Fighter Combat - Tactics and Maneuvering

FIGHTER WEAPONS 27
Instead, the defender rolls farther right, almost to the inverted position,
and pulls down hard. After this roll the defender will be looking at his
opponent out the left side of the cockpit, near the left wingtip. The shooter
is no longer in the target's plane of motion and must maneuver radically to
reposition for the shot. In this case he also rolls inverted and tries to follow
the target through its defensive maneuver. The defender continues to pull,
and rolls slowly toward the bogey (i.e., left) in order to hold the attacker on
the left wingtip. This technique continuously changes the target's plane of
maneuver (spiral) and prevents the attacker from saddling-up. By time "3"
the shooter can no longer follow the target through the maneuver; he loses
the lead necessary for a shot and overshoots the defender's flight path.
Assuming the shooter's original plane of attack is nearly horizontal, this
rolling out-of-plane maneuver will be initiated either nose-high or noselow,
as in Figure 1-5. The best choice depends on the tactical situation, but
a turn toward the attacker's belly-side is probably tougher to counter. A
nose-low maneuver, or a high-G barrel roll underneath, can result in
considerable loss of altitude and is probably not wise at a low level. It does,
however, have a gravity assist in its early stages and results in less speed
loss during the maneuver, possibly providing better maneuverability for
the defender. The high-G barrel roll over the top causes greater speed loss,
which will increase the closure of an attacker in the rear hemisphere. If
begun at too low a speed, however, it may leave the defender too slow and
unmaneuverable on top, unable to avoid a close-range snapshot. Besides
speed and altitude, the choice of nose-high or -low also depends on the
Figure 1-5. Guns-Defense Maneuvering