Quote:
Originally Posted by RPS69
I don't share this. Low level flyers, with good maneuver capacity, were tough targets. Fast fighters, trained to hit and run, see those targets as a good opportunity to start a nice and long chat with the worms.
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That's exactly what happened. Rudel was a master of his aircraft and was able to make sharp evasive maneuvers at close to ground level. His opponent either took a lucky shot from Rudel's rear gunner and/or stalled out with too little altitude to recover.
Rudel only knew that he'd won the fight when his rear gunner told him the Soviet plane had crashed, which tells you that he was utterly focused on defense.
By rights, Rudel should have been dead, but his opponent got greedy for the kill, got sucked into a low speed maneuver fight, and then screwed up (or got unlucky) doing it.
Smart tactics for the Soviet pilot would have been to get a few of his buddies together and do "Thatch weave" beam attacks by sections. Twisty, windy, slow speed evasive tricks only work well against one opponent. They don't work so well if you're bracketed by 2 or 4 fighters.