Hello everyone,
This morning I had a very interesting encounter with a P-51. Perhaps I'm a bit overconfident when fighting P-51s due to a high success rate against them (I've shot down more P-51s than any other aircraft this tour), but in this case it was warrented.
A5 was getting hit (and vulched) from an assortment of Spits and F4s (enemy carrier right off shore), but I managed to get into the air and extend away from the carrier a fair bit before I noticed a high dot tailing me.
To my surprise and joy, it was my primary meal, P-51. He had quite an altitude advantage, but it was just him and I... so I figured as long as we were left alone, I had a shot.
As he begins his first pass, I start filming. What results was a pretty good example of why the Yak eats P-51s.
The pilot was good and had knowledge of energy and the importance of altitude. During the fight, we GAIN several thousand feet of altitude!
The first couple of passes are pretty standard fare, but I keep trying to get him in the vertical which results in a few vertical HO's. I make very very few horizontal turns. The Yak shines in the vertical, and I only turned horizontal to conserve E when he was closing.
Around the third or fourth pass, I make my first real dangerous mistake. A full loop. I wanted to gain altitude and pull into him as he was making another pass, but I blow a lot of energy and cant get the nose around. It looks to me like he has a shot, but luckily, he doesn't take it and we zip past each other a few feet apart.
He continues to sit high above me and it looks like he's trying to rope me. I bite a few times, but roping a Yak is a difficult thing to do. Many times I sit on on my tail facing straight up with less than 150mph pulling me.
Around mid-fight I realize that I HAVE to get some alt on him or I'm going down. We merge again, another HO, and he pulls up high behind me. As he dives back on my six, I split-s, and BINGO, he makes a mistake. He follows me a fair bit into the dive and I gain a serious amount of speed. He rolls around, levels off, and heads away from me. I use this opportunity to climb. By the time he turns around and starts closing on me again, we're co-alt.
This is where it gets good.
He's closing low and in my blind spot, so I break a bit early. We get into a short turning stint while I try to manuver for a shot. I get within 600, but can't close, and actually, don't have a shot at all. However, he thinks I do and split-s'es.
PERFECT! The Yak accerates faster than the 51, and the runstang dive isn't going to work on me!
Then again...
I'm in close persuit. I'm trying my damnest to get a clean shot, but I just can't get in range. Any other plane could have made the shot from 400-500 but not the Yak.
I could have followed him all the way to the deck and gotten the shot if it wasnt for one -key- factor. He was running right for the ack at his airfield.
5 seconds more and he'd be in flames, but I had to break away and let him go.
I take a light-hearted shot at him over 1, and we let it go.
The film ends, but the story doesn't! I return to 5 to find it in ruins. I'm really low on gas, but saddle up on an F4 and use my remaining cannon ammo to shoot off his tail. A5 is swarming with cons, so I decide to divert to the CV about a half sector away.
Next thing I see is a high P-51 closing on my six. I'm running on fumes, just a few dozen MG rounds, and can not make any adjustments to my flight path and still expect to land, so I just keep on truckin. He closes to just about out of gun range and disengages.
Then over CH1 he mentions how I did the exact same thing he did.
I land on the CV and go eat breakfast.
I think this film is a good example of ACM. Of course, I have no idea how to add the link to the file in here, so I'll add it in the next post.
Any comments? Yak experts, am I making any glaring mistakes in my ACM?
Thanks guys!
