Originally posted by humble
Curious what your thoughts are on denying the loop fight there. To me that split second "go/no go" E fighting decision is the toughest to call correctly. When in doubt I just fly the "under" and accept an inferior position vs trying to hang in a vertical fight I cant win. I dont fly the pony or 38 enough to really have a feel for how far I can push it in that regard. My gut feel was simply one of this wont turn out to well so I pushed the nose down and went to "plan B".
Strictly speaking from a P-38 driver's view. What you did in the fight against the La7 could have also been done in a loop fight. In most cases, if the P-38 pilot doesn't flub it up, will have a shot on the La7 as it is climbing out from the bottom part of the loop. As you're doing the loop, lower flaps as necessary and you'll loop tighter (because you've got a better turning radius) than the La7. You can kind of lag the loop by raising one notch of flaps and you should be able to get an angle as the La7 is going over the top of the loop. This angle provides an excellent shot opportunity to the engine, cockpit, wings, wing root area and pretty much the entire upper fuselage. If the La7 tries a High Yo-Yo instead of a loop, you'll also have a nice angle as the La7's nose starts to point down as it comes out of the High Yo-Yo.
Just be warned that 99.9999999% of the time the other pilot will cry "HO!" and others will claim it was a cheap shot because you decided to use ACM instead of being a "knight of the sky".
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