving fuel on board, changing the engine settings, and small amounts of airbrakes could give the crew the fighting chance it needed. The plan worked, and gave the pilot a small additional measure of control as the jet crept along at a little more than 200 knots.”
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Examples of aircraft flying with considerable damage are remarkable because they got very lucky for whatever reason.
Vertical stabilisers control yaw, which is only 1 component that might contribute to “sliding sideways” - I’d suggest aileron control is more important.
So let’s stop talking hypotheticals - where are the replays?