The turnfighter's fate

Turnfighter planes such as Ki-43, Yak-1B, A6M, I-153 or early Spitfires can be used to great effect by skilled players, and make it much easier to score some kills than boom and zoomer or energy fighters. All you need to do for *some* success is to fly into the red furball, turn towards some red plane, exploit your plane's turning rate to keep the sights ahead of the red plane('s lead indicator) and keep pressing the trigger.

Combined with a little skill this is an easy method for scoring more kills than planes lost; most players are stupid enough to join such furballs or fighters even with planes unsuitable for turnfighting - and end up as easy fodder.

There is a fairly low glass ceiling concerning the kill/death ratio with turnfighting, though: While occasionally one may end up even with a 15:0 kills match, I myself never succeeded to exceed a k/d ratio of about 6:1 with turnfighters (A6M, Ki-43-III) by much unless they were suitable for BnZ (Sptifire IX) as well. The reason is the turnfighter's fate:

To turnfight means to bleed energy. A warship that turns by 90° loses half its speed, and then sustains this low speed even during further circling. It's quite the same with aircraft; one ends up typically at 200-280 kph in propeller planes during sustained turns (in AB), and likely even loses altitude until there's none left to spend. A turnfighter in such a position is despite his (predictable) turning an easy target for new red fighters who join the fray with superior energy. Maybe the first one does only slight damage, the second probably misses - but sooner or later the turnfighter will be shot down by new opponents in such a situation. Once locked in a turnfight with more than one enemy a turnfighter cannot break off and run, climb, enter a fight at his own conditions again. He's locked into the fight as long as not all reds are dead or blues outnumber the reds, absorbing their attention.

It's thus quite easy to reach a good kill ratio with a turnfighter and turnfighting skill, but exceedingly hard to reach really high kill ratios. I doubt anyone in War Thunder has a kill ratio in excess of 10:1 in any specialized turnfighter plane spanning more than ten matches. That's reserved for fine BnZ or energy fighting planes (and exceptions such as the B7A2).