Hoof's World War II Online Plane Performance Page
Know thine enemy...
Last Update: 11/13/05 (Changes)
One of my hobbies ever since I started flying ICI's Warbirds back in 1995 has been to test the airplanes in the game so that I'd know the individual performance characteristics of the different planes. This, I thought, would give me an edge in air-to-air combat over someone not as familiar with the available planes. At the time I created a web site to publish online the results of my research. The original Warbirds site can still be found here. A lot of water has passed under the bridge, and when I got back into World War II Online after a three year hiatus, I got the bug again to test the aircraft. Again I decided that such information was too valuable to keep to myself, so I have created a modern version of my old site.
The philosophy behind these tests is the same as with the old site, to test the actual World War II Online aircraft. Real world numbers and statistics are nice and all, but they won't save your rear in the game if the numbers don't match the aircraft as they are modeled. This site makes no attempt to judge the accuracy of the flight models of the particular planes. For an extreme example, if an B52 bomber happens to outturn a Sopwith Camel in World War II Online, I will state that, show my results, and tell you my opinions on how to take advantage of that fact.
Ironically, this time around I am testing planes that are using a flight model I wrote. However, I wrote the flight model system that the airplanes use, not the individual airplane characteristics. Thus the airplanes characteristics themselves I have to learn like everyone else, by actual flying of the airplane. One advantage I have this time around is that I have access to tools I never had in the Warbirds days. When I wrote the World War II Online flight model, I also wrote a wind tunnel tool that directly measures the performance of the aircraft, exactly as the plane flies in the game. Cornered Rat Software (CRS) was kind enough to allow me to use this tool when doing my work on this site. This has greatly sped up the testing of the planes, and considerably increased the accuracy. No more squinting at inaccurate airplane gauges trying to determine a top speed. No more stopwatch climb tests using "best guess" attempts at standardization. What you will find in this site (with a few exceptions like turn rates) are accurate numbers, showing data as the plane flies in the game.
The focus is on fighters, since fighter vs bomber combat is very simple: fighters are better at air-to-air combat than bombers. What matters is fighter-vs-fighter performance combat, because if you can clear the area of enemy fighters, their bombers are not going to live very long. Thus I will only cover the fighters, and their match-ups vs each other. In addition, I will compare fighters only to planes they will fight. For World War II Online, that is Axis planes vs Allied.
You won't find a fancy web page here. I like to keep things simple and to the point. Information may save your virtual behind in WW2 Online combat, fancy web page layouts will not.
Anyway, enough blabbering! On to the planes!
Note: All performance figures, except for engine horsepower, are in metric units. English planes have some figures in the English system as well, but for comparison purposes, a common unit system is required. I chose metric. Conversions are: 1kph = 0.621mph, 1m/s climb = 196.9ft/min, 1 meter = 3.281ft.
Axis Fighters:
French Fighters:
English Fighters:
General Performance Charts:
Complete Aircraft Performance Comparisons
Author Information:
Occupation: Programmer (Edge of Reality, Austin TX)
Background: Warbirds '97-'99 (General Programmer, Imagic Online), Dawn of Aces '98-'99 (General Programmer, Imagic Online), World War II Online '99-'01 (Physics programmer, Flight Model programmer, Weapons and Armor programmer, Front End general programmer)
Schooling: Master of Science and Engineering (Aerospace Engineering) at University of Texas (Austin, TX), Bachelor of Science (Computer Science & Math, Theatre) at Lewis and Clark College (Portland, OR)
World War II Online Handle: HOOF (in all caps)
email: h o o f j at a g o r a . r d r o p . c o m (remove spaces, replace "at" with @)