I was recently thinking about the next Aces High scenario, and the need for tactics involving teamwork and it reminded me of my first experience of wingman tactics so I decided to share. Sorry if it’s a bit long.
Proper wingman tactics can bring a huge benefit in terms of the probability of success, but it absolutely requires a selfless attitude towards getting kills, because it depends on the willingness to give the kill to your wingman or countryman. That is often the missing ingredient, but the catch is, that being willing isn’t enough, it actually takes a degree of knowledge and skill. Two pilots who are great individual 1v1 fighters won’t automatically be able to fight well together as a section. I’ve seen it often, two great pilots enter a fight and within seconds of the merge they revert to fighting as two individuals, with no mutual support and no benefit at all. No matter how good of a stick you are, coordinating your maneuvers with another pilot is difficult, it takes deliberate practice, and a lot of it.
When all that is in place and two pilots fly together and real team work kicks in, something amazing can happen. If you have never experienced that, you will, and you are in for a real treat. I will never forget my first experience of proper wingman tactics, and I was on the wrong end of it. It was a big eye opener and a real game changer. Allow me to share what happened.
I was in the main arena flying a Spitfire at altitude when I saw two P-51Ds far enough below me that catching them was possible. Supremely confident and at the peak of my game I dived in fully expecting to get one of them or both. The worst case scenario being that one or both of them might be able to run away.
I picked my target and executed a text book intercept and as I closed the range, my target did the anticipated defensive turn. I turned hard to follow, pulling close to the black out trying to pull enough lead for a shot but due to the control forces at high speed I was struggling against greatly reduced stick authority to line up for a shot. Then before I had a guns solution I saw tracer pass my canopy and heard the sound of 50 caliber rounds hitting my wings. Scrolling the rear views I noticed that just as quickly as I had saddled up on the first P-51, the second one had saddled up on me. Even worse, I had lost more speed in the turn, so he was gaining on me and getting a guns solution faster than I could line up on his buddy. I was forced to break off and switch targets. This was already unlike anything I’d experienced before, the speed and ease of their transition from defensive to offensive was both surprising and impressive. Still confident, I kept a cool head. I wanted this second P-51 to be equally impressed with how quickly I would now send him to the tower. But this guy didn’t maneuver hard at all, it was almost as though he was trying to make it easy for me. What I hadn’t yet spotted was that at the very moment I broke off my first attack, his wingman had reversed as well and I was being set up. Again I had to break off before I could get a shot. Being a fairly fast thinker, I began to anticipate events but there was nothing I could do to break the cycle. I couldn’t extend, because their aircraft were faster. When I used my turn rate advantage on one to get behind him, the other cleared his six and each time it was costing me more energy than either of them. A lesser pilot would have been more persistent and tried to hold the attack longer in the hope of getting a quick kill, but that would almost certainly have been fatal. I was trying to keep my speed, waiting for one of them to make a mistake, but they were obviously talking and synchronizing their maneuvers with precise timing. As the fight worked its way gradually to lower altitude I was feeling the pressure. The hunter had become the hunted. These two P-51 pilots were working together perfectly, the moment I switched from one to the other, they reacted accordingly, and as soon as I tried to get my guns on one of them, his wingman man always got the drop on me, forcing me to break off and switch again, each time forcing me lower and slower. Each time I came close to getting a good rear aspect shot my target would be pulling away from me, making my shot harder, while the P-51 at my rear was closing distance making his shot easier. This continued for some time while my mind was racing to think of something that could break this deadly pattern. Meanwhile the two P-51 pilots were working together with ease, each pilot switching seamlessly from defense to attack and each defensive pilot repeatedly setting me up for his wingman. Eventually, I barely had enough energy to avoid hitting the trees. I had become low and slow with nowhere to go. I was out of energy and out of ideas. These two P-51 pilots were low and slow as well, but they didn’t need to work as hard as I did and they were gradually wearing me down until I had nothing left. I could hardly believe it, two P-51Ds and a Spitfire in a long tough turn fight and they had won. Shortly after I saw their landing reported in the text buffer, with 8 kills each.
Salutes were exchanged, but I was haunted for some time after by the contrast in the experience, for me it had been an intense fight, as though I’d just done 15 rounds in the ring. For these two guys it had been more like a sunny afternoon's fishing.
What I didn’t know at the time was, they were executing what I later learned was the simplest and most effective of wingman tactics. They had done this hundreds of times before. It was practiced and well-honed. They weren’t just using the tactics well, they were communicating well, using brevity code so that every word exchanged and every maneuver was short, simple and effective. These pilots never flew alone, they always flew together, just like real fighter pilots. During that fight these two pilots earned my admiration and respect.
The fight made such an impression on me I joined their squad and flew the P-51D with them and learned how to fight like they did. I soon came to appreciate the strengths of the P-51 and in my view it went from being the aircraft that was only flown by runners and cowards to one of the most formidable aircraft in the game. I discovered that fighters with good high speed energy retention such as the P-51 and P-47 were built for wingman tactics and when flown in that way became almost unbeatable. I finally understood why some of the less maneuverable fighters had been so highly valued during the war. Flying as part of this P-51 squad, kills had never come so easily. Fighting was transformed from being a sequence of difficult and high risk individual engagements to something as easy as culling baby seals. As a squad we all set up our wingmen for effortless kills until everyone in the sortie could land a large kill tally together. The only thing that limited kill rates was fuel, ammunition and the availability of targets.
The most amazing thing about this was the simplicity of the tactics that made it possible. If you would like to learn more check out my post in the help and training forum.
https://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,399565.0.htmlKind regards
Badboy
