[MaxGunz]

Originally Posted by Haklangr

Thanks all for the replies and help. I've now been able to shoot down my first enemy fighter, and many light and medium bombers. Couldn't have done it without you. Edit: After this post, I shot down two more! This place is good luck!

However, a few things still confuse me:

1.) For hard turns, if I have to make one, I usually throttle down to 0% briefly, as I've seen others do; I'm not sure exactly on the best timing, though -- I usually have it on 0% throttle for the first half, then go back up to 99/110% (usually). What should I be doing?

If you have to make one when you are the attacker then you probably didn't plan far enough ahead and aren't thinking because as the attacker you never -have- to turn hard and are probably being suckered.

2.) In the 109/a BnZ fighter, what do I do after I blow past the enemy after trying a high angle off shot? I line up the shot, and whether I miss or not I usually find myself heading away from the enemy at some high angle; I then usually try to turn around to have another go, and get a LaGG or P-39 on my tail as a result. Should I be trying for altitude or a lot of separation before doing any turning after an attack run? Is my strategy totally wrong? (Except for bombers, I don't find myself directly behind a lot of enemy planes, so I live on a diet of high angle off shots.)

Erich Hartmann the 109 Ace with 352 credited kills would plan his attacks to provide an off-angle behind the target exit every time. He did not stay around to mix it up. Go in, approach a point off one side of the target, make "the rude turn" into the enemy and fire then exit behind the target crossing his path and keep running whether he hit or not. It's insanely hard in limited-view sims, he'd be 50m off the target's left wingtip when he turned but I find that turning in from 150m-200m works well. Just don't take the time to aim, when to fire is a matter of timing, less than a second. You'll be so close that aiming is a waste. Make a short burst while pulling to get behind the target. In practice you'll ram many times before you get it right once. With some kind of head tracking (like TIR) it should be a little easier.
Hartmann always did that with much greater speed than the target and exited too fast to chase or turn 135+ deg in time to get a shot. Generally he achieved surprise and if he lost that on the way in he aborted the attack. His record speaks about his tactics and he survived the war.

About hard turns in general:
* don't hard turn more than 45 degrees to make a shot if you are not turn fighting.
* horizontal turns are -the worst- in terms of speed bleed. Use the vertical, Luke, Gravity is "The Force" you want to use.
* watch your speed, don't get even halfway slow and if you start to slow down much, loosen up on the stick till you don't.

*** Don't get Greedy. That is the #1 mistake. Instead of a hard turn, plan a series of moves to give yourself a better shot while retaining your combined speed/height energy.

Edit: After shooting down the two fighters mentioned above, I think just not bleeding off any speed and attaining a wide separation before trying another run is the key.

Good thinking! Keep it up!

I'm avoiding hard turns (and turning fights) and using speed and altitude to set up shots/disengage. No flaps except combat flaps for particularly hard turns, throttle down for dives and turns and up to 110% sometimes, second-widest FOV: big improvements along with knowing what tactics (speed, altitude... gunnery practice!) to use with a fast but wide-turning fighter. But if I'm getting anything wrong still please tell me -- I'm hardly an ace, even after my magnificent third fighter kill...

I definitely don't know what to do when an enemy is on my six: I assume, with LaGG-3s and P-39s, I'm gonna want to try to outrun or outclimb them, but how to avoid getting poured full of lead while I do this....

You can be hard to hit in a barrel roll, especially from close on your six. Johnnie Johnson told about in a P-47 when a German was on his tail he would pull up and roll -- if the German followed he would end up in front.

From farther behind, then a shallow climbing spiral (defensive spiral) will make you very hard to hit and give you a great position to reverse the attack if the enemy drops off. One P-38 Ace shook 4 190's that tried to follow him up. All single-engine props have a better and worse side to turn due to torgue and P-factor while the P-38 does not. As each one tried to pull lead on him they stalled and spun out. He went home rather than pursue but what happens online?

A hard flat turn can keep you safe but leave you more vulnerable than you were. Even if you don't get hit the enemy just scored if you slow down and he doesn't. If you can get someone to crash then that's a "maneuver kill" which IMO counts as more than a "guns kill".

Learn your Basic Combat Maneuvers (BCM's) in practice flight against NO ONE until you don't have to think about them. If you have a load of other things going on (ie COMBAT) then you won't learn as well.
Then learn your Advanced Combat Maneuvers (ACM's) the same way. Put it all together when practicing gunnery and then go to combat to tighten up on the whole including Situational Analysis (SA), knowing what's going on around you.

Another real big topic to research: Energy Management.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_fighter_maneuvers