"vector rolls"? in T&B combat

[Saintaw]

Sigh, me stipido, not understand.....need to see , Will shout in TA  

[bloom25]

I use this move ALL the time.  It's good when fighting something like a spit in a plane with slightly inferior turning ability, like the 205.  Usually I'll come in from above on the spit, and end up on about his 8 o'clock.  Because I have more E, I cannot possibly hope to turn with the spit, so I roll away from him, pull up for a little separation, then roll back in on his 6.  (Usually you are inverted when you complete the manuver.)  It's great if the other plane is at a slight E disadvantage, as it allows you to keep an altitude and speed advantage on the bogey.

I'm pretty sure this is what you have been describing.  It kind of looks like a lazy barrel roll on film.  E fighters are great for this as you turn mainly in the vertical while the other guy is flat turning.  109g10 and the c205 are great for this because of their great climbing ability.  Roll rate isn't too important, as you really don't roll that fast when doing this.



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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[Lephturn]

From your description bloom that is a kind of aborted barrell roll attack.  You come in from higher at a shallow angle from 7-8 or 4-5 and start to turn toward the bogey.  As the bogey breaks hard, you pull up shallow for vertical separation and check that the bogey is continuing his turn.(Or not... you can't always check if you want to do it fast enough, sometimes you have to do it blind.)  The way bloom mentions it he simply rolls back and turns it into a high yoyo, which is better than a flat turn.  To do it properly is harder, but works better.  

So you've pulled toward the bogey, pulled up say 30 degrees and checked the bogey.  You see the bogey continueing his flat break turn so you know you can do the rest of the attack.  Either that, our you gamble that he's going to do it, and pull it off blind, not the best method but sometimes works best.    Next comes the weird part... you roll away from his direction of break and start a downward spiral in the other direction using roll in the verticle to point your lift vector at where the bogey will end up after his break turn.  Then you just pull out of the dive gently and if you timed it right, you drop right on his six or even ahead of him for a snapshot.  It's one of those things that's hard to describe, not intuitive, and hard to do.  When it works though, it's magic, and it works more than you would expect.    When you start doing it right you'll get the "You cheater, you out-turned my Spitball in that Hog!" calls a bunch. That's when you'll know you did it right. <G>

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
 http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/


"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
 - Steve Earl

[bloom25]

I think you're right Lephturn, that's a better description of what I'm doing.  Usually I use it when attacking a n1k or spit in a plane that doesn't turn as well.  In this case you usually have a huge E advantage, and you want to keep the fight close without losing your E advantage too quickly.  (All I know is I can't do anything right this tour...    Have you ever had nights where everytime you shot down a plane, you ran into his burning fuselage.  Then he gets the kill on you.  LOL I had it happen 3 times in one night.)



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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[leonid]

I used to use this maneuver a long time ago in the Fw 190 in WB.  While roll rate may not be crucial in bloom's case when energy is oozing out of the rivets of your aircraft it can be more crucial when E levels are more equal.  The reason is that one may not have the luxury of using the vertical against a hard turning opponent which holds equivalent energy.  A quick LDR may give you that nice 60 degree snapshot, and only a fast rolling aircraft will get you there in sufficient time.

The funny thing is I haven't used LDRs in the la5, which has a very nice roll rate especially around 300ias.  Maybe this will be my meal ticket for all those spits, 205s and nikis!  Thanks for joggling this old, abused brain  

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leonid, Komandir
5 GIAP VVS RKKA

"Our cause is just.  The enemy will be crushed.  Victory will be ours."

[This message has been edited by leonid (edited 05-11-2000).]

[Lephturn]

Very interesting links.  

This is I think what was initially being discussed.

This one:
 

Is not what I mean by a barrell roll attack.  It is simply a modified version of Johnson's outside roll move with some verticle thrown in.  Basically he is rolling out to get angle without closing on the bogey too fast and overshooting.  Notice in the description he mentions the 109 pilot chopping throttle.  This is a good counter to a better turning plane that goes for the defensive spiral, as long as you get the shot at him early enough.



------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
 http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/


"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
 - Steve Earl

[Macchi]

Hi,
perhaps you should look at this short video:
 www.lemsko.de/video/lagroll.rm


Macchi


------------------
 www.lemsko.de
ACM Training videos

[Lephturn]

Couldn't open that site, I'll try later.

In the mean time, I've been talking to some of my squad mates.  Among The Flying Pigs lurk some great ACM masters such as Worr and Eagl.  Eagl is a USAF pilot who has flown F-15's as in currently working on becoming an instructor.  He emailed me what is easily the best description I have ever seen.  What follows is reprinted with permission, and email from Sean "Eagl" Long.
----- Begin Quote --------
Those diagrams are really showing what we call "offset turning circles".
Rolling in the opposite direction is simply creating some turning room for
the pursuing fighter, offsetting the turn circles so that the circles will
meet again on the far side of the circle.

A better method of offsetting the circles would be to pull up and maybe
slightly away, using the vertical to gain your turning room, then quickly
turning back in the direction of the bandit.  The turn circles are now
offset, and the result will be a snapshot opportunity just like the diagrams
show at the end of the depicted manuvers.  The beauty of rolling the wrong
way is that it ensures that the fighter doesn't delay turning back in too
long, but a little discipline can fix that problem, and pulling up and
slightly away (but not too long!) becomes a better way of getting the
required offset.

To see what I'm talking about, imagine 2 hula hoops, one 3 ft in diameter
and one 4 ft in diameter.  Hold them both with one hand.  You can see that
the hoops touch in one place (where you're holding them), but after that the
3 ft hoop is inside the 4 ft hoop the entire rest of the circle.  This
illustrates the turn circles of 2 unequal performing planes that start at
the same spot.  Now take the 4 ft hoop, and move it in one direction or
another so the hoops cross in 2 places (like the overlapping Olympic games
symbol).  This illustrates "offset turning circles".  Now with the 2 hoops
offset like that, imagine 2 planes racing around the hoops.  At one spot
around the hoop (the crossing right after the area where the 4 ft hoop is
OUTSIDE the 3 ft hoop), the 4 ft circle plane will have a snapshot at the 3
ft circle plane, and at the other crossing spot around the hoop the 3 ft
circle plane will have a shot on the 4 foot hoop plane.

The trick for the 4 ft circle plane is to get enough turning room at the
spot where the 4 ft hoop is entirely outside the 3 ft hoop so he can turn in
cutting inside the 3 ft hoop's circle, and get a killing shot.  How you get
that turning room is up to you, and the more room you get the higher angle
the snapshot will be.  The diagrams and WWII tactics seem to show that the
offset is gained by rolling first away from the bandit then rolling back in,
but the same thing can be done without losing sight of the bandit by rolling
only slightly away and climbing, gaining you both lateral and vertical
turning room.  This would be a classic high yo-yo btw, and the manuver might
only take a second or two.  If you also have vertical turning room in
additional to lateral turning room, it will do a few things for you.  First,
since you're going down hill, you will sustain energy better and your 4 ft
hoop will shrink to a 3.69 ft hoop    Second, your turn circles will cross
or align for a slightly longer time since you're turning harder, and you'll
get a longer snapshot.  Third, since you moved up, there's an increased
chance of your stupid flat-turning opponent losing sight of you.

Note that at the first time the circles cross (after the spot where the 4 ft
hoop is outside the 3 ft hoop) the 3 ft circle plane has turned more angles
than the 4 ft circle plane.  The more offset you have, the greater that
angle difference becomes and the briefer the snapshot opportunity will be.
Taken to the extreme, if the offset is too much, you will meet head on.
More on that later.

Offset turning circles work regardless of the plane of motion of the bandit.
For example, if you imagine the hoops standing up on edge, you're seeing
offset turn circles in a looping fight, and the only difference there is
that the hoops should be egg shaped (fat at the bottom, skinny at the top)
because of gravity effects.  It's even more interesting in a looping fight,
because you can offset vertically (if you're bounced) or laterally (if you
engage a looping bandit from co-alt setup) and the amount of time spent
vulnerable or in firing position will change depending on the setup.

The last trick to an offset circle fight, is for the inferior turning
fighter to give it up after his snapshot.  With an offset turn circle, the
inferior fighter might THINK he's winning the turn fight, when instead he is
simply reaping the benefits of the offset circles.  Even one half of a
circle later, he may be defensive as the circles cross again.  The solution
is after the initial snapshot, the inferior turning plane must do something
to reposition his fighter, either changing the plane of his manuvering or
extending for another entry.  If he has kept his speed up, he could roll
wings level and pull up into a loop.  If he has sufficiently scared the
bandit, he'll again suprise him as he comes back down the other side of the
loop.  If the bandit has any SA and remains undamaged however, the bandit
can reverse his turn, go vertical with the fighter and nail him at the top,
or transition to a spiral climb which will "stuff" the fighter at the top
without enough offset turning room.  Remember the bandit was taking fire in
the first place because he gave the fighter turning room, so if he's smart
he'll do whatever he can to take away that turning room by not letting the
fighter get far enough away to turn in for a shot.

The extreme of an offset turn circle fight is a classic head-on merge 2
circle fight, where the fighter and bandit make an HO, both make left or
right turns, then HO again.  In that case, the circles are offset so far
that there is only one spot where the circles cross, at the HO merge.  This
is a losing proposition for the inferior turning fighter, because eventually
the superior turning bandit will get turned around fast enough that he can
shoot, while the fighter can't get his nose around in time for even a
minimal snapshot.  Use of the vertical at the initial merge can help the
fighter if the bandit makes a flat turn, but if both fighter and bandit go
vertical (making it a single circle vertical fight), the superior turning
bandit will get his first shot before the fighter tops out of his loop.

Doh... Is that long enough?  

eagl

/('o')\

----- End Quote -------

Wow, that certainly simplifies things and puts it all in perspective.    Having USAF (soon to be) instructors lurking in the community is a big plus. <G>  I'll be turning this into an article for my web site as well, so this great piece of training info will not be lost!

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
 http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/


"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
 - Steve Earl

[eagl]

A footnote - I forgot to let everyone know, but I passed my last instructor checkride on 28 April.  I've been working as a line instructor since then.  I haven't really scared by my students yet, but it's only a matter of time    Fortunately the guys I'm teaching right now are almost done with the T-37 phase, so they're not bad at all.  In a month or two, I'll be teaching the brand new students and it will be a whole different ballgame.




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eagl <squealing Pigs> BYA
Oink Oink To War!!!

[humble]

Wow,

Thanx everyone for the input, obviously this is being used alot more than I recognized. only thing I can think is since I never flat turn (well almost never ) is that I dont see it in the horizontal. I'm very certain from eagls description i've seen it more than once in the vertical...I am trying to envision it's use in the classic "out of plane" merges where both planes are oblique ( hope thats stated correctly ) got 1 more trip then i'll be back up, hope to work on this some...thanx again all

[Spoons - SimHQ]

Congrats, Sean!



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John Sponauer
Senior Editor, SimHQ.com
jsponauer@simhq.com

[leonid]

Great posts, Lephturn & eagl!


------------------
 
leonid, Komandir
5 GIAP VVS RKKA

"Our cause is just.  The enemy will be crushed.  Victory will be ours."

[This message has been edited by leonid (edited 05-12-2000).]

[Andy Bush]

Sean

Welcome to Squeaks!

My first class was with guys who had just finished their first contact check. My next class was my first pre-solo class. I can still remember my first student's solo. As circumstance would have it, he and I would meet again some 15 years later...he as an Aggressor pilot and me in my Hog. My dimming memory fails to account how it turned out!

I'm still amazed that the 37s you are flying are the same ones I flew as a student...with some very nice upgrades since. At least you don't have to put your gear down in the GCA pattern to improve your chances of being picked up. I know...what's a GCA pattern, right??!!

I always remember the 37 as an easy airplane to fly and a difficult airplane to fly well. One of these days, you'll come down initial and announce to your stud that today is a XX% day. You'll set that RPM in the pitch and won't touch the throttles again until you pull them to idle in the flare...and you'll have the textbook numbers all the way around the downwing and the final turn. He'll be amazed!

Best,

Andy

[Andy Bush]

Back on the subject of the 'barrel roll attack'....

BFM terminology tends to change over the years...sometimes it gets confusing when two people use the same term but are talking about two different things.

In BFM, you are basically trying to solve two problems...fuselage alignment and closure. All of the individual maneuvers are meant to handle one or both of those problems.

One of the easiest to categorize is the Low Yo-Yo. This maneuver is primarily designed to increase relative closure, both as a function of increased airspeed and (if the bandit is turning) lead pursuit arcing. This maneuver used to be referred to as an 'acceleration' maneuver.

When we start dealing with angular problems, the situation gets murkier. For one thing, terminology has changed over the years. As a result, definitions tend to be the source of debate (that's the nice way of saying argument).

Way back when...we used to teach something called 'rolling maneuvers'. These came in a number of forms...vector rolls, barrel rolls, lag rolls, quarter planes, high yo-yos, high G rolls under (and over)...these were used to solve aspect and closure problems. In some cases they were interchangeable; some were offensive, others primarily defensive.

Having said that, the crux of the problem as outlined in the original post is fairly simple...the attacker's turn radius exceeds the defenders. One thing that never changes is Physics...turn radius is a function of true airspeed and radial G. No amount of smoke and mirrors can change that!

The attacker can do one or both of two things. One...he can improve his own turning performance by possibly slowing down if he was above corner velocity, or improving his plane's ability to produce lift by lowering flaps, or two...he can maneuver out of plane. It's this second choice we are talking about.

First of all, all out of plane maneuvering is, by definition, lag pursuit. One way of looking at lag pursuit is 'slowing things down now so I can speed them up later'. While lag maneuvers may be used to control closure, they usually deal with an attempt to gain additional turning room...either outside the bandit's turn or above/below the plane of his turn.

In the example given, the details are unclear as to what the P-47 pilot was actually doing. I suspect it was one of two things.

He may have been going for additional lateral offset while still behind and in the plane of the bandit. This extra offset then becomes added turning room as the bandit starts his break. The P-47 pilot then drives forward towards the extended deep six of the turning bandit. Approaching it, he then starts his own hard turn.

Or...he could be describing a rolling maneuver that looks like a combination of high yo-yo and barrel roll. The yo-yo gets him up and out of plane (lag pursuit) and the unloaded roll allows him to preserve angle off in the climb. The result is a nose high position still in the bandit's six with the lift vector now oriented back into the bandit's turn (lead pursuit. From this position, the P-47 driver slices down into a guns track position.

One thing for certain...there is no in- plane, 'forward stick', rolling maneuver that can change the physics of the situation. In-plane, constant speed, turn radius reduction can only be achieved one way...lots of G!! I doubt that WW2 pilots were maneuvering with negative g loads as high as the description implies...neither the pilot nor the a/c was stressed for it!

Anyway...a lot of this is pretty advanced for our sim flying. Some of the real world maneuvers are not possible to fly properly in our sims...for two reasons. One, the flight model is incorrect (rudder effectiveness at high AOA is a good example), and two, our viewing systems do not give us the 3D SA needed to fly the maneuver.

I think you have two choices...either yo-yo off to get some vertical turning room, or, if able, pull additional lead for a snap shot.

Andy

Ya'll stop by the Air Combat Corner at www.simhq.com.  I've got a number of articles there that try to explain BFM in wys that you can use in your sim.

[humble]

thanx for the insight Andy, i first read about the "vector roll" in a couple of excerpt's from WW2 "memoirs" years ago...I was wondering where i saw it recently andjust found it again...a buddy of mine was out here for some golf R&R and i indroduced him to flight sims...he wont forgive me for years  ...anyway he like most newbies has a long road ahead..and he lobbied for all my boxed stuff..i never touch em anymore..low and behold the "vector roll" is in the janes tactics part..page 67 or such.

My confusion in the orginal post alludes to your post...I was/am still somewhat confused with regard to the out of plane element (not clearly described anywhere) vs the hi speed roll of the 47...johnston was quite clear that he was using the roll rate to defeat opposing planes with surerior cornering but inferior rollrate...obviously this involves out of plane lag manuvers (least from my semi-novice perspective).

The exact quote is as follows...as the aircraft your tailing starts his tight turn,roll away from the direction of the turn and then throw the stick forward...The end result is that you swing underor over your opponent and push the nose to the completion point of his turn.

What seems missing in this simplistic explanation is the initial positioning...both on the x and y axis with regard to con...and the AoA at initiation of the move ...obviously lot of components in the setup.

thanx again for all the help with this ...i'd love a clip if anyone happens to pop one of these of in the arena.