The ultimate dogfighter's help thread!

[Puma44]

In the real world of fighter combat tactics, there are multiples of two.  So, If you see one there is another close by.  Most certainly, if you are engaged with a fighter, the second one is maneuvering out of plane, supporting and clearing the engaged fighter.  If the second fighter is maneuvering properly, it will drop in on you if the engaged fighter loses the advantage.  

[VuduVee]

hi latrobe, ive been playing off and on for close to 2 years. so ive never thought about the 3-9 line. staying behind that line gives you positional advantage? i generally am fighting for alt and angles, but after seeing this i wonder if i should be fighting for that 3-9 line. i think im doing that in the fights that i do well in, but its not a conscience thing that i was aware of.

[danny76]

Superb write up.

I simply can't do any of this but nevertheless it's a good post

I'm at 20k, they're at 1.5, I'm on the deck, they're at 20k

I take a Zeke, I  meet a high pony

I take a pony, I meet a squadron of high alt Brews.

I fly a 109, I compress and crash, every time, without fail

I bleed energy like an aortic wound

I chase a set of buffs, PW and engine hit from 1500m out, no matter where I attack from, and this coupled with me not being able to hit a barn door

10 years on, no better than week 2

[Bruv119]

danny maybe a session with a sports psychologist will do you the world of good.     

They might be in sparse supply with WC next month though...

[Puma44]

hi latrobe, ive been playing off and on for close to 2 years. so ive never thought about the 3-9 line. staying behind that line gives you positional advantage? i generally am fighting for alt and angles, but after seeing this i wonder if i should be fighting for that 3-9 line. i think im doing that in the fights that i do well in, but its not a conscience thing that i was aware of.

If you are ahead of your opponents 3/9 line, you are at a disadvantage from the git go.  Knowing how and where to position your lift vector is also key to success.  

[Puma44]

Superb write up.

I simply can't do any of this but nevertheless it's a good post

I'm at 20k, they're at 1.5, I'm on the deck, they're at 20k

I take a Zeke, I  meet a high pony

I take a pony, I meet a squadron of high alt Brews.

I fly a 109, I compress and crash, every time, without fail

I bleed energy like an aortic wound

I chase a set of buffs, PW and engine hit from 1500m out, no matter where I attack from, and this coupled with me not being able to hit a barn door

10 years on, no better than week 2

Have you been introduced to the fundamentals of BFM and energy management (the energy egg concept)? 

[Black Jack]

One more thing that can help a lot is to join a known good pilot. Being in his plane while he's fighting will make some sense of how they fly to set up the shot and the other gazzillion questions that will come to mind when you are actually in there with bullets flying everywhere     Many of those good sticks won't mind you tagging along. I've done it with Delirium, Shuffler, Grizz and many others. None of them said no and I learned a lot from em.

[danny76]

You misunderstand, I can hold my own, I have spent time with some of the most skilled guys in game. Nrshida, Batfink, Soullyss.

I understand the concepts of Bfm/acm and if reading about it meant anything I'd be top every tour.

I was simply showing admiration for Latrobe's skills, I wasn't whining.

Btw I was the Pony in his video and he said I knew what I was doing 

[Nimrod45]

Very good write ups and pictures, I think I finally got Lead and Lag prusuit down and the 3x9 line.  I always seem to be in Lead prusuit and end up out of energy, I'm going to consciously try to change my approachg to using Lag prusuit more and paying attention to where my lift vector is pointed.  It seems to me like it will be a more relaxed efficient way of dogfighting, (flying the plane into position to shoot and not forcing the plane into position.

[FLS]

Nimrod we covered this in training.  

I should have given you homework.  

[Nimrod45]

Nimrod we covered this in training.  

I should have given you homework.  

Ya, sorry buddy I'm a sssslllllloooooowwww learner LOL.  Heck I've looked at Latrobes threads before on lift vectors and the 3x9 line before and they never sunk in.  But this time maybe with what you showed me in the TA and just having some more experience the old light came on.  Now lets see if I carry it inot a fight or if the old adrenaline pushed it out of the cocpit as soon as I see a con.   

Thanks for your help by the way, maybe if your up to it we could go back in the TA some time, I seriously need to work on my aiming.

[FLS]

Sounds good. I'm busy evenings now so it would have to be early noonish or late night.

If you review the film you made training you may get more out of it by watching it again with trails on. As you mentioned, you have to repeat the basics until they sink in and become second nature. 

[Bathrobe]

You guys have been waiting far too long for this information, so I've created a second account until I can post under "Latrobe" again 

Okay. There is a certain scissoring technique...You are pursuing in lag, trying to win the nose-to-tail chase. They deceleration combined with an element of vertical that put's God's G to work turning back into you to get the nose on. Seems very difficult to counter within the bounds of human reaction time. Any ideas?

Here's a situation that I think shows what you're talking about. In this fight we're both in Yak9u's and we're in a rolling scissors fight. Then at the end I cut throttle and drop flaps at the top of my loop in order to bleed off speed and drop my nose quickly in order to cut the corner and try for a shot.



The planning for this move started about 2-3 turns back. In the following picture I am coming down from my loop but I have made a mistake and timed it wrong. I have to turn to avoid a collision and this puts me out of position. I know the flying style of my opponent since this was a DA fight so I know what he's going to do, but I can still determine what my opponent is most likely to do even without knowing who's in the cockpit just by the way they fly. How good was their merge? How well do they conserve and use energy? How well do they execute ACM? All this will let me know roughly what skill level they are at and then I can determine what they are most likely to do in their next maneuver. In this case I know my opponent is going to go vertical again to gain an altitude advantage and then drop down onto my 6 for a shot attempt. So I'm going to roll right, with my engine torque, and pull a turn into him and pass under him. This will set me up for my next move.



We can see in this next frame that the Yak is now rolling over and starting his attack run. I am pulling my right hand turn hard into him to try and pass under him...



The reason for this is because I want the Yak to dive steeply to pick up lots of speed at a steep angle. I can then use that against him and force an easy overshoot.



I do not want to turn left and away from him as this will give him a more shallow approach to me and give him and easy chance to gain my 6.



As the Yak makes his attack I pull up and into him to deny him the shot. Now that excessive speed he built up and the steep angle he's in is going to force him to overshoot quite easily. Me pulling up to avoid his shot leads straight into my next move. I'm going to bleed some speed in my climb and I'm going to get in a position above him as he overshoots below me. I'm going to drop flaps and chop my throttle some to bleed off some more speed and let gravity do its thing and help flip my nose around quickly.



The Yak will be going too fast to make the turn and I will get a brief snap shot on him as we can see in this next shot.



Now, how does the Yak go about defeating this maneuver I pull? Well first he has to watch and see which way I roll and pull at the top of my loop. This will let him know which direction has the greatest chance of success for him. We can see the Yak in this shot has rolled wings level and is waiting for me to make the move. As he sees me roll at the top he now knows what he must do.



The Yak pulls a right hand turn into me keeping his lift vector behind me. He is doing the exact same thing I did against him earlier in order to force the overshoot on him. He wants to make as sharp and steep of an angle for me as possible to create the hardest shot possible and then use my speed against me. Just like in my maneuver, the Yak should not turn left as this gives me his 6 and I can easily drop down on him for excellent positioning.



Now the Yak runs into a bit of trouble. He did not expect me to chop my throttle at the top or he just misjudged the angle. Now I'm in a good position to drop down onto his 6 for a shot.  This is where never sticking to one plan in a fight comes in handy. This Yak pilot realizes his Plan A has failed so he abandons that plan and starts his Plan B. Some options that he can do is he can again pull another hard right hand turn into me to try and stay inside my turn and deny me a shot...



Or, he can be a little more risky and cut back the other direction in order to get to the belly side of my plane and hope I don't have enough time to roll my plane to line up a shot on his reversed turn. In both of these options, if successful, he can then take the fight back into the rolling scissors or do whatever other maneuver he may have planned.



The goal here is to get out of a "death zone" that I've marked with the dotted lines. Inside these lines you are not making any horizontal separation and making the shot just that much more easier for your opponent and making avoiding the shot that much harder for you. You can choose option A and turn hard into the attack to try and get inside your attackers turn therefore denying the shot, or option B and take the outside track. It's much more difficult to pull of shots in the negative G's as your aircrafts lift and flaps (if deployed) are working against you.



The Yak has chosen option B and waits for the perfect moment when my wingtips are perpendicular to the ground. This means all of my lift is pointed in the oppostie direction of where he is going to fly to.



And we can see that he has made the perfect maneuver as I can not roll over in time and my flaps make it impossible to get a shot on him.

[Bathrobe]

hi latrobe, ive been playing off and on for close to 2 years. so ive never thought about the 3-9 line. staying behind that line gives you positional advantage? i generally am fighting for alt and angles, but after seeing this i wonder if i should be fighting for that 3-9 line. i think im doing that in the fights that i do well in, but its not a conscience thing that i was aware of.

Flying for the 3-9 line can give you the positional advantage in a fight. The 3 advantages that I like to think of are speed, altitude, and position. The first two are obvious and are a part of actual fighter pilot training throughout the life or aerial combat. The third, positional, might be made up by be, or have an actual name that is different from what I call it . This is just my personal thoughts on advantages, and what has worked for me.

First, I'll explain altitude advantage since it's pretty basic. Having more altitude than your opponent gives you the altitude advantage. With the altitude advantage you can convert that altitude into speed as you dive either to just pick up speed or attack your opponent. From the other side, not having the altitude advantage means that you will have to bleed off precious speed to climb up to your opponent in order to attack them. As I stated before, altitude dictates the fight. With it you can choose when and where to start a fight while your oppoent bleeds speed trying to get to you. There is a problem with altitude though and that's having too much of it. I'll explain why along with the speed advantage.

Now for the speed advantage. This can be pretty simple. If you have more speed than your opponent then you can out run, extend out of their gun range, and reset the fight. You can also obviously use speed to perform maneuvers either to gain a shot or avoid one from your opponent. However, there is a little bit more to this than just that. There is the possibility of having too much speed. The most obvious is from having too much alitutde (the problem with being too high and having too much altitude.) If you're 10K above your opponent then you are going to build up a LOT of speed in the dive. Too much speed in fact. Being just 5K above your opponent means you will build up less speed in your dive but not so much that you are going to overshoot easily. Another problem with too much speed is in maneuverability. All planes have different strengths and weaknesses. For an example lets take the P-47M vs an A6M3. The A6M3 obvious turns better and has a better climb rate and the P-47M is faster and dives better, but speed also plays a little part in all of this. A P-47M can fly and handle quite well up to 600+ MPH. An A6M3 on the otherhand tends to put itself at risk of breaking apart pulling high G turns at around 350MPH. This means that the P-47M can pull more G's at high speed than the A6M3 can, so if the P-47M can get the A6M3 to build up speed by maybe chasing it into a dive then the P-47M can out turn the A6M3 for a moment while the A6M3 struggles with the high speeds and tries not to rip his wings off.

Lastly, the positional advantage. You are safest when you are behind your opponent. This means he can not shoot back at you and the closure rate isn't as drastic as when you are coming at them from their front. The further from your opponents 6 you get, the most risky things get. If you are off their 7-8 oclock then the closure rate is slightly higher than if you are on their six. Also, the angles are slightly greater as well. If you're off their 9 oclock then everything increases even more, and if you're off their 10-11 oclock then again the closure rate and angles increase even more!

To try and show the positional advantage, this first picture notice how both of us are positioned similarly to the other? I am keeping my opponent in front of my 3-9 line by pointing my lift vector behind him, and he is doing the same thing. The positional advantage is neutral as neither of us is clearly behind the others 3-9 line, or on the others 6 oclock if that's easier for you to visualize.



Now, in this particular fight I had a slight speed advantage going into the next merge, so I used that speed advantage to climb up above this Spitfire and gain the altitude advantage. This altitude advantage will allow me to choose when and where to attack him next. We see in this image that the Spitfire has stalled and this is my moment to strike.



Now in this next picture I am very clearly behind my opponents 3-9 line, or on his 6 oclock. He is in front of my 3-9 line, or on my 12 oclock. I have now gained a huge positional advantage over him. He has to use us a lot of speed to try and force me off his 6 and get the overshoot while all I have to do is follow him, keep on his 6, and try to avoid overshooting. This is what flying for the 3-9 line and gaining a positional advantage can do for you.

[Latrobe]

Here's some more stuff to think about.  


Threat assessment, some decision making, and readjusting the attack
So, first contact  in this image we can see a P-47, a Typhie, a lower P-47 and some friendly bombers. This is where we can immediately start assuming some things. The higher P-47 is very much most likely going to going for the bombers. After all, who can resist shooting at bombers?   The typhie is the next highest enemy. He doesn't appear to be going after the bombers though. Is he swinging out wide for a side shot on them? Does he see me and he's climbing to engage? Does he not care or not see me or the bombers and is going somewhere else? We can't really tell. Since his intentions are unknown and he is in a position to give us some trouble if he does target us then he's fairly high on the threat level and we'll have to keep an eye on him. The second, lower P-47, is not really a threat at all. He is way too low to be a threat. He will be spending a lot of speed to climb up to me and that will make him a slow easy target to kill. So, on the threat level scale the P-47 and Typhie are the biggest threats. They have some altitude and can easily engage me. The P-47 appears to be more concerned with the bombers but they are heading my way so he can easily change target to me. The typhie we can not really tell what he is currently doing and he, just like the high P-47, can easily engage me if he so wishes to. The lower P-47 is very low on the threat scale. He doesn't have enough altitude to engage me currently. Even if he was doing 400mph he would be down to his last bit of speed by the time he climbed up to me while I will be cruising around at a good 300+mph.



Seconds later now. Starting to put my plan into effect as I position for an attack on the P-47. NOTE how I am swinging out to the right and rolling so I can keep an eye on all three of these guys without doing any drastic maneuvers. Not having to keep rolling and turn just to keep and eye on a plane will save energy for me. The typhie we can now see is flying off in a completely different direction. We can now assume that he is not interested in me or the bombers.... right now that is. He could very easily turn back later on and come back to fight us but he is 3.5K away right now while the P-47 is 1.5K and closing so the P-47 is the most immediate and biggest threat. The 2nd lower P-47 is still very low on the threat scale but he is climbing up to either me or the bombers so he is at least a little bit of a threat that we will have to eventually deal with. Also NOTE how I am not going to dive straight at the P-47. This would be a bad attack approach as he could very easily pull up into me and shoot me as well. What I'm going to do is stay high, swing around behind him, and dive onto his 6.



This Jug is completely focused on the bombers. He does not see me coming so I roll over and dive in to get on his tail.



And we pull up out of our dive we are behind and below the P-47 in his blind spot. If he really didn't see us coming then he most certainly does not see us now even if he were to look around. This is where I can now unload my guns into his tail and belly and kill him..... or I should have, but my aim is not great and he does get away with minor damage.  



The P-47 noses down and dives away after I hit him. I DO NOT FOLLOW HIM! Why is that? Well remember that there was the 2nd P-47 that was climbing up towards us. Now is the perfect moment to have a look around and update our situational awareness. We know where the first Jug is because we just shot him. He won't be an immediate threat for a little while because we were just on his 6, shot him, and he dove away. We know where he is. So, I have a look around and check my six and what do you know! That second P-47 is in fact behind us and it appears that he is not too pleased with us for shooting at his buddy.  



So, what do I do. I have plenty of options to choose from. I could dive, I could flat turn, I could climb, I could reverse my turn, etc etc. This is where decision making to choose the best course of action needs to be instant and the right decision, and it's not completely random like "Oh I'll dive and try that." There is a reason behind what I choose to do. In this case I can use my previous situational awareness knowledge! I know from keeping my SA up before I went into my attack run that this second P-47 was very low. Now a few seconds later he has gained some altitude but he is still a little ways below me. I know he can't be too fast since he has been climbing. Climbing uses up speed. I, on the other hand, have TONS of speed since I just dove down to make an attack run. On top of that I still hold a little altitude advantage over this guy. The best course of action I can take here is to use that speed advantage to climb and try to bleed this guy of the rest of his speed in a rope attempt. So, I climb and I turn slowly (SLOWLY!) into him to point my wingtip at him. Pointing my wingtip at him will help me get into a better position to drop down on him while conserving as much E as possible. Again, emphasis on the SLOWLY TURN into him part. I do not need to make a tight turn right now. I KNOW I have the speed to out climb him. There is no need to make a tight turn and waste the speed.



Now just a few seconds later and some important stuff is going on here. We also had that typhie to worry about at the start of all this. As we're turning and climbing to deal with the P-47 climbing to us we get a glimpse of the typhie again. It looks like he is still not worried about us and is flying off to engage someone else. This let's us know that this is going to be a 2v1 fight at tops (2 Jugs vs Me) instead of a 3v1 (2 Jugs and a Typhie vs Me). He also appears to have lost some altitude from the last time we saw him. The typhie went from being a somewhat high threat at the start of this engagement to almost no threat at all. He's still in the area and still fighting so he is at least a little bit of a threat if he ever does come back this way and decides to engage us, but at the moment he's not too much of a concern for me. We also see that the first P-47 that I attacked has leveled off. What is he going to do now? Will he start to climb back up to engage me? Will he fly away to engage someone else? Will he go land? We don't know yet and he is still capable of climbing up to engage me so he is still fairly high on the threat level. This second Jug however is still targeting me, still climbing to me, and is still a fairly high and immediate threat.