If you fly Il-2 offline a lot you may notice the tendency of the AI, if it's in a plane that is even slightly faster and/or better at climbing than yours, especially if it's in a 109 model (though E-models seem to have less of the tendency), to constantly jet away from you into the stratosphere and make it impossible to catch up with them. Naturally the solution would seem to be to engage them in a turn battle with a more maneuverable plane or try and boom and zoom them from a higher altitude, but while that should work online it doesn't really work offline because of how the AI reacts to you, at least it doesn't work for me.
Hopefully CoD isn't as bad as Il-2 at letting AI planes jet around at top speed for hours at a time and giving them an AI routine that has them constantly run and climb away. That said, what would be the top speeds of a BoB-era Spitfire and a 109? I don't really know what Spit models were used in the BoB, but when I've looked at Il2Compare it always seemed like the earliest Spits from around 1940 had a top speed at sea level of around 450kph. 109E models from 1940 seem to be around 470 to 480kph at sea level. I know sea level isn't the best way to match up a lot of planes but 500 to 3000m is around where most offline and co-op battles take place, and a lot of stuff online in Il-2...what altitude were most battles at in the BoB?
So anyway I'm just curious about how Spits and 109E's matched up in BoB in terms of speed. I really don't want to see a lot of dumb bickering, I just want to know whether the 109E would have a big top speed advantage at all altitudes or not.

