I believe to answere your question Latrobe that the sliceback (emergency
) is what you call a tail slide.
The Sliceback is an evil manoeuvre, a dirty trick to pull on a bandit who’s comfortably on
your long six o’clock. It comprises a gentle zoom with an aggressive skid near the top
followed by a nose-low opposite rudder reversal to bring you near head-on with your highly
rattled pursuer. You will need quite a bit of separation for this move since you burn a lot of
energy in the reversal – don’t try it if the bandit is anywhere near guns range. It is best
employed by a fighter with high wingloading and considerable rudder authority, in a situation
where a flat or oblique turn would most likely give the enemy a full planform snapshot. The
manoeuvre requires a good deal of rudder-aileron coordination and should not be attempted
without first having perfected the technique. The “trick” is to mask the airspeed decrease
with the low speed skid – the follow-up rudder reversal usually comes as a nasty shock.
The sliceback is useful in a standard dogfight as well. If you're energy-rich but
angles-poor in a turning fight, the reflexive behaviour is to honk back on the stick and bleed
energy to stay with the bandit. This leads without fault to black-out from excessive gravity
loads, to loss of visual contact and sacrifice of the energy advantage. A more cautious pilot
will normally zoom in the bandit’s rear hemisphere and roll his lift vector onto him for a
high yo-yo. While this is certainly good in most cases, it’s time-consuming and thus allows
the bandit a respite during which angles are lost. The outcome is generally a nose-to-nose
fight where either or both will succumb to head-on shots or collision.
In this situation it is far better to use the vertical and a bit of rudder work. E.g. in a
left turning fight where you have an energy advantage on a bandit who's breaking hard to
left, you nose up and skid right (top rudder) with a bit of left aileron to counter the roll, then
rudder hard to left, nose low while adding a bit of right aileron. This is a sort of vertical lag
displacement sliceback which doesn't cost you much energy and which gives you a low yo-yo
snapshot at the bandit (who sustains his left turn). Follow it up with another high sliceback if
he keeps up his turn, and with a steep barrel roll (canopy to bandit) if he reverses.
Tell me what you think guys. All I know is if you do the slice back at the right time. The bandit is in for a surprise HO
