Although the statistics are not the best at first glance, this aircraft has enormous potential: the maximum speed is quite misleading, being a heavy fighter you can reach speeds between 400 and 450TAS without problems (higher than the average spitfire), and this makes him an excellent energy fighter.
It certainly has the flaw of having a slightly higher full turn time compared to other aircrafts, but the presence of the combat flaps manages to make up for the gap well (which is not present for example in the fw190 series), and the roll time at 0G it’s still good.
Furthermore, the two 20 mm cannons and the 12.7 mm machine guns (with 500 and 800 rounds respectively) give the aircraft considerable firepower, making it an extremely efficient interceptor: with a few seconds of burst, they can easily shoot down even the more resistant aircrafts such as the IL series, the Dauntless or the four-engined ones. The only disadvantage are the wing cannons which at first glance are not very easy to handle, especially in terms of accuracy, although the Macchi’s sight compensates for the problem with three in-line pointers.
Taking into account that it is a BR2 fighter it certainly makes it competitive and I personally prefer it to the various BF109s and FW190s of its level. Several times it happened to me to do 1v1 duels against Yak1s and Hurricanes (among the best turn fighters) and still get the upper hand, and for this I fully approve of it!
Indeed excellent aircraft, but it lacks ground support ordinance so unless there are enemy aircraft in the sky, there is little it can do beside strafing for some lucky kills.
I actually prefer the IAR81 because it carries bombs.
Yes the IAR is an exellent plane! I mostly play with infantry and i get the fighter only when it’s needed, so i don’t really need bombs and for this reason i prefer using bombless fighters
IAR is certainly better loadout. Doesnt match the performance
E7 has great performance and bombs, doesnt quite have the stamina (low ammo).
They are all very nice. Depends what you want from them. I dont mind having a pure air superiority fighter option in my deck. Some games are just ripe with targets without needing bombs
I love taking out the spitfire mk Vc aswell. Is unmatched
All are fine choices
Yeees i know…a pure fighter doesnt do anything for the team…at least most of the time it doesnt. But sometimes you do soo much damage to the air you take up to 3-4 players out of the game because they want to fly, and they build aa and sit on it all game, shoot at you with small arms and keeping throwing planes at you because they want revenge.
You need to rediscover the joys of strafing stuff
20mm’s in BR2 are capable of killing basically every vehicle out there, although admittedly bombs are way more forgiving, just strafing stuff can be crazy effective
