Pfalz D.III - Much Maligned?

[Flyby PC 23]

I feel odd thinking about such topics. Whatever way you look at and interpret data and formula, the pilots who actually flew these aircraft are surely the voices we need to listen to when trying to determine which was 'best'.

 

Put yourself in their shoes - would you rather go into battle with a plane you knew and trusted, or a new plane you didn't know with unknown characteristics? I reckon I would only want a 'new' plane if I'd become dissatisfied with the old one and and was reliably outclassed by my enemy.

 

I wonder whether pilots trusted the manufacturers, or lacked confidence in their reputation. Would you trust your plane to dive after similar planes have torn off their wings? Whatever the paperwork says, knowing a plane is good in a dive is all down to some brave or foolhardy pioneer finding out.

 

When you hear Battle of Britain pilots talking about their war, the talk is always which plane could out turn another, which suggests to me in a battle it was turning capacity which mattered to them. It's less distinct in what I've read about WW1 pilots, but I think the defining issue for them was power, - both firepower and horse power. But then again, perhaps those are just the complaints of the living.

[Dej 17]

Still though, Manfred von Richthofen (Dr.1) chased May (Camel) over a distance of 3 or 4 miles.

Which brings up the question, how much an experienced pilot could get out of his craft, if he knew it through and through.

Since the Dr.1 climbs very good, MvR could have used short climbs, to turn the gained height into speed in shallow dives.

We'd need a physician to clear, if that makes sense.

Anyone?

.

 

The Camel and the Dr.1 were both rotaries and not dissimilar in speed. Now, JFM can correct any of this, if he's around but, from memory...

 

'Wop' May was on his way out of the fight when MvR spotted him so MvR had a height advantage for initial additional speed. I think the fact that MvR was able to keep on May's tail for several miles is primarily down to combat experience, rather than aircraft mastery. May admitted that he was turning this way and that, losing speed, whereas Richthofen had the experience not to react to every move of May's but to anticipate and therefore NOT lose speed in turns. Remember also, that Brown caught up with them both, just SE of Vaux-sur-Somme, I think, but - the Camel having little or no speed advantage than the Dr.1 - it was only after diving at such great speed that (I think I read somewhere) he damaged his Camel's airframe.

[Dej 17]

When you hear Battle of Britain pilots talking about their war, the talk is always which plane could out turn another, which suggests to me in a battle it was turning capacity which mattered to them. It's less distinct in what I've read about WW1 pilots, but I think the defining issue for them was power, - both firepower and horse power. But then again, perhaps those are just the complaints of the living.

 

I recall reading in one WWII pilot's autobiography (or it might have been Shaw's introduction in 'Fighter Combat Tactics and Manoeuvering') that on paper or in a planned attack your high G and low G yo-yos; climbing scissors; lag pursuit; split esses etc. are all very well... but when bullets are smacking into the fuselage behind you most average pilots are lucky if they can remember a break turn!

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

I recall reading in one WWII pilot's autobiography (or it might have been Shaw's introduction in 'Fighter Combat Tactics and Manoeuvering') that on paper or in a planned attack your high G and low G yo-yos; climbing scissors; lag pursuit; split esses etc. are all very well... but when bullets are smacking into the fuselage behind you most average pilots are lucky if they can remember a break turn!

 

I can certainly relate to that...most probably froze with fear..and were dead minutes later!...poor devils

[lederhosen 7]

Salute

 

 

 

as far as I can remember (which aint good these days...thats what the wife says), the Kaiser was from a Prussian family and so it was politics and kickbacks etc... that put the Albatros first.

 

The Pfalz was a Bavarian model and so the two houses seemed to of gotten in the way of things. From some of the books I have read it would seem that a few RFC pilots never feared the Pfalz and

 

thought that these planes were given to the bad pilots in the service. This may or may not be true, but could answer why the Albatros remained a feared opponant.

 

Led

[Olham 164]

The Camel and the Dr.1 were both rotaries and not dissimilar in speed.

The Sopwith Camel had a max. speed of 185 km/h - the Fokker Dr.1 only 160 km/h.

 

May admitted that he was turning this way and that, losing speed, whereas Richthofen had the experience not to react to every move of May's

Good point! I bet MvR was much cooler than the novice May, and May seems to have done quite well in that situation - after all he survived it.

 

Whatever the paperwork says, knowing a plane is good in a dive is all down to some brave or foolhardy pioneer finding out.

Good point - each pilot had to decide individually, if they dared or not dared to fly special manoeuvres.

I bet, most of them did the hazardous daring ones only, when they were under direct threat of getting killed - not on their own attacks.

 

Arthur Gould Lee once dived vertical from a "yellow nosed" Albatros (Jasta 10 ?).

And still the Albatros pilot followed, which is insane with the lower sesquiplane wings' known tendency to flutter and then break in steep dives.

But Lee also heard aching sounds from his Pup, and he also feared it would break up in mid air.

He only had no other choice, with two Spandaus hammering away close behind him.

He was lucky and could exchange one of his nine lives - the German was a damn bad shot.

A miracle the Albatros didn't break up!

 

.

Edited May 12, 2012 by Olham

[Olham 164]

I have just read a passage by Carl Degelow, German fighter ace with Jasta 7 and Jasta 40.

 

When he came to Jasta 40, he had to change from rotary (Fokker Dr.1) to the inline fighters again.

He had the choice - Albatros D.Va or Pfalz D.IIIa.

He took the Pfalz, because she was the more reliable or safer plane in his opinion.

He had flown the craft in Jasta 7.

The Albatros, he said, had got that special metal bracing around the wing spar, where it held the V-strut;

but the advice was still, not to dive steeply with the Albatros for longer.

 

So here's a clear vote for the Pfalz.

[Hasse Wind 46]

The key to survival when flying the OFF Pfalz is to stay high and conserve energy. While the plane seems to work well as a turn fighter, you'll quickly run out of energy, and then you're dead, especially when at low altitude. The Pfalz has great visibility from the cockpit, it's a very stable gun platform and can dive like no other German aircraft in OFF. You must make the most of these advantages. Turn fighting should only be considered if you have enough altitude for gaining energy afterwards.

 

I'm hoping to see some improvements to the Pfalz FM in OFF2. It was quite awful when P3 was released, but one of the patches improved it so that now you can actually fight and live to tell the tale in a Pfalz career. But it's definitely not a fighter that suits everybody.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

The Sopwith Camel had a max. speed of 185 km/h - the Fokker Dr.1 only 160 km/h.

That puts the top speed for the DR1 at just under 100 mph. But, I've also seen figures that puts its top speed at around 115 mph. Also, keep in mind that we don't know at what altitude these speed figures are taken.

 

I'm hoping to see some improvements to the Pfalz FM in OFF2. It was quite awful when P3 was released, but one of the patches improved it so that now you can actually fight and live to tell the tale in a Pfalz career. But it's definitely not a fighter that suits everybody.

I've worked hard to improve the Pfalz' FM to increase its speed and remove the "flip over stall" it seems to suffer in OFF. It's still a difficult plane to fly, and still prone to stall in a turn, but you can survive a little longer in it now.

[Flyby PC 23]

Good point Buggsy. There were a lot of decent enough aircraft didn't get that far, so it must have been a reasonable aircraft at the very least. In the same way, they obviously felt earlier models were worth ugrading too.

[Olham 164]

German Wikipedia has the following for the Pfalz types:

 

 

The machine guns (of the Pfalz D.III) were integrated into the fuselage, which made them harder

for the pilot to reach, especially at gun jams.

The D.IIIa had rounded wing tips and control surfaces. The machine guns were installed so, that

they were easier to reach for ground personnel and pilots. The (Mercedes D.III) engine was also

improved for a better performance (then called Mercedes D.IIIa).

 

SERVICE

The Pfalz appeared at the front in August 1917, first with Jasta 10, then with Jasta 4 and the Bavarian

Jastas 16, 23, 32, 34 and 35. She was superiour to the Albatros D.III, but couldn't reach the speed of

the faster Albatros D.V, or the climb of the more agile Fokker Dr.1.

 

At lower level flight she threatened to side-slip in turns. Especially the (...) S.E.5a, the Sopwith Camel

or the SPAD XIII were superiour to her. Still, she was quite liked by her pilots, cause she was rated as

reliable and especially as more robust than the Albatros, which tended to break it's wings in dives.

 

The Pfalz was quite bulletproof, which made her the ideal craft for balloon attacks; although she could

be set ablaze easier than other craft, due to her construction. Successful fighter pilots like Julius Buckler

and Heinrich Gontermann achieved many balloon kills with her.

 

Primarily Bavarian units were equipped with the craft, which was built in (Bavarian) Speyer those days.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

The Pfalz appeared at the front in August 1917, first with Jasta 10, then with Jasta 4 and the Bavarian

Jastas 16, 23, 32, 34 and 35. She was superiour to the Albatros D.III, but couldn't reach the speed of

the faster Albatros D.V, or the climb of the more agile Fokker Dr.1.

 

Thank you, Olham.

 

I've got the speed set in the FM so that the Pfalz is now about the same or a little worse than the DIII and definitely slower than the DV and DVa. Of course, all of the Albatross' are better than the Pfalz in the turn. I had to reduce the side-slipping slightly in order to reduce the flip over stall problem stemming from the tendency for rudder in a turn to work the opposite of how it is supposed to work, but it will still sideslip a lot. Because of this, you need to be VERY careful when turning the Pfalz at low altitude or you will end up in the dirt.

 

One more point about the top speed of the DR1: as the article you posted in the other thread pointed out, it was extremely difficult to get a true speed reading for most WW1 aircraft because of atmospheric conditions and limited technology--situations that were not fully recognized until after the war. So, I imagine a lot of speed estimates during the war were based on comparisons with other aircraft. So, if it was thought that a Camel had a speed of X mph, then a newer aircraft might be judged to have a speed of Y mph based on how it compared in flight to a Camel. But then we have to consider variations in terms of all of the different engines that each model had, individual engine variations, and even different levels of maintenance and age of the engine and aircraft--all of which might throw speed estimates way off. IOW, who knows how fast each plane actually flew in actual combat conditions?

 

BTW, the fact that MvR decided to chase down a Camel tells me that the difference in their speed had to be less than 15 mph. Even with an altitude advantage, a DR1 could not hope to chase down a plane that is 15 mph faster. However, even after saying that, we don't know how well May flew his Camel. In addition to juking and turning, how did he handle mixture control? Perhaps his engine was not operating at peak fuel efficiency and that is why MvR could chase him down? Then again, why did MvR even try if he knew that a Camel was so much faster? Again, we can never know the full answer to these questions.

 

But it is still fun to speculate!

[Olham 164]

I've got the speed set in the FM so that the Pfalz is now about the same or a little worse than the DIII...

Well, they said it was "better" than the D.III - whatever they mean exactly.

Wiki has the D.III with 175 km/h at 1.000 Meter; and the Pfalz D.IIIa with 181 km/h at sea-level.

Quite confusing, the various levels...

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Earlier in this thread, somebody said that the Pfalz was faster than the DIII at sea level, then the DIII was faster from 1 km to 3 km, then the Pfalz became faster again, at heights above 3 km.

 

Very confusing indeed and hard to program into a computer sim!

[Hasse Wind 46]

HPW, did you recently release a new FM pack? I may have missed it completely. The Pfalz improvements sound good to me. I don't want the Pfalz to become a super fighter, but everything I've read about the aircraft suggests that it was in some ways even better than the Alb (especially climbing and diving), and that it shouldn't behave as badly as it does in OFF P3.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

I've been close to releasing a new FM mod for a long time now--so long that I'm getting tired of hearing myself promise that it is almost ready. In truth, I really am in the final stages of putting together a new FM mod that will include several updates and improvements to the planes in version 1.0 of my FM mod, as well as several planes that were not in my original mod, including the DR1, Fokker DVII's, Fokker EV, Nieuport series, Camel, and SE5a's as well as a few others.

 

While the Pfalz in FM 1.0 was faster and dived better, it still was extremely difficult to fly and had weird rudder action that caused it to stall in virtually any turn. I believe I have fixed the rudder problem in FM 2.0. I have also found a way to make it just a little faster than before and I have been able to increase its dive speed so it is now faster in the dive than any German and Allied scout with the exception of the Se5a and the Spad 7 and 13.

 

With any luck, ETA in a little less than 2 weeks.

[OlPaint01 0]

Where have I heard TWO WEEKS before? LOL

 

OlPaint01

[Olham 164]

I bet, HPW - but I am confident you'll get there.

[Hasse Wind 46]

If there's anything that I've learned during all these years spent here, it's that two weeks can be a VERY relative concept.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Especially when the forum goes kablooie!

[Pips 5]

Luv the sound of your FM improvements Herr Prop-Wasche. Methinks that we're going to have a 'true' Pfalz to fly now. Woohoo!

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

The FM mod is now available at simhq.com, Pips.

 

Included is the new and improved Pfalz, along with a Dr1 that will do a flat turn, among tons of other tweaks!

 

I'm about to submit the mod for approval here, as well, but the moderators may have more important things to do at the moment. :moil:

[Pips 5]

Thanks HPW, I'll pop over to SimHQ to grab.