Questions on verticals

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by humble
Your not going to outrun a 38 in a 205, in my opinion "extending" just gives the 38 an added edge by giving away alt. unless others intervene he'll catch you. to me your best option is to initiate an angles fight at your alt. The more E you can bleed out of him while you still have alt to trade for E the greater chance you have of killing him.

Summing things up from the comments above I simply ran into a 10%er...he bounced me (maybe underestimated me) I nuetralized his E and gained significant angles...he went defensive (if he'd tried to extend I'd of hosed him) nuetralized my angles gain (denied me any kind of shot)...rebuilt his E enough to put me on defensive by getting the "over" me and on my 3-9 line...then tried to flush me out in front as he forced me back down...so I disengaged while I could...had enviornment been different he'd of caught me eventually however he choose to zoom up ...nother sign of a 10%er vs getting caught up in a second go around with me on the deck near (for him) a hostile field.

Guess my other option would of been ghosts suggestion of flying the "under" totally...think I did split-s on him at least once...but 3rd pass he went under looking for a shot and I followed him up. I guess I could of gone down again...but I was worried if he was of gas he'd of been on top of me awful quick.


Guess the simple answer here is that a well flown 38 is going to own a 205 under the scenario above, where the 38 has alt and E coming in. Even if you get to "even" your relying on the 38 driver to make a mistake...wish I could fly the thing that well....afraid I'm well back in the other 90%.

I'd also be careful in turn fighting a P-38 in a 205.  While you might have a faster turn rate in the 205, if the P-38 pilot is any good, he'll be able to get the reversal through a series of nose low turns or low yo yos and if things progress to the deck, the P-38 driver can force the reversal through a scissor maneuver.  When I get home from work, I'll post a film of a recent fight I had with a 205 that jumped me.  I was able to work him down to the deck where I eventually got the kill by reversing in the scissors.


Ack-Ack

[Hammerhead]

Please elaborate. I am a P-38 fan, and would love to learn what tactics (not maneuvers) should be used to keep my ride in one piece, and create confetti with his.

 rshubert
 

I wanna hear more of both (tactics and maneuvers)..........with films if possible.........

After all I'm the new and inexperienced P38 driver who's first move is to start a loop........

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by Hammerhead
Please elaborate. I am a P-38 fan, and would love to learn what tactics (not maneuvers) should be used to keep my ride in one piece, and create confetti with his.

 rshubert
 

I wanna hear more of both (tactics and maneuvers)..........with films if possible.........

After all I'm the new and inexperienced P38 driver who's first move is to start a loop........

Here's the film I was talking about with the 205.  The fight starts out with the 205 having a slight altitude advantage and after the merge the fight progresses to a series of vertical maneuvers in order to get an angle.  While it was a good fight and some nice flying from FrankB, the fight lasted longer than it should have and eventually ended up on the deck.  If you see in those vertical spirals we were doing, I had a few good opportunities for some snap shots which I took but missed.  Gunnery is my biggest weakness in this game and sometimes it makes things harder than they should be.

Anyway, after the fight gets to the deck, the fight pretty much progresses to chasing each other's tail.  In this part of the fight you can see how the 205 has a better turn rate than the P-38 but the Lightning's turn radius is slightly tighter, which allowed me to miss most of his shots.  As the fight went on, you'll see a few enemy planes show up and this kind of made things a little tougher since now I had to worry about 2 more planes to deal with.  In part of the fight, I even went nose up to meet what I thought was a high speed pass from one of the enemy Typhoons but when I realized it was just a tap dance, I resumed turning with the 205.  Since I didn't know at first that these 3 enemy fighters were just going to watch and not interfere and the fact that a couple of them made what appeared to be attack runs, I had to be aware of what they were doing and make sure I didn't get fixated on the 205.  The fight went into a scissors where I was able to get some hits on his engine and in the next pass he was able to hit my engine when I made my turn a little wider than I should have and you'll hear his engine quit after that pass which then let me finally finish him off.

Here's the film.

P-38 vs 205

It's a long film, the fight itself lasted a little over 10 minutes and goes on for a little more than 12 minutes.  Last two minutes is filled with B.S.ing with those enemy planes that circled like vultures above the fight.


Ack-Ack

[wetrat]

Even a 109 will have trouble co-E in the vertical with a P-38... unless you know what you're doing or are confident the other pilot is a tard (which is usually the case), don't follow him up unless you have more E, as ackack has said. Myself being overly aggressive, I wouldn't take my own advice, I'd play dumb and go up after him... but that's just me