Air Combat Maneuvers and Dogfighting History


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There are some amazing Dogfighting History videos out there.
[ e.g. = ww2 airplane fights ]

There are even Dogfighting tricks -- I guess the pilots call them
ACM for Air Combat Maneuvers. I know there is something called a Split-S
where you do a loop-da-loop-thing.

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Don't trust Dogfights (the show) too much. It has the reputation of being historically inaccurate.

A Split-S is a simple change in direction. You do an aileron roll while in level flight so you fly inverted. Then you pull on the elevators until you have reversed direction. It's called Split-S because from the side, the plane's flight path looks like the bottom half of the letter S.

It was a pretty effective way of dodging incoming fire, but there are much more complex maneuvers.


look, history.
[vid = jets over korea]


It's possible to wonder which was more common in the olden' days: 1 v 1, or Bomber defense?


Grand Magus wrote:

It's possible to wonder which was more common in the olden' days: 1 v 1, or Bomber defense?

Depends on how you define "Olden Days".


Fabius Maximus wrote:
Grand Magus wrote:

It's possible to wonder which was more common in the olden' days: 1 v 1, or Bomber defense?

Depends on how you define "Olden Days".

Maybe? (but definitely post 1913.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

That's a long period to cover and I'm no expert, just an interested amateur, so take what I write with a grain of salt.

Basically, duels were much more prevalent during WW I, because of the ideal of gentlemanly combat and also because bombing tactics were just emerging. The fighter planes were really suited to these tactics, because those bi- or tri-plane fighters could turn on a dime.

After the Great War, the powers believed the future would lie in inassailable bomber formations and neglected developing fighter technology and tactics further. The Spanish Civil War kind of reinforced that impression, with the Legion Condor's bombing campaign being so successful. But the German Luftwaffe already was investing in new fighters and accompanying tactics. The Messerschmidt BF 109 was one of the first so-called energy fighters, I believe.

Energy fighting means that the pilot would try to gain altitude as rapidly as possible (meaning the planes had to have a good climb speed), because altitude equaled energy you could convert into speed used for diving down on an enemy plane, taking a shot and then using the speed gained in the dive to quickly gain altitude again, before the enemy had time to react. This was referred to by US pilots (I guess) as "Boom & Zoom", as opposed to "Turn & Burn". As this was more an ambush tactic, there barely was dueling anymore. Fighter wings would swoop down on the enemy and zoom away, then turn back and do the same again until they ran out of ammo or fuel.

The US AAF and Navy perfected this tactic and ordered their fighters to be uniquely suited for it. Late US planes would not have a great climb speed, but in the pacific theatre, the distances were so long that that didn't matter. The machines were very heavy, which meant they could outdive anything the Japanese Armed Forces (mostly using turnfighters, like the RAF) could throw at them.

Strategic bombing would be used much more heavily in WW II, so fighter escorts were standard. Again, the best plane for that role was the P-51. Its range was so great that it could range in front of bomber formation to sweep the sky clear of German interceptors, which by then were much more heavily armed than their US counterparts, but lacked the flight characteristics to keep up with them.


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I think it was during the Korean War (1950-1953) that America first went
up against Russian jet-fighters. The jet-fighters would dive down and then
climb back up, and U.S. Pilots called them Yo-Yo attacks.

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Grand Magus wrote:

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I think it was during the Korean War (1950-1953) that America first went
up against Russian jet-fighters. The jet-fighters would dive down and then
climb back up, and U.S. Pilots called them Yo-Yo attacks.

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Never heard of Yo-Yo attacks. There are aerial combat maneuvers called high and low yo-yo, respectively.

The Soviet MiG-15bis was designed for intercepting B-29 bombers, which meant high service ceiling, good climb rate (and good acceleration), good high altitude performance and superior armament. To add insult to injury, the bloody thing turned really well, too.

OTOH, the MiG-15's low altitude performance wasn't great, compared to the F-86 Sabre. The firing rate of the Soviet large caliber cannons was also not really suited to combat enemy fighters and gun convergence between the 23mm and the 37mm was off, I believe.


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[vid = jets over korea]
In this video, goto 17 minutes from the ending (or 43 minutes from the beginning ...)
"Zoom and Sun" is a colorful name, too.

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Grand Magus wrote:

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[vid = jets over korea]
In this video, goto 17 minutes from the ending (or 43 minutes from the beginning ...)
"Zoom and Sun" is a colorful name, too.

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No Hulu for me, I'm afraid.


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How about youtube? [ youtube = mig alley overview ]

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That worked, though I'm not much interested in the jet age, to be honest.

I wonder, shouldn't it be "Sun & Zoom", following that description?


According to eyewitness accounts the first engagement of the Korean War
occurred entirely below 1,000 feet (June 1950). Patrolling Twin-Mustang
F-82As intercepted an inbound flight of Yak-9 fighter-bombers flying low over
Kimpo.
Both groups were prop planes. Three of the Yak-9s were downed.


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"Immelman Turn"
A dogfighting tactic invented in WW1 by Max Immelmann. Immelmann was a
German fighter pilot credited with a dozen or so aerial victories. He was shot
down by a British tail-gunner in June 1916. [ pic ]

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Yeah, but that's not really an Immelmann turn. It's a half loop.

Originally, the Immelmann was a shallower version of a Wingover, with the expert version being the Hammerhead: After an attack on an enemy with less energy you'd pull up until your plane almost stalled, then used rudder to reverse direction, ideally going in for another attack. The enemy cannot follow you; if he does, he will stall sooner than you and therefore be unable to evade your attack.


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Yay, you're thinking of >this< for underpowered planes. It's still relevant.

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Well, yes. I don't know how the misappropriation of the Immelmann name came about, but it irks me. There is barely any skill involved in doing a half loop. You just have to know when you got the energy for it.

The Wingover variants actually are difficult to pull off.


"Split-S"
One can think of this as the opposite of the Immelmann. You roll inverted
and dive in a loop until you’re going the opposite direction, at a lower altitude.
You really don’t want to do this in a dogfight unless you’re diving away and running.
The Split-S is best used to attack lower-flying enemy going the opposite direction.
(Like the Mig-15s did against the F-86s in the video above.) [pic]


Fabius Maximus wrote:

Well, yes. I don't know how the misappropriation of the Immelmann name came about, but it irks me. There is barely any skill involved in doing a half loop. You just have to know when you got the energy for it.

The Wingover variants actually are difficult to pull off.

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Ya know, I've wondered this exact question. Over time, I just got used to Immelmann
being used for any "exchange of speed for altitude with a direction change." [pic]
(But not a Chandelle.)

I wonder who would actually know the history of the terminology?

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Edit: the very bottom of this page is intriguing.

Liberty's Edge

The Immelman Turn and Split S are acrobatic maneuvers more than air combat ones. The difficulty in them is that all movement has to occur in a single plain, the roll has to be precise and precisely timed, and the loops go from level flight to level flight without over looping.

In air combat they are pretty much never used except when breaking off when the other side doesn't have a good position to maneuver for an attack in the first place.


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We can't speak of ACM without speaking of why we do it. And that is to
obtain a firing solution for our guns. Back in the day of McGuire (USA),
and Ohta (JAPAN), and Rall (GERMANY) planes had effective ranges out to
300-400 meters (multiply by 3.28 to get feet). Weapon types were rifle-
caliber light and medium machine-guns, and low to medium velocity 20mm cannon.
As WW2 progressed the >guns< get bigger.

The effective range of guns increased with the addition of high-velocity heavy-machine
guns along with what we now call modern cannons. Rotary Cannon and specialized
long-range heavy cannons could reach out beyond 750 meters in the Korean War.

Then, as jets appeared so did Missiles. After 1988, air-to-air missiles could be fired
at enemy beyond the visual range. Before then, from the Korean War onwards, there
were a variety of Radar-Homing and Infrared-Homing (heat seeking) missiles types.
I don't know anything about them.

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Edit: just found out the NATO brevity code for an air-to-air active radar homing missile launch
is Fox Three. I thought that was just a thing said in the movie 'Independence Day'.


Krensky wrote:
In air combat they are pretty much never used except when breaking off when the other side doesn't have a good position to maneuver for an attack in the first place.

Would that not depend on your and the enemy plane's respective flight characteristics?

Liberty's Edge

Obviously. The Immelman is pretty much just a display of piloting, but the split s is a very handy maneuver to break off an encounter before it really starts, trading altitude for speed and allowing a 180 degree course change. Even then its only really useful when that 180 course change is a good vector. Granted, these days its pretty common since radar and AWACS pushes encounter ranges so far out that surprise is more of a strategic thing than tactical.

Most of the time though you need another vector to evade and you will almost always need it for an attack since the defender will be maneuvering to deny you a shot.

It was much more useful in WWII and the early part of Korea when the Mk1 Eyeball was a pilot's sole sensor system.


There are three forms of pursuit: Lead, Pure, and Lag.
They are defined by the orientation of the attacking aircraft's
velocity vector -- ahead of, directly toward, or behind the target
aircraft, respectively.

A Lead Pursuit path is followed by positioning the aircraft's nose
ahead of the target. The purpose of lead pursuit is primarily to increase closure
on the target by use of geometry. Defense: Two possible defenses against
lead-pursuit depend upon the defender’s relative speed to the attacker.
If faster, the defender can straighten out the angle of attack and use his
speed to pull away from the attacker. If slower, the defender should turn
into the attack thus closing the distance quicker and making the attacker
fly past you - - however, it may not be possible to complete this option
before a guns or missile defense maneuver is required.

Pure Pursuit is when the attacker holds his nose directly on the target.
This also provides closure, unless the target is faster, or the angle of attack
is very small. You don’t close the distance as fast as with lead-pursuit,
but it makes your plane present a smaller frontal area as you sneak up
behind him.

In Lag Pursuit the attacker has his nose behind the target. This is useful
for slowing or stopping closure, and maintaining a desired separation
from the target. Using lag pursuit, a faster plane can keep position on
the rear of the enemy plane.

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Krensky wrote:
It was much more useful in WWII and the early part of Korea when the Mk1 Eyeball was a pilot's sole sensor system.

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Ha!

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Krensky wrote:
It was much more useful in WWII and the early part of Korea when the Mk1 Eyeball was a pilot's sole sensor system.

That's where I was coming from.

Re the different pursuit types: In the prop era, there was an additional reason for using them: visibility. Depending on the target's distance and position realative to you, your plane's engine would block line of sight when in lead pursuit. But it was necessary to line up deflection shots, especially if you caught the enemy inside his turn (which you ideally wanted to do, because he showed you the "broadside" of his plane, including the cockpit). So you had to lead you target while hoping that the enemy pilot didn't change direction or - much more aggreviating - altitude when out of sight.

Liberty's Edge

Or fly fancy (ie 'inverted').

And I realise I left some words off. A Split-S was more useful as an attack maneuver when everyone was using eyeballs. Even then, technically, it probably wasn't used all that much because if you're not on a reciprocal heading at the end it's not really a Spilt-S.

As for differing types of pursuit, there's also that most planes had a very, very small sweet spot for their guns (where they were set to converge). If you were too far outside the point where your guns converged your sight was useless and even if you hit you were still basically wasting ammo, which no fighter ever has much of. This continued to be the case until single mount rotary and revolver cannons replaced machine gun and cannon arrays.

Of course, they lead to their own challenges for a combat pilot since they devoured ammunition which became even more scarce as missiles replaced the cannon as a fighter's primary armament. Fun fact, the F/A-18E Super Hornet carries 578 rounds for it's M61A2 Vulcan cannon. The Vulcan has a rate of fire of 6,600 rounds a minute. This is roughly eight and three quarters of a second of ammunition. This is compensated for by burst limiting the cannon so fire can't really be flown into your enemy. A rotary cannon also takes a noticeable fraction of a second to spin up and begin firing. All of which, along with hitting a fast moving and maneuvering (in three dimensions) target from fast moving and maneuvering (also in three dimensions) platform a makes lining up an effective gun shot hard.


Krensky wrote:
As for differing types of pursuit, there's also that most planes had a very, very small sweet spot for their guns (where they were set to converge). If you were too far outside the point where your guns converged your sight was useless and even if you hit you were still basically wasting ammo, which no fighter ever has much of. ...

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This is a great topic – "Gunsights & Range".

In WW2, the P-51 used the 6-diamond sight, for example.
The pilot could twist a knob to dial in the correct Range for his guns.
He knew things where going well when the enemy plane filled the diamond circle.
[pic= 6 diamonds ]

The British, I think, had circle sights for estimating Range. [pic= circle sight ]

In WW1, they had an iron ring. And, you knew your Range was on when
the target “filled” the ring. If the target was too far away, it would
not fill up the sighting ring.

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Krensky wrote:
Of course, they lead to their own challenges for a combat pilot since they devoured ammunition which became even more scarce as missiles replaced the cannon as a fighter's primary armament. Fun fact, the F/A-18E Super Hornet carries 578 rounds for it's M61A2 Vulcan cannon. The Vulcan has a rate of fire of 6,600 rounds a minute. This is roughly eight and three quarters of a second of ammunition. This is compensated for by burst limiting the cannon so fire can't really be flown into your enemy. A rotary cannon also takes a noticeable fraction of a second to spin up and begin firing. All of which, along with hitting a fast moving and maneuvering (in three dimensions) target from fast moving and maneuvering (also in three dimensions) platform a makes lining up an effective gun shot hard.

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Oh, and I compute 578 rounds firing at 6600 rounds/minute = 5.25 seconds of ammo …
But, the point is taken, there is no room for slop.

I think Jets have Radar-Guided gun sights, but I've never seen one, so not sure.

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Watching a new video about Mig Alley [vid = disappeared ]


Fabius Maximus wrote:
Re the different pursuit types: In the prop era, there was an additional reason for using them: visibility. Depending on the target's distance and position realative to you, your plane's engine would block line of sight when in lead pursuit ...

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Yay, firing while turning would be a harder shot compared to more level flight.
I have to wonder if early pilots avoided firing while turning unless the
lower chance of hitting vs. ammo use vs. desperation of the situation
demanded it.

Did they try to document and keep that type of data back then? That is,
what maneuver the plane was in during a kill shot. Information like that
would more likely be passed on word-of-mouth from pilot to pilot rather
than taught in a lecture-style assembly. Over the decades, the general
knowledge of such statistics would fade away.

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Grand Magus wrote:
Fabius Maximus wrote:
Re the different pursuit types: In the prop era, there was an additional reason for using them: visibility. Depending on the target's distance and position realative to you, your plane's engine would block line of sight when in lead pursuit ...

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Yay, firing while turning would be a harder shot compared to more level flight.
I have to wonder if early pilots avoided firing while turning unless the
lower chance of hitting vs. ammo use vs. desperation of the situation
demanded it.

Did they try to document and keep that type of data back then? That is,
what maneuver the plane was in during a kill shot. Information like that
would more likely be passed on word-of-mouth from pilot to pilot rather
than taught in a lecture-style assembly. Over the decades, the general
knowledge of such statistics would fade away.

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I have no idea if they recorded that information. Also, confirming kills was really unreliable, because it frequently happened that a shot-up plane made it back to base or that a plane that still looked flight-capable after losing an engagement went down out of sight. The latter happened a lot in the Battle of Britain. British planes were outfitted with .303-caliber light machine guns. These things usually didn't stop German (or Italian) planes from fighting immediately, but damaged them enough that quite a few of them ended up in the drink much later.

As for lining up shots: you always wanted to approach a fighter from its six. You were way out of its firing arc and rearward visibility wasn't great in many WW II planes (the BF109 was especially bad in that respect, even if the thing blocking your view as an armor plate). But even rookies knew that. As a result, part of German air combat doctrine was "never fly more than 30 seconds in a straight and level line in a combat area". The allies had similar guidelines. More often than not, you'd catch an enemy fighter plane at an angle where a deflection shot was necessary to bring it down (the whole thing changed when engaging bombers; never approach a bomber from its six if you can avoid it).

That's not necessarily saying you'd engage in a turn fight. You needed to know your airplane's capabilities versus the attacker's plane and then decide how you wanted to continue. Most WW II planes were built with speed as their main defense in mind (with the exception of most British and Japanese aircraft). The FW-190 series for example could probably be outturned by any other single-engine plane during the war (though it had a very good roll rate, I believe, which helped a bit). It was very fast, however, and had a great dive speed, which meant pilots could dive away from engagements (provided they were out of the enemy's line of fire), then climb back up to a greater altitude and boom their opponents.


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Check this out. It is exactly what you are talking about, and the guy is
in a jet. [vid = mig kill ]

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A barrel roll is an ACM. The airplane looks like it's
flying around the inside wall of a cylider.

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Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Fabius Maximus wrote:

Well, yes. I don't know how the misappropriation of the Immelmann name came about, but it irks me. There is barely any skill involved in doing a half loop. You just have to know when you got the energy for it.

The Wingover variants actually are difficult to pull off.

Think of when the Immelmann was invented. When what you're flying is barely more than a kite with an underpowered engine bolted on the end of it, and you're shooting guns THROUGH a spinning propeller, it DID take a good deal of skill to pull it off the way you wanted it to come out.

Liberty's Edge

What Oberleutnant Max Immelmann is credited with inventing is basically what is called by modern acrobats a Hammerhead or Stall turn (ignoring that in ACM the requirements about plane of movement, exit altitude, etc don't apply).

The half-loop based acrobatic maneuver got called an Immelmann later for reasons that are unclear. It would not have been possible with the fighters that Oberleutnant Immelmann flew.


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Seriously. A *Roll* is not a *Barrel Roll*. [img= know the diff ]

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Also, I believe it was in Korea with the Sabres they hunted in groups of two, and employed the Scissors technique for mutual offense/defense. If a MiG got on either one of their sixes, when they rolled back over and "closed the scissors", the other Sabre would have a firing solution on the MiG.

Also, i believe the F-4 Phantom was made without a gun, with the US thinking that they would rely on the Sidewinder and Sparrow missiles to get kills. Little did they know that the early versions of the missiles were very unreliable, so they had to attatch gun pods so that the fighter wouldnt get owned in a dogfight, IIRC. (I think that was in Vietnam, so it wouldve been going up against MiG 17's and 21's I think)


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lorenlord wrote:

Also, I believe it was in Korea with the Sabres they hunted in groups of two, and employed the Scissors technique for mutual offense/defense. If a MiG got on either one of their sixes, when they rolled back over and "closed the scissors", the other Sabre would have a firing solution on the MiG.

I believe that tactic is called the "Thach Weave" or a variant thereof. It was developed by one John Thach during WWII, because the US Navy Wildcats were inferior to the Japanese Zeros. As the Japanese pilots rarely used group tactics, it proved a pretty effective defensive tactic.


Fabius Maximus wrote:
lorenlord wrote:

Also, I believe it was in Korea with the Sabres they hunted in groups of two, and employed the Scissors technique for mutual offense/defense. If a MiG got on either one of their sixes, when they rolled back over and "closed the scissors", the other Sabre would have a firing solution on the MiG.

I believe that tactic is called the "Thach Weave" or a variant thereof. It was developed by one John Thach during WWII, because the US Navy Wildcats were inferior to the Japanese Zeros. As the Japanese pilots rarely used group tactics, it proved a pretty effective defensive tactic.

I believe you are correct, sir.

Off-topic, if you like tabletop "beer-and-pretzel" type mini's games, i found a really fun dogfighting one for Star Wars called X-Wing. Really easy to learn, and it's fun. they have all of the iconic ships, plus they made up "aces" for the imperials, as well as the Millennium Falcon and Slave-1. it a real fun game with dogfighting strategies you can employ. I believe there's a Star Trek version as well. Just figured I'd pass it along to fellow enthusiasts.

Liberty's Edge

The missiles in Vietnam had a reputation as in unreliable, but a good bit of it was that the rules of engagement didn't allow them to be used properly. The vast majority of victories where missile kills, not guns. Even by the last gunfighter, the F-8U Crusader.


lorenlord wrote:
Off-topic, if you like tabletop "beer-and-pretzel" type mini's games, i found a really fun dogfighting one for Star Wars called X-Wing. Really easy to learn, and it's fun. they have all of the iconic ships, plus they made up "aces" for the imperials, as well as the Millennium Falcon and Slave-1. it a real fun game with dogfighting strategies you can employ. I believe there's a Star Trek version as well. Just figured I'd pass it along to fellow enthusiasts.

Off-topic, off-topic: A new DnD attack wing came out this week.


Krensky wrote:
The missiles in Vietnam had a reputation as in unreliable, but a good bit of it was that the rules of engagement didn't allow them to be used properly. The vast majority of victories where missile kills, not guns. Even by the last gunfighter, the F-8U Crusader.

1

Probably the best-known air-to-air missile of the Vietnam era was the
AIM-9 Sidewinder, which was used extensively by both the U.S. Air Force
and the U.S. Navy. Commonly referred to as a "heat-seeking" missile.

There was also the longer range, radar-guided missile called the AIM-7 Sparrow.
It was ok, but the on-board guidance algorithm was a Kalman Filter -- which isn't
really up to the task of high-speed killing.

Also, it didn't help matters the speed of electronic hardware back then was closer
to how fast a glacier moves in a year.

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Grand Magus wrote:

Chuck Yeager called it a High-G Yo Yo. Others now call it just a High Yo Yo.


CrAzY ¡¡ [ vid = WW1 Dogfigth & Battle Reenactment ]

Everything is so slow, and so personal.


I really like this model plane. [ url = buy me ]


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The advent of wing-mounted guns led to problems with bullet
dispersion. Guns spread along the wings left large holes in
the bullet pattern at some ranges.

"Point harmonization" aligned the outboard guns slightly towards the
aircraft center-line so bullets converged at about 700 to 800 ft. This
distance was considered optimum combat-range. The convergence formed a
maximum density point on the target, but led to wide bullet dispersion
at longer ranges. Thus, point harmonization was preferred by pilots with
the best marksmanship.

"Pattern harmonization" involved adjusting each gun individually slightly
up, down, left or right to form a uniform bullet pattern of a certain
diameter at the harmonization range. Although maximum lethal density was
not achieved in this manner, the average fighter pilot had a better
chance of getting hits.

The difference between these methods is like that between a shotgun and a rifle.


Very intersting info. Makes you wonder which harmonization the aces of that time had on their guns. Point Harmonization seems like it also wouldve been a less accurate way to snap fire in a turn.

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