Request tacticle help for USN planes

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by MaxGunz

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.

All good stuff Max but I wanted to highlight that. Quote for truth!

Energy fighting doesn't involve that sitting on the tail tactic at all... and that's a mistake that a lot of pilots make. The aim is to shoot to kill in the first burst and if you miss then you start over again.

With a Wildcat or a Corsair you may not obliterate the Zero but you can aim for his wing, a rather large target on a Zero, and either cripple his ability to turn fight or de-wing them and score the kill. If aimed well at a good deflection angle... you can cripple or de-wing with a quick burst from the guns. All it takes.

And if you miss... then you re-position. It's not a rally race.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by horseback

If the AI pilots all have the ‘same’ strength AND the high stick forces were part of the A6M series’ FM, one could reasonably expect the Zeros’ high G maneuvering to drop off at higher speeds and their recovery from dives to be mainly in a straight line until their excess speed was burned off. But they don’t, just as AI gunners in some planes are much more accurate than AI gunners in other aircraft for reasons unknown. In an offline campaign, it is that much harder to use the tactics used successfully in real life when your AI wingman bugs off and the AI aircraft you are fighting don’t exhibit the sort of limitations that the aircraft that they are supposed to be modeled on had.

cheers

horseback

Haven't flown the A6M in a long time, but against it in P-39/40/F4F as long as the fight is fast, my roll rate exceeds or is close enough to theirs. Only when closing speed is high, that is A6M very slow, then I cannot follow -but its difficult to say if its better maneuverability or the big speed gap.

[MaxGunz]

Originally Posted by IceFire

All good stuff Max but I wanted to highlight that. Quote for truth!

Energy fighting doesn't involve that sitting on the tail tactic at all... and that's a mistake that a lot of pilots make. The aim is to shoot to kill in the first burst and if you miss then you start over again.

With a Wildcat or a Corsair you may not obliterate the Zero but you can aim for his wing, a rather large target on a Zero, and either cripple his ability to turn fight or de-wing them and score the kill. If aimed well at a good deflection angle... you can cripple or de-wing with a quick burst from the guns. All it takes.

And if you miss... then you re-position. It's not a rally race.

I see some problems with getting on the tail, closing in and shooting:

1) in IL2 structure = armor. Tail wheel assemblies can soak a lot of hits and that's not the only hard to destroy pieces depending on the plane.

2) to stay behind the target's six you have to be co-speed and co-alt. If you can maneuver quicker and harder at that speed/alt then you're at a disadvantage.

3) on someone's tail and closer than 200m, every jink they make displaces them wide from your sights.

I like to come in from one side. If they turn away then they become an easy shot, if they turn into me then I have a harder shot but nose and cockpit stand out, a longer burst generally gets some oblique hits on thin to no armor or IL-2 bullet sponge parts.

I learned the one-side approach from reading Hartmann, BTW. I think that he showed it is better to be a aerial hunter than an aerial fighter.