Greetings aviators, I was wandering if there is a list of planes (mainly props but jet would be nice as well) with good energy retention. Is there any?
P-39s(?). Yak-3s (all iirc). Late bf 109s (k4 especially), i don’t remember much about british and jap planes.
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A bit dated and not a lot of planes listed, but the cream of the MER crop are at the top (including the god of MER, Ta-152H)
Note that some planes are shown not for their energy retention but for context/comparison purposes.
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I mean is this a real or just a philosophical question?
I mean the practical usage / purpose of such as list - and not the list as itself.
Basically all aircraft with excellent aerodynamics have good energy retention as long as as the propellant force (jet or prop) is efficient (at a certain alt with deviating power output at different altitude) and provides enough access energy to fight increasing drag - whilst the actual weight of the aircraft has an impact on acceleration (moment of inertia) and the required force to keep the plane airborne and determines the to amount of excess power to accelerate…
The fellow player above is (as usual) right regarding the Ta 152 H - but imho stuff like a Me 264 (yes, the bomber) is quite similar - you find this out when you try to land, both planes have excellent aerodynamics and have problems to slow down even with German airbrake…
So imho a list with planes with very good (or bad if you want to fight them) high- or low speed acceleration at certain altitudes would actually make more sense - because this decides if an enemy diving on you can be forced to overshoot - or not.
The problem of this approach is imho the necessity to distinguish between MER / acceleration in a straight line at various air speeds and MER in the classic sense (so whilst being in a turn fight) and at different altitudes which affects engine power available.
That’s the reason why most aircraft lose a turn fight (starting with high speed) vs a Yak-3 (4.3/5.0) at low alt - as they run out of energy much faster than the Yak. But as soon you are able to to make them very slow (~ 200 kmph) their engine is not really efficient, allowing you to kill them rather easy.
So either you are able to make them very slow or you drag them above 6 km - the lack of engine power at higher alt (assuming you have a better engine) make them way easier targets.
This gets even more complicated with stuff like the F8F which loses so much speed whilst turning - despite having an outstanding acceleration in a straight line…
So being aware of all this stuff makes prop Air RB still worth to play…
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