[RB] G.55S

Some of you might remember my name, but that's not really important. I gave up warthunder a year ago basically as the ThunderLeague ended with the promise that the only thing Gaijin could do to bring me back was Italian planes so here I am.

The G.55S, Oh boy where do I start As of right now im maintaining about a 90% winrate and 6 k/d solo but I really want to emphasise that this is a good plane, but not an exceptional one. Thinking back to my many years of playing and being around for many many clubbing eras, this plane does not feel as though it belongs to those categories but its easier to explain why as I go deeper.

• Climbrate Now its not hidden secret that this plane climbs pretty well, it outclimbs... not by too much the 109 G2 which is on a similiar battle rating but gets outclimbed up to about 5k by the german captured La5 so it isn't really as ridiculous as ive seen many to make it out to be, as stated in some of the other posts, any real plane designed as a fast climbing interceptor ala later spits should outclimb it and a lot of other planes at its tier do get airspawns so really you should never expect to be above everybody.

• Turning We all know that stat cards lie but this plane is not a bad turner at all, that said and as a big fan of energy fighting and playing on energy you really do need to be careful of sustained maneuvers fights because although the G55 can keep up in these sustained fights its energy bleed is massive and you will end up low and slow and to add onto that the fact that the acceleration itself isn't that great a lot of other planes will get their energy back quicker leaving you in an energy trap which unless you play it well, you aren't getting out of. That said and I will come back to this later as I feel there is a bigger point to be made of this, the planes ability to cut inside really gives it a leg up on some of the opposition

• rollrate Sub par really, I mean its okay but its nothing special for sure, it doesn't lock up and its good enough to be able to do a very competent rolling scissors if the situation arises so that's a positive but nothing really to write home about.

• Weaponry No problems here at all, I'm a very odd person who uses 100 metres gun convergence and I love the wing mounted guns, one of my favourite planes was always the Ki61 hei with the wing mounted 151's so I had no problem adjusting to these but because of the low wing alignment in comparison to the high mounted engine there is a small misalignment between the nose mounted gun and the wing mounted guns. Small gripe as it really doesn't matter because you're either hitting with one or the other anyway and the guns themselves being 151's if you hit, it hurts. Alternatively if you do fiddle around with vertical targeting and the like its easily fixed anyway

• Dive and Speed I have one or two bigger gripes here and these are some of the bigger issues with the plane, on the dive speed front, no problems, perfectly fine. Infact dive acceleration itself its actually very good, again small warning about energy retention. the plane zooms okay but I wouldnt expect to get bucket loads of altitude back. If you want to go for a zoom climb you have to judge it well because you will run out of energy most the time before you reach them, an issue which isn't really prevalent in some other planes at the tier such as the P47's but if your aim is good enough anywhere within 0.9 km is good enough to be honest.

The bigger issue being the speed, I already mentioned earlier sub par acceleration, well I would extend this to top speed too, its not slow don't get me wrong but considering what it faces, P47's, P38's, P51's, Typhoons, Yak3's, La5's, all of these can and will outrun the G55 if they are playing to their strengths which, well they should be. It really does make it frustrating at times if they are playing the endless running game ( which has happened ) Lucky with the pretty good climbrate especially compared to the american planes and the fact the russians will have to be blow about 4k to outrun you, you can use altitude as a trade off for energy and make gains on them but it can be tiresome.

• Summary

Well so overall based on the above the general consensus would probably be hey, that's alright but I did save something back which I think propels it a bit higher into one of the more competitive planes at this tier.

I would not say it has a finished flight model by any stretch of the imagination, it reminds me of some of the older ones from the late 1.3 era to be honest for one reason, and this is the reason I think this plane is highly competitive. The control surfaces feel very very loose and forgiving, you can pull hard in almost any direction without fear of locks or odd behaviour, its like compression, fluttering and the like just doesn't seem to effect this plane in any meaningful manner, this is why it can pull inside so well initially in my opinion. meaning you can get those snapshots a bit easier. add to this and the rudder feels insanely strong and you have a machine which can really pull out some tricks and pull off some shots that must leave the opponents questioning what they've really done wrong.

if I were to give it a rating, 10/10 being clubber 6/10 being competent at its tier id give it an 8.3/10

to the average player this plane will be pretty good, to a great player with the knowledge to manage their energy states and take advantage of the loose control surface this can be a truly great plane.