Never ... and I repeat ... never will I turn tail thinking ... zOMG there is a 109 and he just may hand me my arse so I better bug out and maybe come back and whack him while one of my countrymen has him all tied up.
I hear ya, but I am trying to avoid judging the motive of the 109 from the OP. My take on the post is a lot of time elapsed. The 109 did initially press the attack until his energy state eroded to Co-E vs. a better turner, so give him some marks there. He then disengaged and reengaged later as the 2nd in, whether he knew it was the same Spit or was just being opportunistic against "a Spit" who he found later on a wingman we can only assume, Spits aren't exactly uncommon. As I said earlier, a pilot confident in himself and his ride would have at least continued to track the opponent during the reset phase and reengaged at his earliest possible convenience. I know, when it comes to being the 2nd in, I have no problems with it whether it's me doing it or having it done to. This is especially true against the *cough* "hyper-modelled" rides like the Hurricane, Niki, La7, Spit etc.
I like to use Greebo as an example because he's done it to me more than any other in recent memory. I have come at him with an energy advantage and we've ground to a stalemate repeatedly, I can't get a shot on him and he can't saddle me up. On a couple of occasions, without saying anything we've mutually agreed to go our separate ways. Ten minutes later we both land a pelt pouch full of scalps, but not each other's. Sometime's if you're committed to fighting only your fight and the other guy is too, there's an impasse. It's not an overly common occurrence, but it happens, when it does I just salute the other guy and go about my business. If you read some anecdotal accounts especially from WWI where 1 vs 1's were not such uncommon unfortunate accidents, this happened a lot. Two planes, with dissimilar performance would reach a stalemate and eventually salute each other, go home or seek their prey elsewhere.
