Fighter Combat - Tactics and Maneuvering

196 SECTION TACTICS, TWOVERSUS-ONE
pilot's full attention be devoted to the opponent he sees, leaving little or no
opportunity for him to defend against a second attack.
There are no eyes for your backside, no eyes for who is coming from
below ... if you are single you have too many blind spots.
Colonel Erich "Bubi" Hartmann, GAP
In theory, the operation of two fighters together can alleviate this
problem by allowing each of the two pilots to cover the blind zone of the
other before an engagement and by allowing one pilot to prosecute an
attack confident in the knowledge that his vulnerable areas are being
protected by his wingman. A fallout of this strategy is the old military
principle of concentration of forces, as greater firepower can be brought to
bear on the adversary.
Although this principle of "mutual support" sounds straightforward
enough, it has given rise to a multitude of tactical doctrines designed to
exploit its advantages. Most of these doctrines have been successful to
some degree under certain combat conditions. Three of the most common
are discussed here, but it should be recognized that there may be many
tactical variations within each broad doctrine, all of which, obviously,
cannot be covered in detail.
Fighting Wing
Fighting wing tactics, sometimes called "welded wing," designate a leader
and a wingman. The leader's primary responsibilities are navigation, forward-hemisphere
search for the enemy, attack planning, and engaged
maneuvering, and he has a secondary responsibility of rear-hemisphere
visual coverage. The wingman flies a rather loose formation on the leader;
his primary task is maintaining a rear-hemisphere defensive lookout, and
he has secondary forward-hemisphere duties.
The position flown by the wingman is shown by Figure 5-1. In actuality
this is not a rigid position, but rather is a maneuvering area roughly
described by a cone-shaped airspace extending aft of about 60° off the
leader's tail. Distance from the leader varies with the performance of the
aircraft involved. Generally the wingman needs to maintain sufficient
separation to preclude any danger of collision with the leader in the event
of unexpected heavy maneuvering, but he must be close enough to facilitate
the task of remaining behind the leader during maximumperformance
turns. This formation task becomes nearly impossible when
aircraft separations are allowed to approach the equivalent of about one
minimum turn radius for the aircraft involved. Because of the increase in
the speeds of fighters and their turn radii since World War I, maximum
separations in fighting wing have also increased dramatically. Typical
maximum separations have ballooned from about 200 ft in World War I, to
600 ft in World War II, 1,000 ft during the Korean War, and 3,000 ft for the
Vietnam conflict. Since turn radius increases with altitude, at high levels,
separations up to twice these values might be workable. Minimum comfortable
maneuvering distances also have expanded, primarily as a result of