Fighter Combat - Tactics and Maneuvering

100 ONE-VERSUS-ONE MANEUVERING, SIMILAR AIRCRAFT
Everything I had ever learned about air fighting taught me that the man who
is aggressive, who pushes a fight, is the pilot who is successful in combat and
who has the best opportunity for surviving battle and coming home.
Major Robert S. Johnson, USAAF
The Angles Fight
In attempting to gain a position advantage against a similar adversary, the
angles tactician has essentially two choices: He can turn harder or he can
turn smarter. Although the primary objective for the angles fighter is to
achieve a position advantage, energy considerations cannot be ignored
with impunity. An angles fighter that races around the sky with its pilot
pulling on the pole as hard as he can normally will lose energy in the
process. Since potential energy (altitude) is limited, this energy loss eventually
will mean loss of speed. If the angles fighter becomes too slow, its
maneuverability suffers, so that eventually it reaches a point where it has
insufficient performance remaining to gain further position advantage, or
even to maintain previous gains. The prudent angles tactician must, therefore,
achieve his angular gains as efficiently as possible, so that he can
defeat his opponent before his own aircraft reaches the point of critical
maneuverability loss.
In nearly all cases where machines have been downed, it was during a fight
which had been very short, and the successful burst of fire had occurred
within the space of a minute after the beginning of actual hostilities.
Lt. Colonel W. A. "Billy" Bishop, RAF
In the last chapter two types of turns were defined: nose-to-tail and
nose-to-nose. The discussion there brought out the fact that gaining advantage
in nose-to-tail turns requires excess turn rate, while reduced turn
radius and slower speed bring success in the nose-to-nose case. Since
sustained turn radius is usually more sensitive to speed reduction than is
sustained turn rate (see the Appendix discussion of sustained turn performance),
nose-to-nose turns generally provide the greatest angular gain
per knot of speed loss. In other words, nose-to-nose geometry is more
energy efficient. For this reason, the angles tactics recommended here are
based primarily on the nose-to-nose turn.
Fly with the head and not with the muscles. That is the way to long life for a
fighter pilot. The fighter pilot who is all muscle and no head will never live
long enough for a pension.
Colonel Willie Batz, GAP
237 Victories, WW-II
Besides direction of turn, another consideration of the angles fight is plane
of turn. Earlier discussions showed how oblique turns reduce a fighter's
horizontal turn radius, so, assuming the opponent turns level, the angles
fighter can use oblique turns to increase angular gains during nose-to-nose
maneuvering. Now this leaves the question, "Should the oblique turn be
made nose-high or nose-low?" When two similar fighters meet nearly