Firing Solutions

[icepac]

Once you try to HO buffs, it immediately becomes apparent that the "HO" complaints in the main arena should be blamed on both parties.

It's not easy to truly get a dead on ho on buffs but I do recommend you get around 4k in front of them before turning if you want to try it.

If your closure rate is insane, dead six works far better than most think.

[Zacherof]

thing with that is less surface area to shoot at
Coming from high 6 gives you more leverage but alas, each to his own

[jeffdn]

Once you try to HO buffs, it immediately becomes apparent that the "HO" complaints in the main arena should be blamed on both parties.

When faced with an enemy, you can turn in and try to merge, or run away. The former gives you a chance. When you are trying to engage someone in a dogfight and all they want to do is HO, that's frustrating.

[Wiley]

The other night, I had a dead on HO opportunity with a bomber for the first time I can remember since I started this game.

For grins, I decided to make it as straight on as I could.  I dove and leveled in front of him.  All I saw was -o- in front of me, I was pretty much perfectly inline with his fuselage.  He saw me all the way in though, and we both caught a face full of bullets.

I find to be safest attacking bombers, you want to introduce as many different elements into his shot as possible.  Attacking from high, or if you have smash, low, and between the 2 and 4 lines or 8 and 10 lines gives him the most problems to solve to hit you, as he needs to lead you and also account for the change in impact point from his plane's lateral (relative to the gun) motion.

Nowhere is truly 'safe' if he sees you all the way in, but the more factors you can give him to work out, the better your chances are I find.

If I'm feeling lazy/having a bad gunnery night, I'll just come down from almost straight above them as a second choice.  The top shelf gunners will sometimes eat you doing that though.

Wiley.

[SmokinLoon]

I would rather have enemy fighter try a HO or a level attack from the side or rear.  Taking out the up/down compensation equation makes it that much easier to hit them.  I have yet to take out an enemy fighter in a HO with the He111's though.  I've tried, but no cigar yet. 

I had the fight of my life while in HE111's yesterday (mid afternoon CST).  While RTB'ing from enemy strats at 20,000ft I had a 109K-4 intercept, he was approaching from my 11 O'clock at near co-altitude.  The rate of closure was fast so I hopped in to the front 20mm and turned in to him for a HO.  He was smart and went high but then came down at my 10 O'clock which was smart because I didn't have a shot from my front guns, only my left side gun (single .30 cal).  As he went on by I could see he was firing only his 13mm.  I pedaled as fast as I could to get towards allied airspace but he was simply too fast.  Thing is though, he came right in on my dead six and at 800 I opened up with just the lead bomber's ventral .30 cal turret peppering him (I don't fire all guns until they are inside 600 yards especially at the straight away shots).  After peppering his nose he dove away and gained some E then climbed out, each time coming in with lots of E to within 400 yards from both high and low dead six positions but not landing a kill shot on any of my bombers (I lost multiple control surfaces, including vertical stabilizers, and all but the forward guns were knocked on on the lead bomber), but I was able to land enough hits with the .30 cals to oil and kill his engine, take off enough control surfaces, and keep his gunnery shakey enough that he broke off the attack.  He was able to land on a dead engine, but after watching the film I learned who it was and I consider myself lucky.  I was able to get the ammo factory down to less than %70 from %100, and the AAA factory down to %92 from %100, all with the 8/250kg bombs.  Not a bad run, really.  

The ironic thing is after surviving all that I ran out of fuel and bailed about 4 sectors from an allied field.      

[Arlo]

Screenies? 

[Bino]

This is from the "Battle Over Germany" scenario, Frame 6...

[jeffdn]

This is a short video of my style of killing bombers, as mentioned in the last post on the previous page. In this video, taken on 7/15 of the large Knight strat raid of B17s and P51s against the Bishops, first myself, followed shortly thereafter by Flyman92, each take down a B17 in one pass from straight above the formation, diving down and firing along the spine.

Check out this video of Flyman92 and I killing two B17s (make sure to watch in HD):

original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAOx4L4hOY8
old style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB5mg7gm9iw