PART III
OK, in the last section we covered common mistakes, in particular to a classic Boom and Zoom fighter. Let me take the opportunity to reiterate that Energy fighting isn't always a BnZ technique. Energy fighting is about maintaining a total advantage over your opponent with respect to the three attributes or components of energy. Those three are altitude (potential energy), speed (kinetic energy), and angle (force vector). The pilot who is better able to retain the superior energy state of those three components will win the fight. Some aircraft are known to be faster than others or better turners than others. Those tend to be fixed attributes (max and min values I mean here) and altitude is the one attribute the pilot can really control. The key is in knowing how to balance the three in the right combination to make the kill.
Alright, so after dying from making those earlier mistakes in a positive energy merge you decide to saddle up and try again. Here are some techniques for using a superior energy state to defeat your opponent:
Zoom to The Wall: This technique is also called "Rope a Dope" by some. In this instance lets say you have a speedy plane like the Spad and your enemy has the DrI. The DrI has got the angle component all over your plane, but you have the advantage of speed. Combine that with your advantage of altitude and you start with the energy advantage. So, after a few maneuvers you have managed to whittle his energy away a bit and you can see he is not one of the masters of the DrI. You've worked your way behind his 3-9 line and dive at him. He stays straight on because he is trying to build up E again. You pass over him in an overshoot and he goes for the 6 shot. Realizing you may have screwed up you note you can zoom straight back up so you yank back on the stick. Because of your initial altitude advantage and speed you zoom up higher than he can. He is fixated so he keeps following up. His initial low energy combined with the induced drag of a high angle of attack his plane falls off before yours does. Timed right you can hammerhead or wingover to line up for another pass at his plane. If he is low enough he smacks the ground. If he is high enough to recover he usually is wallowing for a few seconds allowing you to get in your shots.
A variation on this is the Slow Climb To The Wall. This is where you know your aircraft has an advantage in a climbing turn. You slowly make that turn climb watching your opponent knowing his airplane will stall before yours. When he does you nose over and deliver the killing shot. A great example of this is a Morane Bullet versus a Halberstadt in the Advanced Flight Mode. The Bullet can spiral climb to the left slightly better than the Halb. It is so close that the Halb will get a shot at you. The secret is that your Morane has a lower stall speed so you can turn a tighter circle than the Halb. If he attempts to turn as tight as you his stall will occur before yours. You'll take some shots but you will deliver the death blow. The E3 is actually harder to kill this way because while you still hold a left turn climb advantage he can turn nearly as sharp as you can. The good E3 drivers can hold that edge and not fall into the dreaded AFM left hand E3 death stall. The AFM Se5a and P3 also fall into this category. Which ever one of those gets into the higher position can pull the same maneuver (assuming no uber damage.)
OK, so how does the Halb pilot make the kill? Well, remember back in the early posts about trying to pull a lead turn and watching your speed drop off? This is the same thing only at a slower pace. Use a lag pursuit method and don't worry about alwyays keeping your site on the target. Do lag pursuit for a couple of turns until you have the E for that snap shot. Widen your turns a hair so your turn radius is a little wider than the Bullet. You'll find that about every third rotation will present itself with a firing solution. This is energy fighting as well. Both pilots are watching their speed, trying to gain alt and either gain or give angle. That is what energy fighting is all about. It's not just Boom and Zoom.
Another problem you often run into is the pilot who continues to force the head-to-head shot. In this example lets assume your positive energy state is either from Speed or Angle and altitude varies very little. Every time you try and make a pass at the enemy he forces a head on. You might get the lucky engine shot or ahead shot but you may also collide. My most recent experience in seeing this was in a Dh2 versus a Halb in Normal flight mode. The Dh2 turns better than the Halb, speed is about equal and Halb had a slight altitude advantage (50-75 feet). In a flat, standard bank turn I could come around quicker but with his slightly higher alt he was able to rudder around and force a head-on.
At this point I had two options. 1) I could try and duck under his turn and go for an engine or cockpit shot. Doable, but my timing would have to be perfect and my aim perfect. Well, with these planes, the scatter effect and just plain ordinary internet lag that isn't likely. 2) This is what I did. I continued to force the head-to head-turns but rather than banking around I used a wing-over to reverse my direction.
A wing-over is a low E, no altitude loss of reversing 180 degrees. Now, what I mean by wing-over is I enter a 30-40 degree climb for about 2 seconds, roll to the left, pull my joystick down and left to the 7 o'clock position for about 2 seconds then push it over to the 5 o'clock position. The end result is I should be 180 degrees from my initial course. The same can be done to the right just reverse the directions. Done properly the alt I gained in my quick little climb (slight increase alt component), combined with the conversion into a a quick turn (conversion of alt component for better angle) brought me around slightly quicker than my opponent. The advantage came from the fact that I lost no altitude in the end. I did lose a bit of speed, but since we were nose to nose it was less important. Each of his high rudder turns was causing him to lose a bit of altitude each time. After 3 or 4 of these maneuvers I was now 100-150 feet over him. I now held the advantage in angles (my turn was better than his), and altitude (100-150 feet, not much but enough) and our speed was about equal. I was able to position behind him and take the initiative and eventually make the kill.
This example was more of a classic energy management battle than Boom and Zoom. I traded various components of my E management to slowly gain the advantage. I didn't rush the shot and waited until I held the advantage. Once attained I went for the kill.
What could the Halb pilot have done to prevent this? Well, if he had been watching and saw me do the wing-over he should have realized I was going to be slow coming out of the wing-over. He could have leveled off at that point and simply increased the horizontal separation and maybe even use the speed advantage to convert back to alt and negate my advantage. Another option was he could have used the speed advantage for a low G climbing turn that would have helped to negate my slight alt advantage. I could not have afforded to go for the angle on his climbing turn because my speed was too slow and I would have stalled my alt away trying to follow.
Remember, I was counting on him to use those rudders to come around and thereby lose alt. It wasn't that I was climbing as much as it was the fact I wasn't losing alt while he did. In fact, the next person I met did that exact thing. I kept doing the wing-over and he kept doing a low G climb turn. We were stalemated for about 15 minutes until planes from both sides showed up and all hell broke loose. :-) In the end we both got away.
Overshoot Control: One last thing on attacking from a positive energy merge--overshoot control. There is no better way to blow an altitude advantage than to dive on an opponent, overshoot him and watch him fill your 6 with lead. There are certain things aircraft are equipped with for overshoot control. In AFM it is your throttle. Cutting throttle in AFM will cut your closure rate. In Normal with the Mach 2 dives you have to nose up to bleed your speed as cutting your throttle won't work. In AFM raising your nose won't work very well as it doesn't bleed E enough.
One technique I use (and is one I seen often from Camel jockey's in AFM) is a lag pursuit roll. A lag pursuit roll is where you are diving on your opponent and notice you are going to overshoot. You nose up and go into a wide barrel roll. You are converting your excess speed component for altitude in the roll plus angle in the roll (albeit the angle isn't one for killing). If he stayed straight you will end up on his six again. Chances are he won't stay straight but will bank in one direction or the other. If he does, make your barrel roll in the OPPOSITE direction and use aerilon and rudder to line back up on him. This is an extremely effective technique.
One way I practice it is to find one of those aerodromes with the hangars run down one side of the drome and wrap around one end of the runway forming an "L". In this example let's assume the long row of hangars is on the right hand side of the drome and curve around the back of the drome to the left. To me it will look like an upside down "L". I'll dive, pretending each hangar is the new position of my enemy as I am diving. I'll dive lined up down the long leg of the "L" (down the side of the drome) when I get to the second to last hangar I will barrell to the right and use my rudder and aerilon controls to come out of the roll lined up on the back row of hangars. I hope that picture is clear...
The high yo-yo is another technique to control overshoot and is the classic technique for an airplane with less turn ability to stay on the 6 of a plane with high turn rate. I will cover the high yo-yo in another post because it is more accurately an example of flight geometry more than overshoot control. In flight geometry we will cover things such as Turn Circles and Offset Turn Circles.
I hope you find this info useful.