Here's mine.
I was prowling around the valleys yesterday afternoon in my A8 while watching my NFL Fantasy team rack up points in my squadron's FF league.
There was a running gunbattle going on along the northern coastline between two airbases and the furball moved back and forth like a flag in a tug of war. The red guys had run a NOE Mustang raid a couple flights earlier by sneaking through the valleys between the bases on the inland side of the combat zone. I decided to play it smart and avoid the furball and work my way around the mass by ducking along the ridgelines, to try and catch another Mustang raid while it was low and slow. That's when I saw the first co-alt Mustang inbound to our airfield. I figured I'd turn and engage and at least get him to drop any ordinance he may be carrying.
So he turns and comes at me and I press the HO, knowing that I'll win that battle. He gets smart and rolls out into a break turn as we pass. We're both packing some speed but I know my FW190A8 will bleed it quicker so I pull up and around as the airframe buzzes with the start of a high-speed stall. I get my nose around just about the time he does and we do another HO. He breaks as we pass and we swing around to do the HO thing again. And again. That's the problem with high-speed fighters - neither plane can turn sharp enough to get on the other's tail. So we go around a few times. Altitude and speed are both getting lower. The airframe is really buzzing now as the speed drops and I know the P-51 guy is popping his 25% combat flap to maintain control as my FW tries to snap roll left from engine torque. As he passes, I drop my nose down, punch the WEP and dive into a valley to get some separation. He brings his nose around to pursue but I've got the initial jump and get about d1.5 away by the time the numbers stabilize.
Now a 2nd P-51D comes diving down from my 4:00 position and closes on me. I dive deeper into the canyon to get more speed. I figure I'll try to get him to black out in a turn and smack into a mountainside, and maybe even get both of them that way. I snap roll left, turn, then snap-roll right, turn, and pull up into a yo-yo, hoping he's lost me under his nose or in a black-out. No dice. He's still back there and now we're in a horizontal scissors. I turn left towards him, then reverse the turn as he turns right towards me and then reverses his turn. Again, I bleed my speed faster in the turns and our turn radius' meet in a HO. I squeeze off a burst and look back to see his vertical stabilizer flutter to the ground. He goes into a stall and crashes. "You shot down (name removed to protect the innocent)". Man, I love firepower!
The horizontal scissors dropped my speed down to around 220 and now the first P-51 is back on me. I nose down to get some maneuvering speed and equalize the playing field. I'm hugging the mountains, doing high yo-yos, low yo-yos, snap rolls, anything to try and get this guy to black out. He's inside guns range and things are getting tense. I snap roll left and pull back on the stick as the airframe buzzes with a high-speed stall. I look back in time to see black smoke start pouring from his nose, but I don't see any of our guys so I don't know what shot him. Then he explodes. "You shot down (name removed to protect the innocent)." I figure he must've dug his prop into the earth and porked his engine.
Now I'm glad I spent all those months with my "Fly What Shot Me Down Last" policy, because its good to know the capabilities and weaknesses of all of the planes.
