Fighter Combat - Tactics and Maneuvering

26 FIGHTER WEAPONS
tracking G, shorter firing time, and increased min-range also make the
attacker's job more difficult.
The following episode describes a successful guns defense begun just a
little too late. Here John Godfrey is flying a P-47 and is attacked by an
unseen Me 109.
"Break, Purple Two, break!" It was too late, a 109 was right on my tail, and I
heard the thunder of explosions as his cannon shells burst in my plane. Fiery
red balls were passing on all sides of me. Crunch, I was hit in the wing.
Crunch, one exploded in back of my armor plating, and chunks of shrapnel
smashed against my instrument panel. It would be only a matter of seconds
now. I had lost air speed, and even if I turned left or right, or dived, I would
still, probably, not be able to escape him. But then I remembered sitting back
in Eshott, listening to two RAF Battle of Britain pilots talking. Their words
stuck in my memory: "The important thing is to do something. Make no
movement gently, but be as violent as possible. Pull back on the stick and
apply left rudder at the same time. It might rip the wings out of the plane, but
if you're a goner anyway, what's the difference?"
All this raced through my mind at the same time, no longer than it takes to
blink an eyelash. I nearly pulled the control stick from its socket with my
violent yank; at the same time I pushed with all the strength of a desperate
man against the left rudder bar. The maneuver blacked me out. 3
If the shooter is able to maintain his firing position, both range and lead,
a continued break turn is no longer appropriate. Continuation of an inplane
turn past this point can result in sustained tracking or a very deadly
in-plane snapshot. As the shooter regains his firing position the defender
should roll quickly about 90° in either direction, using maximumperformance
roll techniques, to throw the attacker rapidly out-of-plane.
The defender then reapplies G to turn sharply in a plane perpendicular to
that of the shooter. This second turn is continued until the shooter breaks
off his attack for minimum range or no longer positions his nose for a shot.
A slow roll toward the attacker is required to keep the shooter in the
defender's horizontal plane, i.e., in the plane of the defender's wings, so
that the perpendicular plane of maneuver is maintained throughout. The
defender is actually performing a near "barrel roll," inscribing a circle
around the shooter's aircraft. The attacker's closure will generally cause
him to break off the attack or overshoot the defender's flight path well
before the defender completes 360° of this maneuver. This tactic is illustrated
in Figure 1-5.
At time "1" in this example the defender sees the attacker approaching
from the right at about co-altitude and approximately 90° off the tail,
apparently attempting to close to guns range. The defender quickly rolls
right and breaks into the bogey in an attempt to increase AOT as much as
possible. The attacker also rolls right and pulls to maintain his lead and
begin the saddle-up process by maneuvering in the same plane as his target
(in a level turn at the same altitude in this case) while continuing to close.
At time "2" the defender judges by the attacker's range and nose position
that he is about to open fire. A continued in-plane turn past this point
could be fatal, since it offers the shooter a nice steady target to track.