Here's a film I made over the weekend that has a couple of note worthy fights.
A6M5, Spitfire, C.205 vs. P-38JIn the beginning of the film, I see a low A6M5 and I prepare to roll in on it when I finally spot the Spitfire I had climbed up to hunt. I break off the A6M5 and deal with the Spitfire first because if I didn't, he would have picked me while I was dancing with the Zeke. I quickly knock the Spitfire out of the fight and then pounce on the Zeke. Actually, rather lackluster kills on my part and are really nothing more than filler for the time in between fights with snaphook.
After dispatching the Zeke, I start to look for the Spitfire I knocked out of the fight to finish it off when I stumbled into a C.205. I'm relatively low on energy (think I was around 250mph IAS or so when I first spotted snaphook) and quickly level out and hit WEP and then slight nose down to build energy for the merge. Lucky for me, the C.205 when low on the merge, this allowed me to roll into a Low Yo-Yo on the merge and gain sufficient energy to follow up the slightly faster (think he had between 30 to 50mph on me) into the vertical for the kill. In the film when snaphook and I talk about it, I made the mistake and stated my energy state at around 300mph IAS at the merge when I was actually slightly faster.
I run into the C.205 again and the fight is on. This is the fight that makes this film worth watching. In the beginning, I had the altitude and energy advantage and could have danced on the C.205's head all day long but knowing the other guy at the controls was an excellent pilot, I felt that a knife fight would be more enjoyable for the both of us and dumped my energy and engaged.
For the P-38 flyers, this fight is a good example of fighting in the vertical and the use of flaps at a low energy state. There were a couple of times during the fight that I really regretting dumping my energy since the fight was so fluid that one second one of us had the slight edge and then the next moment the other guy would have the slight edge with neither of us being quite able to sync things together correctly. I knew that I would be able to follow his vertical moves for the most part but I had to take extreme care that I would not stall out before he does. If I did stall out before snaphook, he would have rolled over and easily killed my floundering Lightning. In this kind of fight, I had to make sure that he stalled out before me. Since my plane is better in the vertical and is probably the best plane in the game for hanging on its props, I knew that if he stalled out before me, I had one of two options:
Option One: As the C.205 stalled out above me, I could keep my nose up and as the C.205 started to come down from his stall, I could roll inverted and pull into him for a lead turn as he fell past my nose during his stall for the kill shot.
Option Two: If I was unable to gain the angle for the kill shot, I could just saddle up instead.
Because I didn't have the angle for Option One, I tried Option Two. Because I was able to saddle up as he was coming down from his vertical climb (after his stall at the top), I was able to generate enough energy on the descent by raising my flaps as I was coming down. This allowed to me to continue to follow the C.205 in the vertical and eventually equalize energy states enough that I was able to go for the kill.
This is the kind of fight that everyone should live for. It was a fluid and dynamic fight where it could have gone either way from moment to moment and makes one fly their plane to their utmost. Fortunately, while the fight was almost ruined by the Spitfire looking for revenge, I was able to avoid the pick attempts and it also helped that the Spitfire driver wasn't very skilled in either flying or fighting. I think he had the stall limiter on which prevented him from pulling a hard lead on his pick attempts and his failure to be able to stay with my maneuvers on the deck.
<S> snaphook.
ack-ack
