Post Stall Aerobatics in Air Combat

[DHenriques_]

This is an interesting thread for me.

I would like to see the community discuss these things more often, in the same relaxed manner. Providing an overview of air combat, maneuvers, theory etc. a couple of defensive and offensive scenarios would be good material for beginners.

There are a lot of aircraft out there, so books can only offer you the theory which which to apply. Stories and scenarios of the applications of these concepts is interesting. I would like to see energy comparisons graphs between the main fighters and tips on how to defeat an energy fighter or angle fighter. For example when is trading energy for a tracking solution worthwhile, obviously you have to make it count more if the opponents aircraft is a superior energy fighter. How can you take advantage of your ability to pull better angles. And Vice Versa - How do you beat an angle fighter, obviously by using your energy more efficiently.

I am studying a fair bit of aerodynamics atm and I would quite like to be able to apply it.

Colin

The long and short of it is that after all the books have beed read, once you strap on the airplane, it's basically an instinct game. You have to "read" what's happening in 3 dimensions in real time and make instantaneous decision based on multiple data point input sometimes adjusting several factors at once.
Shaw just about covered the necessary "Bible" with his excellent book. I knew Boyd personally and have read all the work he did with Christie and Rutowski on EM for the initial Viper project. All good stuff!
I remember asking John how he managed to convert every one of his famous 40 second head to head "bets" while flying the Hun against all comers. He couldn't explain it.
ACM is such a fluid and dynamic thing that it defies verbal explanation. You read up on all the science and physics, then you go up and rely on your instinct to take over. If you have to think about it you're already dead.
Bottom line is that there are fighter pilots out there who can quote you chapter and verse on ACM but don't have the instinct to make all that work in the fight. They will eventually become statistics. Then there are fighter pilots who have read all the books, can't really explain it in detail all that well but have the instinct to make it work in the fight.
THEY are the killers who will survive and win.
Dudley Henriques

[seaniam81]

As Chuck Yeager once said it's the man not the machine

[Sundowner]

It's a funny thing, I was into virtual air combat since I was 8 years old (Comodore 64, and "Ace" series was the first ones), since that time I read a lot of books on the subjects, and while I was at the stage of looking for "The Maneuver" I noticed, that most of those were about tactics, and not really controlling the plane in dogfight. It took me awhile to find out why that was, and that the most dense package of useful data was in the video for Falcon 3.0 Gold - the "Art of the Kill" with (then) Major Peter A. Bonnani (I wonder if it was filmed during "Mustache March" ? ). The whole ACM section is... 5 minutes long ? The rest is about weapons employment, evasion, and decision making.

It's basically it, when you enter the furball, the books are going into the map pocket, and as Dudley writes: you're going on instinct and experience. Luckily virtual fighter pilots are not getting exhausted so easily, so you can get hours of training in any conditions.

So one have to get acquainted with his weapon system (the plane), and then throw himself into fights. I like 'Falcon 4.0' in this, as you can set up a fight conditions, and just go for hours, restarting the fight immediately after someone shoots the jet from under your seat. In 'Rise of Flight' you have to load the mission again (which take ages), and the same goes for 'DCS' - although loading times are a bit shorter. Plus the BMS 4.32 mod for that Falcon have the most fluid flight modeling I experienced since Condor, and have most of F-16 Fly-By-Wire system quirks too. I can only wish that some day we could get something like that for our P-40, P-51 and others, but FSX is already taxing CPU as it is... maybe if someone would dump such computations onto the CUDA GPU... would require an Nvidia graphics card though.

[McDonnell-Douglas]

If you have to think about it you're already dead.

Dudley Henriques

Well that's a big gamble with a $30 Million dollar plane Lieutenant

Thanks for the advice Dudley, much appreciated. I will give the literature a read and work on developing my own tactics, evaluate the opportunity cost of maneuvers, when, where and how to apply them etc. I guess that is the best way to learn.

Thanks again guys. Colin

[CodyValkyrie]

I've done a few maneuvers, but they have to be second nature, and generally your opponent is trying to outmaneuver you so often they go right out the window. For me it was about exploiting the weakness of my enemies aircraft while ringing my own aircraft's assets to their fullest. For example, the Sopwith Camel turns extremely tight in ROF, and rolls better to one side than the other. With a lot of rudder and a lot of yanking, you can ride the edge and if your opponent is incoherent enough to engage in a turning knife fight you pretty much get him every time. Sometimes against the DR.1 they will go into the vertical, the trick is to ignore it because your little Sop will never be able to follow them through it. Keep your E high and don't try to follow them. The order of the day was yo-yos and attempting to get your enemy in a tight knife fight. Keep turning and you stay alive.

The DR.1 had some pretty wild things it could do, especially at the edge of it's envelope that could turn the tables quickly. Half spin flick rolls, complete reversals, etc. The problem is they left you with little E left, but when your enemy was close or you wanted to make a straight on pass, they could be utilized. Some of these moves were extremely effective, but they could only be applied in specific situations or you were a sitting duck. One maneuver I favored was a half flick spin in the vertical. It required very well tuned input on the operator's behalf which could get you easily killed if not done precisely. Anyone behind me would have my gun trained on them faster than they could say hello. If nothing else it evened out the fight. If they bled enough energy off, I would go into the vertical and try to keep their energy down. At this point, you're fighting for scraps of E and trying to maintain it only slightly higher than your enemies.

In the SE5a I would keep my E high and gain as much altitude as I could. My horizontal maneuvers were minimal at best. Generally I would swoop down on an unsuspecting victim, trying to catch them in a deflection shot or otherwise and trade my E for altitude, leaving them in the dust. Rinse and repeat until I downed my enemy or I ran out of ammo. Either way, they were almost never able to get a shot on me, completely minimizing my exposure while keeping my aircraft squarely at the advantage. If someone got behind me and had altitude, I would generally firewall and head for the deck so I could keep what distance I already had between us, then simply outran them in a slow climb once I bled their E off. This again put me at the advantage. They key was always E management and awareness. Usually when I got shot down, I didn't see it coming. I spent a lot of time in the clouds just for this reason when I got bounced.

A few times I performed a Thach weave with a buddy and I was surprised how well it worked. I was never great at deflection shots, but it generally gave us a leg up when someone was on my tail or my buddies.

The trick is practicing enough that it becomes second nature and then be fluid and dynamic, adapting to what it happening. If you over think it, you'll commit to the maneuver until its finality which could leave you in a worse position if your enemy is able to see it coming. "Oh, he's doing a split-S, I'll just turn around and maintain my E in a wide turn and swoop down upon him when he's done." Dudley is dead right in his assessment.

[McDonnell-Douglas]

Hi Guys,
Quick question. Where can I find Energy Maneuverability charts for WWII fighters?

Best Regards,
Colin

[seaniam81]

Quick question. Where can I find Energy Maneuverability charts for WWII fighters?

You can try poking around some IL2 1946 forums. But you wont find anything official because Energy Maneuverability theory didn't exist until the 60's and wasn't officially accepted until the early 70's. And it's all just theory anyways, really only useful during design of an aircraft.

[Sundowner]

More likely in the time of figuring out a tactic to counter a specific threat. You still can't design a fighter that is better in everything over everything else. In some regimes of flight F-104 still has the upper hand over F-16

Although since 1960s the differences are shrinking, and there is not much of margin between say F-16 and MiG-29, to reliably put oneself into position of superiority over the enemy. In current generation of fighters (F-22 excluded - no data) they're basically equal. One-on-one dogfight result would depend on how well the pilots are proficient in operating their weapon system, how well they can maintain their situation awareness, Gs-resilience etc. etc. - not much to do with the hardware as it gives no clear advatage.

BVR is of course a different story.

[McDonnell-Douglas]

Ok.

In that case. Can anyone point me in the direction of turn charts, climb charts, hp at various altitudes.
Also can anyone aid me in producing Energy Maneuvrability charts.

Best Regards,
Colin