"I got lost 5 or 6 times before I finally found the group. There were so many planes up there, I almost joined an enemy flight because I couldn't see our guys." New pilot after a real hairy engagement. There are various ways to kill the enemy aircraft you'll be hunting. But here are tips on how NOT to get yourself killed in the process. When flying all of the aircraft just remember they aren't modern jets. None of the aircraft in the game can or will climb vertically for ever, nor will they complete snap rolls while diving at Mach One. These are aircraft from an age where warfare was up close and personal. If you want examples of this watch the movie The Memphis Belle. You will see just how close things really were up there. Sometimes a B-17 would have the honor of watching a Bf-109 make a head on pass at them. More often than not, the B-17 would go down in flames. Buff hunting
Location: The location the bombers are coming from must be found. Usually this is reported by scout planes and radar. Once you know where they're coming from you might be able to figure out their target. Intercept: You should have a few groups of fighters already up and roaming the area. When the location of the bombers is found out you can send every available aircraft to intercept. If you plan it right another of your flight groups will join the fight about every 3 minutes or so. Assault: Remind your aircraft to attack head on, and to aim for the engines. You aren't looking for a great kill score you just want to nail the engines and get them out of action. The priority targets are the escort aircraft, not the bombers. The bombers are for the second wave waiting over the target. The first thing to do is get
rid of the escort fighters, that way they can't interfere with the second group. When the bombers make the initial turn tell your second wave aircraft to begin the attack. If some of the bombers are taken out by your first wave don't worry. All aircraft in front of you are hostiles, and it turns into the European version of the Mariana's Turkey Shoot rather quickly.
Tips, tricks, and other things
Music can help you relax, it can soothe the savage beast, and it can turn a nice flight into your own personal war movie. I've listened to Bon Jovi, Guns 'n' Roses, Metallica, Motley Crew, AC/DC, and even Garth Brooks while flying. What music you might choose depends on your mood. A nice fast song will set the tone for a typical dog fight, while bomber pilots might listen to something slower. If you've got a CD burner, or know someone who does, then you're set. Burn a few CD's of fast music to fly with. Joe Satriani being a personal fave. When everything is just right it seems as if you know what the aircraft will do next, and you become a part of it. It's an odd feeling when it happens, and if you ride it out you'll wonder after the fight ends "How the hell did I pull THAT off?". Gunnery
A trick
Some dirty maneuvers
Some dirty tricks Stand-off tactics
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Delta6
Going after enemy bombers is tricky. Since they all have defensive guns, and take a lot of hits to bring down, attacking them isn't easy. Some of them like the G4M and the Ju-88 are fairly easy targets, and both don't require a flak gun to bring them down. The G4M will burst into flames with just a little effort on your part. While the Ju-88 can take some pounding, more often than not it's the loss of an engine that sends them to their grave. The worst targets of all are the B-17s. They have plenty of guns to defend themselves, take forever to bring down, and worst of all; they travel in groups of 4 or more.
Some pilots believe that if you approach from the 6 o'clock low on a B-17 it can't get you. Dead wrong. The ball turret is mounted on the belly, just behind the bomb bay. This gives that gunner a full 360º cone of fire. And the tail gunner can shoot at anyone coming from that direction. There is safe no place to approach a B-17 from, they have guns facing above, below, off to both sides, and directly in front of them. About the only nearly safe place to approach a B-17 from is head on. This gives the guns, and you, less time to work due to the high closure rate. If your shot is good enough it will hit an engine.
If bombers have a weak point it is the engines. When an engine is shot out it creates drag, and pulls the aircraft to that side. If you want to get this experience then start flying a B-17 at 15,000 feet and cut an engine. After a while you get the point. If you didn't then cut engines 1 and 2 (both engines on the left side of the aircraft). The other 2 will remain at full throttle and pull you off to the left. Buff hunting is not a thankless job, as most pilots will give you quite a bit of respect if you do get one.
Since bombers are large targets some things have to happen before they strike. First off, most of the flak sites will have to be taken out before the strike. This happens (in Warbirds) just in front of the strike, usually about 20 minutes ahead of them. It keeps the bombers safe from flak and gives them a better chance of hitting their target. Fighter escorts will sometimes run just ahead of the bombers to pick off enemy aircraft. About the only thing you can do is watch the flak sites. If some of them go quiet suddenly, then a strike is about to happen. Flak hunters are always out in force, shooting up stand alone flak sites. These sites aren't near any fields, but they are in the way of something. So if flak hunters are spotted then get 'em ASAP.
Bombers have one other weak point; the bomb run. About 10 minutes before the actual strike hits they will make their final turn. This puts them on a base course which they have to hold. Any turns will throw off the bombs, so the bombers will have to stay perfectly still for just over 13 minutes. That gives you 13 minutes to wreak havoc on the bomber formation before they make another turn. Bombers never fly a straight course to and from the target. The flight is made in sections, most often 3 or 4 turns are made before the initial turn is made. The initial turn is made just before the strike, and is almost always a small one. Just a minor correction in the flight path 10 minutes before the bombs are released.
Your best time to strike is after the initial turn, when the bombers have to hold course. If the first wave of your fighters did their job, some (hopefully most) of the enemy escort fighters were destroyed. Here's what should happen when going Buff hunting:
Another way to strike a bomber is to slash across the aircraft from the 2 or 10 o'clock high position. You have to set-up this just right, or the angle will be far too poor and you'll have to pull out; exposing yourself to enemy fire. Once you get your aircraft in position dive in on the bomber and aim for the cockpit, but don't fire until you
get to 400 yards. Once you shoot up the cockpit allow your guns to move onto the engines on the opposite wing, don't stop firing just let the aircraft drift onto the engines.
Once your pass has been completed use your speed to climb a little and pull out on a similar course to the bombers. Keep them in sight, and wait until you get back into their 2 or 10 o'clock position. Once there commence another attack; this time you're attacking from the other side of the aircraft so aim for the engines or cockpit.
I do some strange things to stay alive. From listening to music to flying some aircraft in a rather strange manner. All I know is that it works, and it's kept me alive.
A friend of mine calls it getting in "The Zone", others call it the Zen of combat flying, and the official Psycologist term for it is "Flow". All I know is that it's a weird feeling when it first happens, and after you're done you sit and wonder how you did it. Getting to that point is more relaxation than anything else, most often it happens
when you aren't concentrated on it. And if you notice it when you're in that state of mind, it almost seems to disappear. About the only thing I do to get in that kind of mind-set is relax and ignore everything but the cockpit. Ignore the occasional grinding the hard drve makes, the squeak of the joystick, the tell-tale click of the keys on the keyboard, everything.
Nothing is there except you and the game. Next time you fly have someone sit and watch you, but pay no attention to them and block them from your mind just like everything else. When you're in that mind-set they will see you flinch when you take hits, you'll turn your head at odd angles to match those of the cockpit, and do other strange things. No matter how many times I play the original X-Wing, I still duck when I'm flying through the obstacle course. I don't know why, I just do. I get in that mind-set quite easily, and when I do everything else becomes a large blur. I don't remember what song I was listening to, nor do I remember how many aircraft I shot down. But to hear someone else recount what I did, both physically and in the game, makes me a bit embarrassed. "I didn't cock my head like that when I was flying", "What? I've never bobbed my head when I get close to another aircraft", "You're telling me that I ducked and twisted my body to the left when that Zero shot past? Yea right".
When things like that happen you don't remember doing the physical things, you just remember that you were flying a Bf-109 G6 and that you had your rudder shot off by some P-51 who didn't know that there was more than one target. It's happened to me, I even caught myself on video doing it. And believe me I erased the tape just after I watched
it. I couldn't believe that I was making all these strange noises and body movements. But they happen when you brain hits that little "block out" switch. Everything seems to vanish, and you're really there flying the aircraft shooting down other planes.
There are some small tricks to flying an aircraft in combat, and every single pilot will tell you that they're a learned skill. That's B.S. and I know it. I will tell you a few small secrets about gunnery, flying, and cheating. Gunnery is a learned skill, but I can help you along with it. When you're shooting at an enemy plane, you're not
shooting at him, you're shooting where he will be in the next second. It's called leading a target, and you HAVE to learn it to get your first kill. Bullets are't magic, but they do travel fast enough to make you think. When you're shooting at a guy with .50 caliber machine guns at 600 yards you have to lead him by about an inch on the screen. And you have to shoot where he'll be in
¼ of a second. You have to literally be a psychic to find out where he's going to be so you can shoot the crap out of him.
Cannons travel at a slower speed, and require more lead time. For those reasons most pilots will not fire at ANYTHING with a cannon unless it's closer than 200 yards. I can tell you right now that I've nailed a Zero on more than one occasion at ranges between 600 and 900 yards with both 20mm and 30mm cannons. It's far from easy, and not
everyone can be an aerial sniper, but it's fun when you talk to him after shooting him in the butt from 800 yards away and he asks "How the hell did you get me when I was that far out in front?".
It requires a lot of patience, more than most people have, and it requires you to have a soft hand on the stick. When you are jerking on the stick to get in behind someone you're using a stiff hand, sniping at long range requires a slow steady aim. Don't hit the trigger and throw the stick all over the place, you'll never hit anything. What you
want to do is take a nice slow aim and squeeze off a short burst. Sometimes you get lucky, other times you miss. It happens to everybody.
When you fly something like an Fw-190 A8 and you pull back too sharply the wings wobble. Everyone knows it, but did you know that you can turn tighter if you add a touch of rudder? It's true. I can turn at the same rate as a Hurricane 2-C in a Bf-109 K4 at only 270kmh. How? That's simple; I use the rudder. When you pull back to hard on the
stick the wings wobble, or dip, to one side. When you're wing dips to the right add left rudder and keep turning. You'll stay in a turn a lot longer than most people would believe, and you'll stall the aircraft in the turn. I'm not talking about yet another type of wing wobble, I'm talking about a perfectly normal stall when the aircraft just drops. Thankfully this will only happen when you stay in a turn like this for too long. Not many pilots know about this, and even fewer know that you can make an Fw-190 D9 turn tighter than a Spitfire at 340kmh.
Several pilots use little habbits in their flying style to cheat. Such as the infamous 180º miracle turn, the pop-up, and other dirty little tricks. The 180º miracle turn is simply a turn that covers 180º without putting any more distance than 400 yards between you and him. Some who fly in Warbirds call it cheating, thanks to the cookie-cutter flight model. The pop-up is a bit more on the weird side. A pilot flying head on at you from your 12 o'clock high can roll inverted and then pull up [down] and drop behind and below you, by continuing to pull up he can come in behind you. Yet another goof in the flight model, and yet another maneuver that some call cheating.
You can use both to your advantage, by following a few simple steps. If they try the 180º miracle turn on you, pull and hold the aircraft straight up. They used up a lot of speed when they turned, while you were still holding level. When they come around they're trading speed for turning, that's why you trade speed for altitude. If they try to climb after you they'll stall their aircraft, because they turned sharply and burned a lot of speed to get behind you. All you have to do is let the aircraft stall and drop on top of them, since they have to dive underneath you to gain airspeed. When they drop into a stall just kick the rudder hard and dive straight down on top of them, guns blazing. Essentially, a Rope-a-Dope.
As for the pop-up, all you have to do is loop away from them. A pop-up is when someone is following you and pulls up slightly before diving again to get a bit more speed. Since you're running straight you didn't burn any speed. So you still have your airspeed, which is why you pull a loop. When you pull a loop you will loop in behind them,
and get them at their own game. It makes some pilots angry when another pilot can stay behind them after they pulled every trick they know. That's why you never really memorize a maneuver, or stick to a set of maneuvers. Always try something new, and never give the enemy a fair fight.
Ever wish you could stop those dang-blasted quake-birds? You can, and you can do it a LOT easier than you think. Any bomb leaves a nice crater, and craters make leaving an airfield impossible if it lands on the runway and taxi-ways. So here's what to do. Get a few pilots together and fly B-25 Hotel models loaded up with those nasty para-frags. One of you goes down the runway dropping those bombs at good intervals so they don't bunch up. The other two pilots will head down the taxi-ways and bomb them in the same manner.
No more quake-birds flying from that field, and the runway can't re-build itself. It effectively closes that field until some nut drops some bombs near it and the craters dissappear. If you want to really make things hell on anyone, just carpet bomb the entire field using B-17 Golf models. Having 48 craters on the runway and taxi-ways makes thing a living hell for any pilot.
Edmund "Paule" Rossman developed stand-off tactics due to an arm injury. This injury stopped him from hauling his aircraft around like most pilots do, so he taught himself to look for an oppotunity to strike. He would stand-off at a good distance from the actual fight, looking for a good shot. His method to combat was to shoot and kill at long range, mainly to avoid a turning fight.
The Bf-109 can't turn as well as most aircraft anyway, and coupled with Rossman's injury he could barely accomplish a normal bank. A hard break would be too painful. So this makes one think; Rossman had a total of 93 kills, about half of which were done while he was shooting at long range. By avoiding a close range fight, he did several things. He didn't bleed energy because he didn't turn hard, he developed a long range eye for long distance shots, and he kept as much distance as possible between himself and the enemy plane.
By doing this he was able to anticipate the enemy pilots next move, and if he guessed wrong there was enough distance between them to allow him to not only correct, but also maneuver to match the enemy plane. Everyone knows that the guns on a Bf-109 work the best up close, and just about every pilot that flies it for a long time learns this. By using distance you can carefully place your shots, out-maneuver the enemy aircraft, and kill him without exposing yourself to a hard reversal.