Cat among the pigeons time....

Ok, we've all read the pages and pages of stuff about how to dogfight, we all understand the principles of height=energy=speed=survival.. we KNOW all this stuff... so why do we keep getting blown outta the sky so frequently?

You can put it down to the OKL planes being pretty much superior to what we're flying in VEF2 at the moment... but why aren't we shooting at least a few of them down?

Sure, we sometimes get a mission where we get a good result, but all too often, we're getting ripped into faster than you can say "Check your six!"!

I've played a few missions of late and I reckon I've found at least one problem which we can address immediately and improve our chances of survival and mission success.

At the minute, I think we are in far too much of a hurry to get to the target. We all take off and go screaming off, dragged out in a great long line and either hurrying to catch up of having to content ourselves with being half a klick behind the next plane.

We're leaving ourselves as sitting ducks!

Bader once said that there is nothing worse than being bounced by the enemy when at climbing speed, and he's damn right!

The few missions I've flown where we take our time, get some height and THEN go for the objective have seen drastically better results.

And if we're on a ground attack mission, we need to go in line abreast, not dragged out into a flight 2 kilometres long... the enemy can just strafe right along us, only having to face one rear gunner at a time!

Our comms before we launch is great, we always agree where we're going, how we're going to get there and all that, but if we don't wait for the last plane off to get up we just present the enemy with lots of individual targets.

If we took our time, circled the airfield until everyone was up, at the same speed and height and clear as to which way to go then we'd stand a much better chance. Instead of having to face down one rear gunner, the 110 on your tail has the rear gunners of the 3 planes either side of you to worry about too.

If he does smoke you, you can bet your bum that as he overshoots from his dive there'll be 4 pairs of uber cannons drawing a bead on him instead of just you on your lonesome.

Up high, dogfighting, we need to think much more about who covers what...
From doing a bit of reading, the best place for an escort is behind and high... but not so high that diving down means reaching or exceeding the critical speed of the plane!

Ideally, excorts should be no more than 1000m higher and about the 1000m behind... it'll mean having to weave loads but it works!

there is a simple answer. Simpler than that. The guys who tear us new a holes are flying together more often. We are *cough* quite a senior squadron *cough* .

Lets face it...kids, wives, dogs, mortgages, full time jobs, mates, lives, girlfriends, family...sort of ;)

And we dont fly with the same people over and over.

I've not been airborn for a week.....me and Rias should fly tonight I hope.

When we do, we'll be "rusty"....good enough to own a noob, but cack enough to die in a turn fight with a dot that turns out to be one of our mates, and then get bounced by a pair of 109's who fly 7 hours per day.

I have been out for a week now, to get my head round rallying, but now I am in the right mood to get back to VWF/VEF.

If 2 or 3 of us fly together for a few days, we suddenly get better..its not rocket science. Its practice. Its not even lack of skill....a reasonably average pilot (like me) who flies solid for a whole day and then drops into VWF will get good results, but if I wrok the day, make dinner and then get on the joystick at 9:30, it takes an hour to recall all that's gone from my head.

In that time...I die ..a lot :(

We have to sadly face it.....we aint 15 years old, with 1 hour of homework and flying from 6pm to midnight daily.

Funnily enough, there are other reasons...but they are gone from my head ;) cos I;m old

Been saying that for ages Deck :) When I was without headphones I was flying high and scoring a lot of kills on lone 109s stalking the main dogfight at 6000 to 8000m our problem is keeping our performance up at those hights :) And the fact we are often defending il2s at sub 100ms, however if we have enogh of us that are on comms I suugest a hi pair and low pair

Been reading some more stuff...

Escort tactics

A high pair (or more, depending on available pilots/planes) on intercept AHEAD of the main group... like scouts...

The main group of GA planes, at whatever height they should be.

Behind them by about 1000m and no more than 1000m higher the main escort group.

Above and behind them a trailing high pair.

Now I know we dont have enough bods up in the air for this, so a bit of further reading reveals....

One lead plane, high and ahead as a spotter. His function is purely to spot bogeys and then leg it if they look like engaging him.

The main GA group stay at whatever height they chose.

The main escort group stay above and behind, but close enough to get in fast and take out or drive off enemy bogeys. If they wish they can follow closer and go higher, the idea being that separation shouldn't be more than about 1200m in a straight line from escort to GA plane. (that means roughly 1000m horizontal separation and 500m vertical or vice versa... or, as this book puts it "Imagine a rope 1200m long... you can fly anywhere you like around the plane you are escorting, but only as far away as the end of the rope tied to his tail"

Lastly, one of the main escort group goes high and behind everyone as a backdoor man. If nothing else he can warn the others of incoming bogies on their six.

Obviously all this needs to be adapted to the numbers we fly in and the people we fly with and I'm in no way saying we should all rigidly stick to this... but its something I think we should bear in mind.... GA planes are always gonna be the main target, cos they're slow and easy to kill, closer escort might make them a less attractive proposition....