What do the combat flaps do?
What do the combat flaps do?
I can't seem to make heads or tails of flaps in War Thunder, so a little help would be welcomed.
Flaps help you to reduce speed and take off and land at a lower true speed (TAS). They also help maneuverability slightly and help in tight turns, when you kill throttle or when you shut down the engine.
Generally flaps is just an adjustment to wing area and shape. They can serve 3 main purposes:
- Increase lift force. It is needed when a plane has low speed during landing and takeoff, sometimes it's useful when plane is heavily damaged.
- Increase maneuverability. Life and death question in battle.
- Increase air resistance and decrease speed. It is needed on landing and could help in some battle situations. Flaps also increase load on wing, so extending them on high speed could lead to damage or destruction of aircraft.
As you can see flaps extension have few effects and not all of them desired on all flight stages. So late WW2 planes had few flaps positions. "Combat flaps" means flaps position which shouldn't lead to any damage on all speeds and altitudes. It's a safe minimum which you wold use when performing most of maneuvers.
Note that depending on situation takeoff and landing flaps could also be useful even in combat.