S! all

 

New seaplane is almost ready. It has 2 forward guns and the rear gunner does not have a rudder in his way. Famous last words- it should be really good.

 

Description and video at http://riseofflight.com/Blogs/post/2012/09/05/Brandenburg-W12-Beta-video.aspx

 

S!

It does look really good.

 

Should be a lot of fun to fly!

Brandenburg W12 is out! Sea plane water interaction dynamics are really nice.

 

Airplane itself a good flyer for a two-seater with floats. Will be best at attacking big flying boats. If you want to mix it up with land based scouts, better have a couple of wingmen and human gunner. Gunner position is the best in the game. Pilot visibility is worst.

Haven't picked it up yet, but am looking forward to flying it.

 

The tail gunner configuration (and it's increased field of fire) seems extremely well designed. The ventral vertical stabilizer and rudder makes a hell of a lot of sense. But I'm really curious to see if it affects the aircraft's handling.

 

Also, if this was a successful design for the rear gunner, it makes me wonder why it wasn't adopted on other two-seaters.

 

 

 

 

 

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The W12 had a deep, slab-sided fuselage that eliminated the need for a vertical stabilizer. Because the W12 was a seaplane sitting high-up on floats, the rudder balance horn could go beneath the fuselage rather than above with no fear of interference with the ground (water). This configuration gave the gunner a great field of fire and was also used on several other aircraft types, all seaplanes.

Very interesting, thanks for the info Lee.

 

I knew that ventral stabilizers found general use in other aircraft, like the Do-335 for example. But almost always in tandem with some form of dorsal stabilizer. So the lack of a dorsal system on the W12 is very very interesting.

There is one small problem with the W12.

 

We have the Benz Bz.III powered long fuselage C3MG model (two fixed and one flexible MG) which also happens to be the worst performer of the the W12 series. What's odd about it is the previous production run used the same engine and fuselage but were configured as C2MG models (one fixed and one flexible MG) with better performance due to lighter weight. I would have thought the C2MG would be the default configuration with the C3MG as a weapons mod. We don't get any fixed gun options.

 

This is significant as it brings into question the ability of the W12 to catch a Felixstowe in game.