The art and science of dragging

[myelo]

Had a friendly complain the other day when I kept turning as he was trying to clear my six. I was in a spit vs. 190. Now I really appreciated the help and wanted the 190 dead as much as anybody did. But, while I understand it would be nice for me to fly straight and level while my teammate killed the 190, the tracers over my head, pings, and various plane parts falling off made this undesirable on my part.

I suspect each situation is different, but I would be interested in some tips on how to properly drag an enemy.

[Seeker]

1) Stay alive. You're not dragging if you're dead

2) Make very many small jigs and jinks, in pursuance of (1), but no major course corrections, no U turns.

3) If you're leading back to your friend, lead back at an angle, and turn away, not to your friend. That way your friend has a chance at both a tracking shot (instead of a HO) and keeping up his E for a second attempt.

4) Be prepared to switch roles. Most often your attacker will change focus to the new threat (your friend). Be ready for it, and pounce when it happens.

[funkedup]

Those are good suggestions.

Other rules:  

Drag towards friendly territory.

Drag away from any big furballs or enemy concentrations.

Drag so that the friendly has a chance to intercept your bandit.  If you are going very fast and the friendly is slow, you need to give the friendly an intercept angle or else he can't catch you.  If you are at 10k and the friendly is at 4k, then you need to lose some altitude.  If you are on the deck and the friendly is at 20k, the friendly is going to have trouble getting to you in a hurry without compressibility problems.

Don't HO the friendly.  If you are heading towards eachother you have to give him something like 1k yards flight path separation so that he can make a lead turn.  Don't fly through him.  Fly to one side of him, above him, or best of all, fly under him.  Then he can split-s on to the 6 of the bandit.

Another good move if you see a HO happening is to call a turn and make it.  Tell the friendly you are going left or right, then make a 45 to 90 degree gradual turn in that direction.  The bandit will follow you, and if the friendly is smart he will turn with you and slide in behind the bandit.

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: funkedup ]

[Vermillion]

Excellent Advice in both Seekers and Funked's posts.

FYI, you can perform defensive manuevers without just performing hard G turns, which makes it very hard for your friend to clear your six.

Try using loose rolling barrell rolls, while trying to head in the same direction. Rapid wingovers and changes of direction are helpful. Just make sure you keep to the same basic course. Not only does this make it hard for the enemy to hit you, it might also cause the enemy to overshoot you.

You can also use the "dolphin" manuever where you use the quick elevator response of your spitfire, to do a sort of vertical scissors, but keeping your wings parallel to the horizon (personally I hate this manuever, from the attackers perspective, but it is legitamate). IE sharp nose up and down maneuvers.

[Wotan]

NEVER TURN INTO THE GUY CLEARING YOUR SIX

also if you expect that everyone flies spits and nikis and go into elaborate stick stirring manuvres then get pissed when you get killed.

Theres a level of SA that covers dragging.

1. plan a way out before you enter
2. Now where your friends are and what they are flying
3. Dont panick look to set the guy chasing you up so that he gets killed.

[Tac]

To drag:

Con on your 6, friendly coming to clear it, start jinking left, right up and down. If you dont deviate from a 45 degree flight path while jinking, your 6 will be cleared quickly.

Ive made it a rule that if im clearing someone's 6 and that person turns hard or turns to ME to make me HO his opponent, I just leave him to die.

Chances are, if you turn hard, you're dead anyway. The con will STILL be on your 6 and you've just made it twice as hard for your teammate to clear your 6 compared to the con at your 6.

[Blue Mako]

The other rule to setting up an effective drag is Keep the cons attention.

Gentle climbing turns keep the bad guy focussed on you as he thinks he has an easy kill.  You can also use this to get the bogey nice and slow for the kill.  However, if you are going to do this you must trust your friend to kill the con.  If your friend doesn't kill the bad guy quickly you are dead...

[Andy Bush]

The tactical efficacy of the drag ceases when the bandit enters weapons employment range.

In other words, anyone who drags when he's getting shot at has seriously missed the point!  

Drags are relatively long range affairs...usually attempted when the bandit does not have the other flight member in sight...or is dumber than dirt.

The number one rule when defensive is to defend...not maneuver to set up your wingman.

Andy

[Kweassa]

Sometimes, it's not so bad to drag the guy behind you almost straight at the person willing to clear your six(as in the Thatch Weave) - if you are sure that a) the guy willing to clear you is a good shot, b) he's armed with .50s, and c)the team work is very good.

 Usually, cons don't expect the tail clearing person to come in a near-HO angle getting a front quarter shot, and even if he is aware the target's wingman is near, he usually prepares to disengage only after he notices the wingman is maneuvering to catch his six. This gives in good results with good team work, preferably with voice communication devices such as RW.

 The chased person could do light jinks without major course adjustments, heading towards the wingman, and at the critical moment begins flying level. At this moment the enemy behind also straightens himself out, preparing for the shot, and this is when the wingman coming from the front just aims at the middle of the 'invisible line' connecting the hunter and the hunted, puts in a long burst of .50s which forms a 'wall' right in front of the hunter. If the aim was right, the probability of downing the hunter is high since it hits usually the most critical parts: the engine and the cockpit. Arguably, it is pretty easy to aim in this situation too, since it is not a blind-lead shot. The wingman has a good view on where he should form up the 'wall'.

 This only works with good team work, but it is a very rewarding experience when it works perfectly  

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Kweassa ]

[Soda]

Nice thread, a tonne of useful info.  I think almost every trick has been covered.

3 things I always keep in mind when I'm dragging:
1) enemy gun lethality range.  Something like the La7 has an effective gun range under D500 while something with hispanos or .50's can reach out to D800-D1.0.  Always keep that in mind.  Also keep in mind the amount of ammo the enemy has.  A Spit with 250 rounds of hispano is less likely to want to fire all that ammo at long range where a N1K with the 450 rounds in 2 banks will likely not worry about spray-and-pray tactics.

2) eventual overtake speed.  Who has the acceleration and overall speed advantage.  The more acceleration/speed advantage you have the more defensive maneuvers you can make and the longer your drag will be effective.  Dragging with a Spit is bad news against an La7... he will turn D900 into D400 in no time.  Best to know about how long you think you have before you will have to go truely defensive so you can estimate if friendlies can get to you in time.

3) know the person who you are dragging for, try and identify the guy who appears to be coming to your aid.  Dragging kills tend to attract people to your aid (since they see it as an easy kill) so you can often tell if a friendly is coming to help.  Once you've identified someone coming to help, try and set the draggie up so that your friend has an easy shot.  No HO's, no high angle stuff.  Try and set up the draggie so your friendly has a nice 6 shot.  9 times in 10 the enemy will either break or get shot down.  This becomes more critical if your friendly helper is packing a lot of speed where some angles of shot would require almost a miracle to land hits.

-Soda

[airspro]

I loved this one >

We were in P51D's reaper started draging a Spit9 , he had to slow down some to get the guy to follow him . Now as he was "catching" reapers stang I went from 8 oclock high to his low six and blowed him up  

reaper asked him why he thought he could catch a Mustang in a spit , lol .

IMO the drag and bag is one of the nicest wingman moves in the game . It always makes my bro laugh .

That said lots as you have stated don't have a clue how to drag . They don't let you setup for the shot , but the ones that do , hehe .

Lots of times I drag for people I don't know , works very well even then , but you had better be flying a fast plane . Who in hell wants to be the best "turner" anyway , hehe , turning gets u dead way quicker in the MA .

A nice gentle climbing turn works the best for me .

Nice thread ,
take care ,
spro

[Lephturn]

Just one thing to add, and it's not really a "drag" per se.

You are on the deck in a Spit, in a turnfight with a 190a5 as for example as the first fellow mentioned.  Now he took a shot, and still has an advantage in angles, but you are slowly winning out and gaining angles.  Maybe you are hurt and need to RTB right away, or maybe there are other bad guys around and prolonged contact will make you easy meat.  Either way you want to help set up your buddies and get cleared so you can get the hell out of there ASAP!  In this situation, you can likely keep turning and you will eventually win.  The key if you want to stay defensive and make it easier for a friendly to help, is not to switch directions.  If you are in a hard turn to the left and you are winning, your friends will anticipate where you (and hence your enemy) will be when they engage and can set up a shot.  If you suddenly change directions, that snapshot they set up to clear you just went away.  If they are in an E fighter or have a speed/E advantage, they will not be able or willing to drop into the turnfight easily.  You need to make the enemy as predictable as possible to help them setup snapshots and deflection shots.

Now granted, first you have to survive.  BUT, if you are in a situation where you are likely to survive for a while and can drag, BE PREDICTABLE!.  If you are predictable, then so is your attacker, making it easy for your buddies to set up a snapshot pass to clear you.  Of course, this is only going to work so long as you can keep his guns off of you.  Survive first, worry about the rest later.

What if he is in guns range and parameters?  Then you must evade, which means you can't be predictable!  The only way to help get your six cleared if you are in guns defensives is to communicate to your friends what you are doing.  This works best with voice coms, where you can say "I'm going to hit a hard break to the right in 3 - 2 - 1 - NOW!" over the radio so your buddies can predict what you will do and when, while you stay alive.  It's not a drag really, but it's increasing the enemy's predictability making it easier for friendlies to set up and clear you.

[funkedup]

Andy made a great point, which is an underlying assumption of what I was saying.  If the bandit is in weapons range you need to do whatever you need to do to not get shot down.  In that case it is up to any other friendlies in the vicinity to position themselves for shot.  

However if you can maneuver in a way that prevents you from taking bullets AND gives the friendly a chance at a shot AND won't get the friendly killed, then you are doing it right.

[myelo]

Thanks for all the excellent replies. They are very helpful.

[pbirmingham]

Originally posted by myelo:

I suspect each situation is different, but I would be interested in some tips on how to properly drag an enemy.

If it looks like this:
 

you're doing it wrong.