How well would the WWII fighter planes work as acrobatic planes? (training)

[Phil P]

Assuming you removed all armament and installed modern avionics.

And how much would they cost in comparison to modern day acrobatic planes?

[DMenscha]

I'd much rather own an Edge 540 than a warbird. Less expensive to operate and maintain and probably able to outperform anything from that era.

[burdell]

Originally Posted by Phil P

Assuming you removed all armament and installed modern avionics.

And how much would they cost in comparison to modern day acrobatic planes?

They'd work about as well as designed for competition modern aerobatic planes would work as stable gun platforms in a combat environment, not very.

[West Phx Native]

depending on what you want to do. A P-51 will run you 1.5-3 million, and it does big lazy loops and rolls, a pitts will be less than 100k and will spin so fast it will make your eyes roll in your head. A fighter is not designed for acro and if you get too slow and don't have several thousand feet below you, you will be a smoking hole.
Acro for show is one thing, acro for maneuvering the plane to shoot down another is totally different

[Chava61]

Check out the Harvard/T-6 Texan WWII sky typer team:
Skytypers

[West Phx Native]

Skytypers do not fly acro, they fly formation, totally different.
I have done formation and formation acro in the T-6 and while it will do it, acro is hard work. The 6 is unable to do any acro from straight and level flight, it is a energy management plane in that you are always trading altitude for speed.
The P-51 or any fighter is designed for speed and does not like to fly slow, so all acro is done with a good amount of speed and uses a lot of altitude. A Pitts or Extra is designed for acro and not speed, it will do a loop from straight and level flight and does it very quickly, as it does all acro. A aileron roll in a 6 is a big lazy maneuver, in a Pitts, it occurs so fast that it took me 3 times before I was able to stop it wings level, all the other times it went past level and was 45 degrees into a 2nd roll.
Think of it as taking a road course in a race car then trying the same course in the family mini van, both will do it, just one is designed for it, the other is not

[SluggoF16]

Back in 1964 the Thunderbirds used the F-105 as their new demonstration team aircraft. The slow, graceful loops and other aerobatics masked the enormous turn radius of the Thud. People lost sight of the team at the top of loops, despite the F-105 being a large jet. When the F-4 came on line it was easier to see, but still had a huge turning radius compared to the follow-on T-38, and especially the current F-16. The Canadian Tudors flown by the Snowbirds are energy management aircraft; it takes time to set up each maneuver, which is pretty cool; it requires advanced planning, compared to brute-force acro of F-16s and F-18s. Need power in an F-16? It's there. For something more thrust-limited, acro takes planning.

An aircraft designed for acro has the power, wing loading, roll rate, and pitch responsiveness needed for good quality acro, though there are exceptions; the Cessna 150/152 Aerobat, for example. I flew one right before I went to pilot training, in the Phoenix area, in the summer. Over-to-top maneuvers, while not impossible, took careful planning, and a lot of climb-back-up time. The roll rate wasn't very impressive, either. However, the Aerobat DID reinforce the need for rudder. Citabrias and Decathlons had more power and a nice wing loading, but nothing like an Extra 300. They also don't have 9+ Gs available on the airframe... the Aerobat could accept, if I remember correctly, a maximum of +6/-3 Gs, which was more than a utility-category 150/152 (+4.4?).

Personally, I'd rather see old warbirds flying gentle maneuvers to preserve their integrity, like Lefty Gardner did in the P-38, than clipped and overboosted at Reno. Sad when we lose one. I watched a Corsair crash at the old Williams AFB during the inaugural Phoenix 500 air races in 1994, and while the pilot got out (good news) we still lost a piece of history.

[Phil P]

Thanks for the replies. I was interested. So it sounds like fighters could do large maneuvers, but not tight, quick acrobatic moves. This would make sense though since in a fighter, if you have low airspeed, like maybe the modern day acrobatic planes are, then you will get eaten up in a dogfight.

[SluggoF16]

Originally Posted by Phil P

Thanks for the replies. I was interested. So it sounds like fighters could do large maneuvers, but not tight, quick acrobatic moves. This would make sense though since in a fighter, if you have low airspeed, like maybe the modern day acrobatic planes are, then you will get eaten up in a dogfight.

Not true with respect to 4th-generation fighters (MiG-29, SU-27/30, F-15/-16/18, Rafael). They can get plenty slow, much better than most earlier fighters. The F-18 low-speed demo flown at airshows is very impressive... I've had F-16s down real slow (and still very controllable) and climbing at over 1000 fpm in a stacked dogfight... the newest fighters offer an exceptional combination of speed, turn rate/radius AND low-speed maneuverability. Only caveat: multi-million dollar pricetags, if available for sale at all. Not cheap to run, either (about 500-700 gallons an hour of JP-8, without afterburner). And for competition aerobatics I suspect they'd have a hard time staying in the box.

There are foreign attack and trainer aircraft out there if you have the budget. L-39s, for example. A lot on the market, as far as jets are concerned. However, if I had a few hundred thousand dollars in my pocket I'd lean towards an Extra, and with substantially less a Pitts or Christen Eagle.

[msgsing]

The Japanese Zero comes to mind.