BBMAW,
Last night you and I engaged in probably one of the best one-on-one fights I've had in a long time. It was a thing of beauty.
The engagement, for those of you reading this post other than BBMAW, went as follows:
I was cruising around 15k just southeast of A24 when I spotted a co-alt bogie. I turned to engage and the icon came up as P-51. I called into the rest of my squad (they were all engaged at A25) that I was engaging a pony. As I turned towards the bogie, I thought, "Hmmm...I don't see a shine, I wonder if that's a bravo?" As I got closer, I noticed that the bogie was indeed a P51B, such as I was flying, and realized that my initial tactics would have to change.
There wasn't another friendly, or bogie, around for miles, so it was just me and this other P51B one on one. The fight commenced, and we both used great energy tactics to try and outsmart each other. The initial part of the fight brought us down to about 5k. I went up into a high yoyo to try and get a good guns solution. The bogie dove away and extended. At this point, I had landed a few pings on his airframe, so I thought he might be going down. I kept up alt and followed him. I considered returning to base as I was getting low on fuel, but I really wanted to find out who this guy was in the bravo pony so I went into a shallow dive and closed the distance.
I closed to within 2k of the bogie, and he started to reverse. I pulled up to conserve my energy, and the fight started all over again. By the time it was over, we were both on the deck. I had 3 notches of flaps and we were each trading fire. I managed to land some critical hits on his airframe and rolled up to try and finish him off. At this point, he was deadstick and an easy target. I saw this and gave quarter, allowing him to ditch in the water.
This was one of the best engagements I've had in the MA. It could have gone either way at any point.
I salute you BBMAW.
