Murdr...question

[MaddogJoe]

Murdr, on your revese film you have posted at 479th Raiders site, the first pass the 38 makes is a half hearted, but I love the way you get your seperation with the nose low turn. In the second pass you force him to turn on you as you climb to him. In this merge he "split-s" under you giving you the room for the barrel roll and the shot.

Two questions... why do you think you gained in speed...to close as he lost speed when after the barrel roll you were slower than him and both of you seemed to climb?

second... if he had gone vertical to stay on top....given your low "E" at that time of the second pass.... what would you have done if he came right back at you over the top?

Thanks for the films!!

[Murdr]

Reverse.ahf

I kind of touched on that in the film synopsis.  One key point on exiting that barrel roll is to start spraying immedately.  The enemy plane needs encouraged to start turning asap.  Even if they manage to distance to 600-800 and then start a hard turn, your own pursuit turn will be less drastic due to the distance.  That puts the enemy plane in a position of sheding E more rapidly than you.

You might notice that even on the first attempt at a merge, I was positioning for the exact same situation, but he chose not to merge that time.

In that particular situation, I dont think he was gentel enough (ie- shed too much E) in going verticle to escape serious or fatal damage before getting "over the top" on me.  In general though I would have tried to get inside his level flight recovery altitude as outlined in Attack/Pursuit Modes or if I judged the speed difference to be too great, I would have completely dropped pursuit and dive to reposition.  Likely I would have seen the latter situation long before it was too late to disengage.

That barrel roll is actually a variation of a maneuver outlined in Attack/Pursuit Part 2, there it starts as a pursuit, in the film it starts as a merge