I read about conditions at Guadalcanal for the Marine pilots there. Malaria being rife and you kept flying until you couldn't get in the plane. Not being able to get a night's sleep often due to air raids. And yes, missing the occasional meal as well as going up in planes with unfixed gigs that occasionally amounted to crash on or soon after takeoff with the lucky ones only having to turn back. It was very bad for the Marines from the start and well into it at Henderson Field.
But their stick roll forces were not so great at high speed.
I think that the difference came when tactics that took advantage of such margins were put into operation, same as with the AVG & the 14th Air Corps and that those tactics were in play before Guadalcanal was taken.
Those tactics allowed the US pilots to decline close-in dogfighting and win.
One thing about planes with great low speed turning ability is that it's not great at mid speed and loses out before things get really fast. I've taken advantage of that in many sims online and off just through tactics. Taking the faster, less turn easy plane and flying fast large half-vertical egg-shapes I've been able to hit the slow movers and be gone.
Any that did have speed up were generally not able to follow and get lead enough to shoot. They could fly inside my great circle but still losing lap after lap while almost all the time I held the initiative. When I'd get to the top well above them I could hold up there if it even looked like the sucker might get a shot timed and drop down behind him in seconds. When I was roaring along the bottom I had enough smash to alter course a good 10-15 degrees quickly without much slowing and be in a very different part of the sky than my path had been headed rather more quickly than my slower moving adversary could respond to. I could roll onto a new heading at any time and had the speed to make something real of it while my slower enemy had less of all that including the ability to turn at the speed he was forced to fly. His ability to use initiative was almost nil.
Of course if I hadn't been able to shoot deflection well, it wouldn't have meant so much. That's why I think there are so few good energy fighters. You have to get past needing to sit on someone's tail and pepper them from close in to energy fight.
|