Its a P-38 Tour again for me.
All too often when a red P-38 comes in for a base attack it will auger. It is embarrassing. I thought I would share my hanger attack method that eliminates the chance of an auger.
I use the same method on the P-47D and Corsair albeit augering is less of an issue for the 47 and F4U1D. Still, I need to be consistent between the planes since I go back and forth.
The attack angle is the first key. Forty-five degrees or somewhat less but not more. Judge the angle by the distance you are from the target and how high you are. They should be roughly the same. My best attack height is 9,000 above field elevation.
Second, throttle control and dive flaps. Make it a habit to do two things before you push the nose over. Pop the dive flap and pull the throttle back to idle. The dive flaps are just insurance if you make your attack run starting at 8-to-9,000 feet or if you are at a steeper dive angle than you thought.
Third, a good rocket ladder gunsight ala Bustr's historical gunsight package. I use the N9 Rocket ladder. Use the ". "sitting in the small "v" for rockets. For bombs use the very bottom of the rectile circle to the bottom of the glass. Most of the time my bottom drop is closer to the bottom of the glass.
Because of the 45 degree attack angle you will fire rockets first then bombs on one pass. As your gunsight centers on the hanger the rocket ladder will come up first with the bombing sight at the bottom. That's fire rockets, bump,bump of secondary selector then drop bombs. Sounds hard but with just a bit of practice it will seem perfectly natural. Fire-bump-bump-fire. Its just that quick.
Use salvo of 6 for hanger. That is type / to pull up the radio then type .salvo then a SPC then 6. This will leave you 4 rockets for other targets or a backup if you slightly missed on your first pass.
As Lusche says in gunnery post, get close then get closer before you punch the rockets. In practice blow yourself up a couple of times to see how close is close. You will be surprised how close that is.
Red guy or not, I hate to see a P-38 auger.