ok....imagine you and your wingman(you DO always fly with a wingman, right?) are cruising along at 18,000 ft. You happen to see an aircraft at your 2 low.......about 3 miles out, on a heading that'll take him directly past your 6. You both turn to intercept his flightpath, noticing that he's approx. 8,000 below you. Now a 1/2 mile out you lower your nose as you continue your turn into him. He has only 2 options........dive away, hoping to outrun you(although you're already near VNE), or attempt to climb directly at you making himself a harder target. Or assume in this instance, he doesn't even see you till you're almost in firing range. As you're about to squeeze the trigger, he sees you, and breaks right hard, causing you to overshoot. No problem though....you gently pull back on the stick, raising your nose to about 45 deg above the horizon. Your intended victem sees this and tries to follow you. Now comes the problem. YOU were doing....ooo..sayyy.....400 KIAS when you puled up. Victem was cruising at 295 KIAS. You have TONS of stored energy from the dive in the form of your speed. Victem has nothing...he firewalls the throttle trying to keep with you, but can't. When he stalls trying to maintain the climb, either you or your wingman now have an easy target. In this scenario, its a matter of who's faster at the outset.
Don't forget......Richtofen didn't score 82 kills in dogfights...Eric Hartman didn't score 352 kills in dogfights......they both waited, picked their targets, dove in, shot, climbed to safety. Richtofen died when he broke his own rule, and followed a sopwith down low, got disoriented, and was shot down by ground fire.
Hartman lived through the war, and only died sometime in the 90's. HE didn't break his rule.
Sorry for the long post, but i hope this helps yas a little bit?
john
