Rolling in a FW 190

[dduff442]

I remember that even after learning a bit about manoeuvres and studying tactics guides like 'In Pursuit' (which is excellent and free on the web), I was using the scissors but not as effectively as possible because I basically only partly understood why I was doing what I was doing. Then I read some other sim pilot's remark about the moment to reverse your turn being when you see that your adversary is outside your turn.

If your opponent is tracking you (lead pursuit) or following your turn, then reversing the turn just puts you in front of his guns. The 190's poor sustained turn performance turns into an advantage here, though. Suppose you do a quick 3/4 roll and then turn away as hard as the machine allows to get away from a pursuing Spit. As soon as you start to turn, the Spit is already late because he can't match the 190's roll performance. Now when the 190 is turned hard it will quickly lose speed... even if the Spit pilot cuts his throttle he actually can't bleed speed as quickly. The rapid slow-down effectively tightens the 190's turn, sending the Spit shooting past.

The moment the Spit's wings have him pointed to pursue is the moment to reverse. If your playing with cockpit view only, then the moment he disappears from view to the rear or a split second afterwards is the time to do it. You'll need to get your eye on him immediately after reversing so as to avoid his guns as you cross over. With external views on this is a piece of cake with enough practice; with a locked cockpit, the main problem is evading your pursuer's guns while you manoeuvre him to within 250m without losing excessive energy -- close enough for this to succeed but also close enough to get shot down. That's where the dinking comes in handy.

Cut back against him hard and you'll be nearly head-on as you cross. I usually only reverse once and make good my escape at this point, but if you reverse a second time exactly as your paths cross you will have a decent chance of scoring a rare dogfight kill with a 190. It's chancy though and you will need to dive away if it doesn't work out.

I should mention that while this will work against any lone pursuer exept maybe a P-51 in the very high speed domain (and you can use other tricks against them), it's no use whatsoever against a staggered pair of attackers. Evading one will just tee you up nicely for the other. Your best bet against a pair of attackers is to dive away, twitching the stick and rudder to complicate aiming, or to break the leader's pursuit and dive under the follower.