I would like to preface this post by stating that I am only an average fighter pilot (if I'm lucky), so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I am only posting this so that some pilots new to flight sims can benefit from my experience.
I have been flying AH somewhat consistently for about 9 or 10 months now. Before I began flying AH, I had no experience with flight sims, on-line or otherwise. When I first started flying, it was brutal and demoralizing. I got killed five or ten times for every time I got lucky and managed to shoot someone down. In attempt to get better, I read everything I could find on ACM (i.e., air combat maneuvers) and BFM (i.e., basic flight maneuvers), including Shaw's book on fighter combat and the plethora of articles at
http://www.simhq.com and other places on the web. (If you're as new to this as I was, there is no substitute for a little education.) I also spent a good deal of time reading this board, and while I did garner a good bit of useful information, I also read a number of posts that, in retrospect, I believe hindered my progress.
In particular, if you spend any amount of time at all perusing this board, you will find, as I did, many posts deriding planes like the several Spitfires, labeling them "dweeb" planes or the like. Many of those posts also make claims like "You will never learn to fly ACM or BFM if you fly planes like the Spit." The upshot of thoses posts is that to learn to fly in any manner other than just pulling as hard as your plane will allow in a flat circle, you have to learn to fly more "challenging" planes, like the American or LW rides (Note: with the addition of the F4F and FM2 to AH's plane set, the Americans now have planes that share some of the "dweeby" characteristics of the Spitfires). Thus, in a desire to get better and to avoid exploiting some "unfair" advantage of the "dweeby" planes, I spent the better part of a year struggling to get better while largely avoiding the Spitfire.
Now that I have been flying the Spits (IIc, V, and IX) fairly regularly for a bit, I have some observations on why I think that they are excellent planes for new (and old) pilots to fly and in which to learn ACM/BFM:
1. As you will soon find out, a high percentage of the planes that you will encounter in the Main Arena are "dweeby" planes. A typical (but probably incomplete) list of "dweeb" planes is: any Spit, N1K2-J, La-7, and Yak-9u.
NOTE: As far as I can tell, the following factors contribute to a plane being labeled "dweeby": (a) it has multiple cannons, particularly the Hispanos of the British planes; (b) it maintains its e (i.e.,energy) while maneuvering relatively well; (c) it accelerates and/or climbs relatively well; (d) it is relatively fast.
If you choose to fly one of the more "challenging" planes and actually want to dogfight, you will find, particularly when starting out, that you can only successfully engage one of the "dweeb" planes if you have a considerable energy (i.e., speed, altitude, or both) advantage at the outset. Thus, you will be in the unpleasant position of having to run from every co-e (i.e., equal energy) Spit, La-7, or N1K2-J that you encounter. That is not only no fun and not instructive, but also it fosters a defensive, unagressive mindset.
2. As a follow-on from the previous point, the only way to learn to survive in a dogfight is to actually dogfight. You can read all you can find on yo-yos, barrel rolls, lag displacement rolls, scissors, rolling scissors, etc., but until you have performed those maneuvers often enough that they become second nature, you will never be able to rely on them in combat. Thus, repetition is the key. Flying the more "challenging" planes, you will find yourself either running or making quick, hit-and-run passes most of the time (or else, when you are new, you will be dying quickly and often). As a consequence, you simply will not have the opportunity to develop those ACM/BFM skills. Many of the pilots that post on these boards have been flying on-line flight sims for years and probably cannot remember the time when basic ACM/BFM was not second nature. But to the new pilot (at least to me), ACM/BFM is anything but intuitive.
3. In my experience, one of the best (and most enjoyable) environments in which to dogfight is field or fleet defense. In those situations, you will typically find your field or carrier being assaulted by hordes of fighters, all of which will have an energy advantage over planes like yours that are just taking off. If you manage to get airborne, you will likely find yourself awash in a sea of red icons. In those situations, planes like the Spit V and Spit IIc really shine, because they are quite maneuverable at relatively low speeds (the corner velocity (i.e., optimal turning speed) for a Spit V at sea level is probably not much more than 200 or 225 mph) and will tend to retain their energy well during agressive maneuvering. This is perhaps the ideal environment in which to quickly amass dogfighting experience; there may be no better "target-rich environment" in the game. A side benefit of flying in these sorts of environments is that you will naturally improve your SA (situational awareness) and your ability to mentally track multiple contacts. You will also learn how to neutralize a bogey's energy advantage. Once you can get a less maneuverable fighter into a situation where it has expended its energy advantage, you have gone most of the way to winning the fight.
The Spits are well-armed with dual cannons, and this is a very good opportunity to exploit those cannons and get better at deflection shooting (i.e., shooting from a position other than directly behind your opponent). This is one thing that I am not very good at but which is absolutely critical if you are ever going to fly a "more challenging" fighter. In planes like the P51, P47, or Dora, you will rarely be able to "saddle up" on a bogey's six o'clock for a zero-deflection shot. Instead, most of your shots will be high-speed, (realatively) high deflection shots.
4. Flying planes like the Spit, you will often find yourself "bounced" by higher fighters like the P51, P47, Dora, Bf 109, etc. You will quickly find out that such "bounces" are relatively simply to counter, provided you see your attacker. Learning how to avoid such passes will make you better if you eventually decide to fly planes like those (actually, you can quite successfully fly the Spit IIc, V, or IX as a "boom-and-zoom" plane), beause you will understand the evasive maneuvers that your opponent is likely to employ.
5. I believe that one key to being a successful dogfighter is outthinking your opponent. A primary aspect of doing so is understanding, visualizing, and exploiting the geometry of the fight. In my experience, this is the most challenging aspect of ACM/BFM, but to be really accomplished (which I certainly am not), I think you must master this (which I have not). (I think that exploiting geometry is even more important when flying the more "challenging" planes.) Again, the only way to master geometry is to dogfight, which you will probably find yourself doing more often in a plane like a Spit than in a P51, P47 or Dora.
6. Dogfighting and using ACM/BFM (as opposed to just pulling as hard as you can, trying to gain angles on your bogey) has the ancillary benefit of helping you to become proficient with the AH view system. Because you will find yourself in all conceivable relative positions with respect to your bogey, it will become second nature to use the AH's (excellent) view system to keep a tally on him.
7. There is one aspect of fighter combat that you need not master in order to be somewhat successful in a Spit: energy conservation and management. You can often get a kill in a Spit, pulling as hard as you can and expending most of your available energy cache. The typical result, particularly in a furball environment, is that you are low and slow and easy prey for any enemey fighter that has some energy in the bank. If you discipline yourself by conserving energy and expending it only when necessary to give you the kill or gain a decisive advantrage, you will find yourself getting shot down much less frequently and getting multi-kill sorties. One way to do this without really thinking about it is to try to turn in the vertical, rather than purely horizontal (when you go "up," you are necessarily converting some of your speed to potential energy, thus conserving it). As you learn to exploit the geometry of dogfights, you will naturally find yourself turning in the vertical anyway. A side benefit is that you are learning good habits that will translate well to whatever plane you may choose to fly. Indeed, to fly the more "challenging" fighters well, you must focus on energy management. I believe that this is why some folks who fly those planes instruct new pilots not to "learn bad habits" in planes like the Spits.
8. In my opinion, dogfighting is just more fun than making repeated, boom-and-zoom passes the way that most P51 and 190 pilots fly (the 190-A5 is actually a very capable dogfighter, although given pilots of equal ability, it will usually lose a co-e engagement with a Spitfire). There are many very good pilots who fly those planes much more agressively and, I believe, to much greater effect. To do so, however, requires mastery of all of the ACM/BFM skills that I believe you can learn most quickly by flying a plane like one of the Spitfires. If you just jump into a P51, P47, or Dora and try to dogfight in it, I think you will quickly get discouraged.
So, go ahead and fly your Spit--you can have fun and get better at the same time!
- JNOV
