Why is the P-51D such a nightmare to play?

BECAUSE THE U.S PLANES IN THIS GAMe are terrible.

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The tail plane and stabilizer are canted 2.5 degrees due to a particular issue at hover.

It is really noticeable when you look for it!

Didn’t know what exactly you were aiming for. But yes, tail rotor is under angle by design.

I mean, you could technically say that about any aerial kill ever: “The dead pilot never should have done XYZ.” Aerial combat is mostly about just that which is capitalizing on enemy mistakes rather than having the superior plane because the BR system mitigates that issue to reasonable degree, at least for props as I don’t really play jets too much. Also, you are mistaken since the P-51D-10 is faster in the horizontal than the Yak-3 by a large margin since it goes 613 km/h IAS on the deck versus the Yak-3’s 572 km/h IAS. If I’m not mistaken, all the P-51 variants 5.0 BR and below are faster than their 5.0 and below Yak counterparts.

Nevertheless, what the video illustrates is that the P-51D can always control the fight by being able to BnZ when above an enemy as well as do what I did in the video when below the enemy (sufficient altitude permitting) which is what I would characterize as reverse BnZ. I didn’t even have to take the fight from that disadvantageous position of lower altitude if I didn’t want to since I could’ve kept running indefinitely until the Yak-3 eventually pulled off and then I would climb above him which is the cheesiest but most safest way to play a BnZ fighter and the strictest form of BnZ also. But, the critical thing is, if I play my cards right by always forcing the fight down, in order for the Yak-3 to kill me in the P-51, he will always have to point his nose down as well and stick with me to some degree if he wants to get any decent shot at all. Because he’s forced to point his nose down if he wants to do anything other than neutralize the dogfight (that is, win the dogfight), I can always get on his six by forcing the fight down every time because he will overspeed if the descent continues long enough and thereby be forced to pull up whereupon I can pull up after him too and get a gun solution.

This is a fantastic dynamic in the P-51s favor because the Yak-3 will be slowing down as we zoom up as opposed to me getting faster and harder to hit as we dive down and 50 cals have incredible speed and range to complement the former, making them especially lethal as both planes lose energy. Moreover, if I ever run out of altitude, I can simply extend away with my superior top speed and climb at a shallow angle until I have regained enough altitude to perform the same tactic over and over. Or, if I am feeling particularly ballsy, I can simply turn straight around and head on the Yak-3, rinse and repeat aerial jousting match.

To say the least, this a great tactic that I have perfected and am still perfecting myself, but other, better players than me in War Thunder have used this same tactic as well like RamJB and proven its merit. RamJB uses the FW-190 in this video to reverse BnZ a Spitfire. Moreover, the P-51D has been demonstrated to outperform Yaks in high altitude vertical maneuvers as this YouTuber,
noSBinTSSclowns, shows in this video so that was also another possible way to defuse the situation if I could’ve gotten co-alt with the Yak-3. All in all, don’t doubt the P-51s merit.

Bonus clip: P-51D-10 reverses J2M2

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If i was flying that yak i would not of followed you down, same if you was in a f4u and i was in a spit, simply because of your energy retention. That is what i do.
I might even wait for you to come bsck up but i will have more energy if i choose to climb. Even in a turn fight if you try to low yo yo, i will maybe high yo yo. Also you have less compression and i know this

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Less likely an aerodynamic related design but the hinds cockpit are also uncomfortably off center.

Bruh

OP here, but I would like to add my issue is with the P-51D.
The game does have an issue of making American planes suffer from horrible game design with interdiction style starts. But what I wanted to add is that from my experience (and to the guy who posted the DEFYN vid showed) The D-30 is just a crapshot with the huge fuel load.

The P-47D-28 climbs relatively quickly, and even the lowly d-22 when given enough altitude and the thinner air, can turn well. In fact, I wish it was like it was. But the P-47N is one of my favorite aircraft if they fixed the thing. The large wings at altitude allowed me to Outturn G-2s handily in turn fights. But that’s the thing. A lot of the aircraft are hampered by excessive minimum fuel and the P-47N is equipped with the wrong engine.

I just don’t understand Gaijin’s thought process by hampering an aircraft and then stuffing it on the ground where it’s going to be easily beaten by the enemy team.

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Imho you might considering to do some research regarding P-51Ds - especially regarding fuel load, location of fuel tanks, fuel management during the flight and shifts of the Center of Gravity during these phases. You might get some interesting facts and learn why the main tank behind the pilot was used first.

I fully agree that gaijin’s approach regarding fuel loads is a joke - it creates artificially increased or decreased flight performance without any relation to actual combat scenarios. Seeing friend using jet with min fuel (like 7 minutes) or meeting Corsairs with 12 minutes is just another way to prove that realism and wt are 2 different things…

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You know they’re adding adjustable fuel sliders in a future update.

They don’t adjust minimum fuel load. So the P-51D is still screwed over

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I got a terrible feeling the P51D20NA has been nerfed again while Gaijin dropped its BR to 4.0. it is no longer the fastiest at it BR if it ever was, yak 3 is catching it at 5k alt while being able to do damage at 1.7k distance, bf109f4’s can catch it in a dive zero’s can also kill it in a dive, it just don’t accelerate like it used to
is there any other p51 players than can verifier this. It could be me, i have checked it against the USA performance guide and its top speed is the same.

Below is recent replay please excuse the lengthy extendeding away from the yak 3, i was running a 500% booster and was unable to get an energy advantage over the yak 3, even at 5k alt while receiving dameage from a distance upto 1.7k
https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay/186253155169881289

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The Yak-3 is made of stalinium since always, and the P-51D-20 has been bad, since always. I’ve been reading datamines for months and have not seen any mention of changes to the P-51D-20. However, we do have early model P-47 nerfs recently introduced in the game files. This screenshot indicates changes from last week.

image

Lowered manifold pressure equates to lower horsepower. However, there have been no such changes to the P-51 and as far as I know no P-51 has received FM adjustments in a long, long time.

The fact that you are struggling with the D-20 just means that you are seeing in practice that the D-20 is bad.

Ive allways had problems with it mostly due to it climb rate or should imsay manifold pressure, but saying that i am doing better now that I reduced convergence from 600 to 500, surprising how much it has had an affect. I would like to learn about this data mine, do you have a link about it please? And thanks for sharing that info

The updates are posted by a discord bot that distributes posts from a server called “MTG’s Official Discord Server”. That’s all I know. I have access to the updates because I am in Nimble’s discord (he makes sim content).

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I hate to be the one to have to point the obvious out to you: All your suggestions are like they’ve been made prior to 2014 and Ground Battles don’t exist. Many of these planes are at higher BR because of their utility and destructiveness in ground battles as CAS. Yes, yes, different BRs are coming for Air and Ground, but it’s not here yet. Your suggestion for P-47s are silly and would mess up Ground.

Gaijin is going to separate Air and Ground BR’s - and even though (I believe) I wrote this before they announced that, it doesn’t mean that I was wrong about them being overtiered in Air going off of the attributes in the game files.

Regardless, you could’ve read down a bit where someone pointed out that the easy-to-read flight performance data in the files isn’t the compiled flight performance data, and that flight performance is a more active process (i.e. not written down in a file nice and pretty).

Essentially what I was saying needs to be taken with a grain of salt, some more than others. I am still mostly correct, Gaijin’s code isn’t that bad, but there’s at least ±15% leeway on most vehicles (some are still crap, like the P-47).

Oh, I believe you. There are many, many, many aircraft of all nations over-tiered because of how they perform in ground battles, because of the air-to-ground ordinance they carry. The separation of air and ground BR will be one of the biggest changes to occur for many years.

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Real😂

I also think that the problems of the Americans are that they are airplanes to play as a team, doing hit and run when the enemy is chasing you and shooting him down, the problem is the same as always. Here you almost never play as a team, so when you do hit and run you can only go in a straight line until the end of the map or until the person chasing you gets tired and turns around, so you should gain height again and look for an enemy below you and with less energy.

A lot of the times you need to attempt to be a decent team player in order to get the team to help you.

Often times what I’ll see from players is that they will attack the first target they see…get multiple people behind them…and then dive to the deck and in a direction opposite of friendlies.

It’s like…bruh…in order for me to help you out…you need to not put yourself in a situation where we will both die even if I save you from your immediate threat. The fact that US planes can use speed to basically delay/prevent being hit/killed is an enormous advantage that most players don’t take advantage of.

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