Delta 6's Flight School: Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned:
What you can learn from my experiences

"If I hadn't talked to my instructor about what he'd learned in air combat I'd most likely be dead right now." New pilot, after his first kill

Learn, then teach

    I recently learned about just how lethal an aircraft can be in the right hands. I decided to get a Fw-190 D9 up and try for a BIG kill streak. It took 18 minutes to rack up 13 kills; a very impressive score by any measure. I did this against offline aircraft with Veteran difficulty level selected. I also expended all my ammo during this fight, but I got 13 kills with a rather small amount of it. Back in the Warbirds days (a few years ago) this was very common, especially flying offline against the drones. Now? I prefer the head-to-head arenas of Aces High. A drone is only as good as its programmer, while a living pilot can really give you a run for your money.
    The Fw-190D is a cross between an energy fighter and a turning fighter. It can hold up against every aircraft in the game during the initial stages of a tight turn, but works best when given a lot of altitude and speed. By getting in close, under 200 yards, and starting with the machine guns I was able to judge the deflection angle. Once my MG rounds were getting hits [literally a half-second after I opened fire] I added my cannon shells to the enemy aircraft and watched it explode.
    Doing this is far from easy for a novice pilot; you need to learn how to keep your aircraft at high speed, and you have to get in close. Most novice pilots will, almost every time, shoot from long range and expect an instant kill. This rarely happens. What you are certain to do is waste ammo, and without any ammunition to fight back with; you're a guaranteed kill for someone else. Or they'll suddenly reef the stick to get the aircraft into a very hard turn. Blowing all their speed and giving anyone a very easy target. Trim is also high important, and shouldn't be forgotten.
    As a general rule, don't open fire from long range using any weapon unless you're the tail gunner in a B-17 and you've got a dead 6 o'clock idiot coming in very slowly. Below is generally a good way to start out against someone who's a half-way willing target. Trying to get your first kill against a vet usually results in you being sent back to the tower. So try to find someone who will go easy on you for the first few go-rounds.

Always have an altitude advantage, if you don't then you'll end up dead. Energy fighters require a lot of altitude in order to gain speed and dive on an opponent. You don't need to park it at 40,000 feet, though. That's far too much altitude to be usefull. What will work is a medium altitude, say 11,000 to 18,000 feet. Higher aircraft will be rare, but you'll have the speed and maneuverability to deal with 'em as they come.

The fight starts with you higher than the enemy plane, preferably at least 1,000 feet. Reduce power to idle and dive in on him from your pearch, accounting for his maneuvering and his closure rate. Once you get in behind him pull up hard to bleed some of the excess speed that always builds up, and go to full power. Now you wait for him to close to under 300 yards, at which point you open fire with your machine guns. Cannons always have a small amount of ammo available, so you don't use them unless you're cheating by using unlimited ammo [which can't be done online]. Once you see hits on his aircraft from your MG rounds, wait a second or two then fire with your cannons as well. His aircraft will explode from the hail of ammo pounding him.

    That's how it can be done with every aircraft, except turn-fighters like the Spitfire or A6M Zero. If you choose to fly an energy fighter (Fw-190, P-47, etc...) then you HAVE to learn this form of air combat or you'll die from lack of speed. Twin-engined aircraft are always energy fighters, because they can't turn for crap. P-38's aren't half bad if you want to learn both sides of the coin. They don't turn horribly well, nor do they bank a load of speed. What they can do is switch between energy and turn fighting almost at will.
    Before I go too far, I'd better define a few things. Energy fighters are aircraft that don't turn too well, but will readily out-run almost everyone. The Me-262 is a prime example of an energy fighter. Want a short list of E-fighters? Okay: P-47, Fw-190, Bf-109, P-51, Mosquito, Yak-9, Bf-110, Me-262, Typhoon, Tempest, La-5, La-7. They use speed, altitude, and a whole load of firepower to their advantage. One thing that most tin-horns don't get is there are rules to flying an energy fighter. Numero Uno being "never get below 250mph indicated airspeed". Turning fighters are nimble little things that seem to maneuver forever. Early to mid-war Spitfires, and the Zero series, are perfect examples. An A6M2 can and will out-maneuver anything in the air, with a trio of problems. First, at high speeds the controls get very stiff. Second, low ammo load for the twin cannons. Third, comparitively slow top speed. Can you see what this spells out? No? I'll explain.

    In a fight against any other aircraft, the Zero will be at a disadvantage for two of the three problems listed above. Slow airspeed means they can't close range fast enough to make a quick kill. Add to this the fact that the controls really get stiff at high speeds and you're in for it. You have to make the enemy give you a good shot at them, or play dweeb and get into a turning fight. More often than not, you'll end up dead trying to play the speed game in one of these. A Spitfire IX is much better off both from a handling standpoint and a speed standpoint. Their controls don't stiffen that badly, and for the most part they can keep up with the faster folks.
    Roll rate is also important. You can use roll to scissor, change directions quickly, attack ground targets, and dodge enemy fire. Fly a Typhoon and you'll really appreciate the roll rate of a P-47 or Fw-190. Typhoons had a serious aileron problem that caused very sssslllloooowww rolls. Going up against another aircraft with superior roll rate can be daunting. In order to set up a very hard turn you have to roll. The faster you roll, the faster you can get out of the way. A Typhoon vs Fw-190D fight would probably be won by the 190. Blessed with the fastest roll rate out there, it can flick into a turn faster than you can blink.
    Think of the flick as this: You're in a slow flat turn and you want to switch direction. All you have to do is pull up a little harder and add a touch of roll. The aircraft will flick out in the other direction. A handy maneuver but a dangerous one, because it exploits the nasty dump-stall 190's were notorious for. If you do this without knowing what you've done you might just get into trouble without knowing it. A favorite saying of drill instructors goes "When you leave training, you know just enough to get your self into trouble." Nothing could be closer to the truth.

Stick forces are something most people know as "that plane hardly rolls at high speed" or "you can't turn the thing above 300mph, the elevator doesn't move". Bf-109's were famous for their stick-in-cement problem. A short stick throw combined with a bad aileron design meant the forces required to move the stick at high speed were terrible. The higher the force required to move the stick, the worse it maneuvers. Early to mid model Spits (up to the IX) have little trouble up to the 350mph range. Beyond this their ailerons stiffen up badly. How come? It's called compressibility. High speed airflow increases pressure on the control surfaces. As this pressure climbs, so does the force needed to move the stick. Zeros are equally famous for their lousy stick authority at moderate to high speeds.
While compressibility means a sloppy stick or sluggish maneuvers, cannons mean quick kills. Earlier I described how you can get kills pretty easily by firing machine guns first, then adding cannons in. It's not too hard to pull off at short range. Open fire with the machine guns, and when you see hits, open up with the cannons. Provided your plane has them anyway. I'd say around 2/3 of all fighter aircraft had cannons installed at one point or another. At longer distances you can't do this because the trajectory of machine gun bullets, and cannon rounds, is very different. Cannons shoot with a much flatter trajectory than most machine guns. As a result, if you're hitting with cannons your MG rounds will either fly high or low, depending on the range.

Tackling the enemy

    Like they say in real estate: all that matters is location, location, location. Hitting the enemy is good, but blowing off a wing is better. Damaging the other guy is purely a matter where your rounds land. Hit the engine and it'll probably sieze, while wing strikes knock off control surfaces. And eventually the whole wing will flutter away, given enough punishment. Tail feathers (elevator, rudder, vert and horizontal stabs) are another great target. Blow them off and the aircraft becomes a winged lawn dart, unable to stay level. Why is this? It's really simple, a wing makes lift by pulling the aircraft up. The horizontal stab, where the elevators are, pulls the tail down to keep it level. Remove that and the lift from the wing will cause the enemy plane to go haywire. With nothing to hold the ass-end down the nose will come up. Since the elevators are attached to the horizontal stab, the pilot can't push the nose over to level off.
    Knocking off an aileron slows down roll, while blasting flaps off can be lethal. Some aircraft, like the P-51, can use combat flaps to tighten a turn up. If one of these is shot off and he deploys flaps, they'll open asymetrically. Meaning one will come down, increasing lift on one wing, while the other is on its way to Momma Earth. Uneven lift means he'll start to roll uncontrolably until he retracts his flaps. Rudder damage is also pretty bad, because you can't correct for engine torque. Shooting off the vert stab, which the rudder is bolted to, makes the entire aircraft unstable. There's no way to keep the thing pointed in one direction because that fin is gone. Elevator damage isn't too bad, because you've got two of 'em. If only one gets shot off then you'll have problems maneuvering, but you can still keep it under control. Should both get nailed....you're screwed.
    Radiator, oil cooler, and fuel leaks always get ugly. The P-51 seems to lose the radiator pretty fast in combat, 109's usually end up with a perforated oil cooler. Either way it means the engine will sieze up in a few minutes. Fuel leaks can get nasty for two reasons: first, you lose range and might run out of gas if you've only got one tank. Second, wing tanks that leak mean you'll have to trim out the imbalance. A full fuel load in the wing tanks could be 200 pounds of weight, per wing! As you can imagine, having even 100 pounds in one wing, and none in the other makes for quite a problem. With bombers it gets better, but not by much.
    Not everyone flys fighters, some stick to blasting ground targets. For the most part, the damage and problems with it described above apply to bombers. Damaged or shot off ailerons mean a bomber's rate of roll will be almost nil. There's just too much weight for that lone aileron to counter all by itself. Elevator damage isn't as detrimental, because bombers never do tight maneuvering. The same goes for flaps. Rudder damage can either be a bad thing, or a minor hiccup. It depends on a few factors to go wrong before things really go down the crapper. Engines are something bombers have plenty of, and you should expect to have an engine or two shot out. It's very common to see a B-17 or a Lanc come home with an engine or two smoking.
    However, Buff drivers have to deal with a lot more shit than any other pilot. Ground fire, enemy fighters, and the odd rocket are always flying at the bombers. Bombers are a lot like aerial tanks: because they're big and can readily level ground targets, everyone goes after them. Yet because they have two or more engines, and are so stable, they're a lot more survivable. Engines can be lost, control surfaces shot away, gunners knocked out, and it'll still get you home. Unlike a fighter, where engine damage or a lost elevator means doom.

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