PART IV
The topic for this section is the Negative Energy State Merge. In laymen's terms this would be "I'm screwed, how do I get out of it?" A Negative merge means just that. You have merged with the enemy and he/she has an energy advantage over you. Most commonly, this occurs because they have more altitude. As you well know this can happen in a variety of ways. Another common scenario for a negative energy merge is that your opponent simply has a better plane than you do. Bomber pilots typically face this situation.
OK, so you are tooling along and suddenly a quick "E" check shows a bandit high over head by at least 1000 feet. In our example let's assume he is to our high 5 o'clock about 1000 feet up and 1000 feet back. In case you were wondering this is really, really bad--not a happy place. What do you do? Well, your first thought is to disrupt any potential easy line up shot you may be giving the enemy. The best way to do this is to turn and get directly underneath them. Why? Remember back to the common mistakes people make when they hold an energy advantage? One of the "mistakes" was failing to maintain adequate horizontal separation thereby forcing the Positive plane to perform High-G BFMs in order to line up. Well, if you are the lower aircraft you can force the issue by turning your plane and getting underneath the bad guy.
Back to our example--bandit is at high 5 so I react by making a hard right turn and....ooops, I'm dead. What happened? The hard right turn is what happened. When at an energy disadvantage it is imperative you not blow any more E if you can help it. Make a right turn but do so at a minimum energy loss. Keep the nose level in your turn, make as tight a turn as you can without losing speed. Do NOT dive or turn hard because if you get slow the other guy will pounce and kill you. While making your turn you will have to keep an eye on him (F3/F8 view), your VSI and your speed. You will be flicking back and forth between all the views so having those joystick hotbuttons really helps here.
"But, Sensei, trying to watch all those things at once is hard!" So? Air combat is hard. In a negative energy merge you are already dead for the most part. You are going to have to do everything right to survive. That's just the way it is. Learn the skills it takes to survive and you will. If you are looking for a "quick trick" that will turn the tables go back to playing X-Wing vs Tie Fighter or watching Top Gun. What I am attempting to show here are the tried and true methods of surviving an encounter like this with the same techniques that have been taught to fighter pilots since WWI. This is a game where you can screw up and get a second chance the next time up. Many real life pilots never got a second chance.
So, you make a good right hand turn and now you are directly underneath the bandit. He had to abort his first pass because of your maneuver so now he attempts to re-position. Be aware he is going to try and get you to commit to high energy bleed maneuvers. Hopefully, for you, he will be so busy watching your maneuvers he doesn't notice his own. Keep your turns low, load, and stay underneath him. If you are able to make a really good low G turn take the opportunity to climb a bit. Grab alt whenever you can. YOUR NUMBER 1 GOAL IS EQUALIZE THE ENERGY STATE. I emphasize that because many people feel or look for a way to reverse the situation. That will only happen if your opponent really, really screws up royally and that seldom happens these days. One reason for grabbing alt is that you may need to reconvert it to speed in the event you do get forced into a high G turn.
Great, so you have managed to stay under him and he made a boom pass at you but only got a wide deflection shot that hit nothing. He is now zooming up to alt again on your 6. At this point, if he is indeed behind your 3-9 line you want to turn again to face him. When in doubt force the head on from a disadvantaged position. While you are turning around and he is climbing you do a small spiral climb as well. In fact, make it a habit of grabbing alt when he does. Don't over do it and yank back on the stick or your speed will drop too low, just grab what you can. During the fight it is important to remember that his goal is to KILL YOU. Your goal is to KEEP HIM FROM KILLING YOU. Your goal is not to kill him. Believe it or not, in most cases there is more pressure on him to complete his mission than there is on you to stay alive.
The number one thing you can do to stay alive is to frustrate your opponent and make him/her make a mistake. If they have been denied a good gun pass 2 or 3 times they will begin to get anxious for several reasons: 1) You may have friends coming 2) After 2 or 3 passes, unless they have been extremely diligent, their altitude advantage is now less. Especially if you have been grabbing a foot here and there. 3) The "Thrill of The Kill" will cause an adrenaline rush in the attacker more so than the fear of being shot down. I'm not a doctor, I don't know why that is true it just is.
This leads to the most important combinations of things you need to keep in mind--Patience and Calm. Be patient! Wait for that dive that goes too low, or the rushed gun shot. Go back and read the mistakes of the attacker in the previous posts and think how a potential target would force those scenarios. If you remain calm and analytical you will buy yourself time. Time will be on your side in this fight. The longer he takes to shoot you down the more anxious he will get.
"OK, Sensei, nice words but how about some other examples? What else can I do?" OK, imagine spotting the bandit at your high 12 and he is diving on you. Maybe he is hoping for an engine shot or a head shot. What should you do? Well, the worse thing to do is to turn. The best thing to do is to raise your nose and meet him head on. Who knows, you might get a lucky shot, but that isn't the real reason. When doing this be sure to watch your airspeed. Don't let it get to stall speed. While you raising the nose angle a bit to one side or the other (left or right) just slightly. While still above stall speed and as he closes rudder hard over the opposite direction of your initial drift. Because of all the smash he has going, the enemy in most cases cannot follow the maneuver and he will begin to pull up. If he was going very fast he might actually dip below you.
Let's say your drifting to the right a hair (3-5 degrees) and hard ruddered to the left. What do you do then? Good question, remember back to wing-over maneuver? That is the one where you pull up a bit and roll with rudder in one direction so that you make a 180 degree turn without losing alt or energy. This is a perfect opportunity to do that maneuver. Your enemy will have either already begun to reclimb or if you are real lucky, he dipped low and is now reclimbing. You might even be in range to get a few shots on him. Another option is that after the hard roll you even out and spiral climb back around. What you have done is negated his speed advantage by meeting him head-on and also taking away his high percentage shot. You may have even forced him to overshoot and get your own shots off. The key is he lost a bit of E while you gained some and narrowed the gap. BTW, the drift one direction and hard over into another is often called the "flick and flee".
Another technique I have used to a bit of success is an aborted barrel roll. Let's say I screwed up and the bad guy is diving on my 6 for a good tail shot and I am too slow to split-s underneath or make any drastic maneuver. He comes barreling in waiting for me to make a break turn so he knows which way to high yo-yo. I start by jinking a bit to throw off his aim, just little bumps left and right/up and down, when he gets fairly close and I start taking hits I roll hard to the right but at the same time stomp hard on the left rudder. What will happen is that your plane will look like it is about to break right, but the opposite rudder will halt it right in mid-air. The diving bad guy will do one of two things... He will pull and high yo-yo in the direction he thinks you made a break turn. If he does you make a right low-g lag pursuit turn to get behind his 3-9 line and possibly get a shot. Another option is he just plows through the air right by you and you get a nice 6 shot. Option 3 is he plows into you and you both die. Option 4 is he really pounds your plane hard and just pulls up vertical to restock and reassess. Obviously Option 4 spells bad news for you. Option 3 is bad in that you die, but at least you take him out too. Remember, if the enemy held all the advantages and still died then you win. He should not have died. The down side to this maneuver is that you will take damage. It may be too much damage to survive but if you do survive you will most likely begin to hold the upper hand.
To summarize, the key things to remember in a negative energy merge are as follows: 1) Stay underneath the nme using low G turns 2) climb when you can but don't over do it 3) relax and THINK 4) keep the bad guy in front if not on top. Force the head ons. 5) Don't pull a Top Gun Maverick maneuver. Most of my diving kills are on people who go straight to vertical in front of me. You will get ripped to shreds. 6) Remember, you are trying to get CO-E not kill the enemy! Once you get CO-E then use those techniques to get the E advantage. Only go for the kill when you have the E advantage. I cannot emphasize point 6 enough. Many people have anecdotes about a great last desperate head shot that wins the fight, but in 99.9% of the engagements that doesn't work. Don't count on it.
Look to work yourself into an advantage before trying to make the kill.