Let it be known that I picked my screen name because "boom and zoom" was a phrase that kept coming up when I was reading about the exploits of American fighter pilots, back in the days before we Walter Mitty types had online flight sims to feed our fantasies.
Until I had played AH awhile, I thought BnZ meant "using an airspeed advantage and vertical maneuvering to fight against better turning planes".
Apparently to some, both those who boom and zoom and those who complain about boom and zoom, the phrase means "make one pass at 500mph and then dissapear, never, ever to be seen again."
I honestly like 190s, since before I played flight sims. For someone of my raising,the FW190 is the ultimate "sinister" tool if you wish to play at being the villian, if Snidely Whiplash's mustache were an airplane, it would be a black Dora :-). (I also like Jugs, but since 3/4s of the airplanes you meet will be Allied, flying
Luftwaffe is more historically satisfying during a Walter Mitty moment. Shooting a Spit with a 190 just feels better than shooting it with a Thunderbolt. I squint my eyes and pretend the niks are spits...)
Also, I honestly like flying to kill AND survive. To me, going into a chaotic furball and inevitably dying is pointless, even if you get several kills in the process. Take away a real pilots desire to live another day, and it is just plane Quake. (Why NOT ho if you don't care about living?) People speak of "score whoring", but score is not calculated by kill/loss ratio alone. Mathematically and practically, it actually improves your overall score to get up, get to the nearest fight as quickly as possible, kill some as quickly as you can (which usually means a good turning cannon bird), and if you get killed, then that just saves you time spent in RTB. Do this often enough to have kill numbers in the mid-three digits and you're golden.
Call me perverse, but believe it or not, I'd rather get one single, solitary, lonesome kill, get clean away with the dirty deed and land, than get shot down with ANY number of kills. Blame it on reading Kylander's book or something, I dunno.
Some act like that flying a fast plane and using tactics suited to such planes is an act of malice or cowardice. I think it is a reasonable response to the actual conditions in the MA.
Got some good sticks in my squad. Lambo, 2cmex, Creton. Have gone round and round with them in the DA, it is fun, have gotten pretty decent at it. Also found that what you learn there, you rarely get to apply in the MA
Some representative sorties:
Up a Spit. Find a furball, red and green fill the sky. See another spit heading towards me. Unload and dive under him, listen to the crack of guns during the merge. Pull my Immelman and get on his six easily he flat turns, cut my throttle and "saddle". Oh crap, there is another spit diving on me. Turn into him, get on him, oh crap, first spit or maybe another spit, I don't know, is coming. Start barrel rolling for my life, even get he flaps down, oh good, I've pushed him out in front. Oh crap!, there is a CHog on my six, and my E is low low. He is not BnZing (I wish!), he is slow and has flaps out, commited to killing me (Even though the sky is filled with green as well as red.) I die as he belch dozens of 20mms at me. CHog pilot almost certainly gets shot down pretty soon himself...he is too low and slow and there are just too many green planes. Pointless crap.
Lesson: Spits are wonderful in every way except for low top speed. Which in the MA is the same as having a sign around your neck saying "Gang me." That is why, unlike others, I don't consider the Spits/Niks/Hurris/Zekes planes of the dweebish or lame, I consider them the planes of the masochistic.
Another. Up D9, went to 15K. Met another D9 at that alt in transit to the main fight. We have the sky to ourselves, we commit to a turn fight. It is tense for awhile, maybe five minutes. He tries a front quarter snap shot (not a HO) that takes off a flap. But he sacrificed angles to do it and now it is only a matter of tightening the noose. We are turning as tight as possible, I'm creeping closer to a shot. Then BOOM, a P51 appears out of the sky and saws his tail off. Result: I've wasted time, fuel, energy and mental concentration for zip, he has down the same for the reward of being shot down. Pointless crap.
Lesson: Not only is it dangerous to commit to a 1v1 when there is more than 1 red guy around, it can be incredibly frustrating to commit to a fight when there are too many green guys around. You've got assume you will be fighting a red horde for survival 90% of the time, and that often enough, you will be fighting a green horde for kills. In either case, the old "Speed is life" saw turns out to be correct.
I've had hundreds of experiences similar to this in the time I've spent playing AH. Now tell me again why it is wrong to favor fast planes and BNZ tactics...
