Dudley

On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 14:59:43 GMT, "Dudley Henriques"
wrote:


"Big John" wrote in message
.. .
Dudley

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You would have enjoyed the 51 at a light GW with minimum fuel. It was a joy
to fly.

I can imagine. Ever bird I ever flew where I got the weight down, flew
so different and better.

I knew Douglas Bader fairly well. We used to run up our phone bills talking
about fighter tactics during the war. We both agreed that the "dogfight era"
came to a screeching halt during the Battle of Britain when just about
everybody realized that the way to survive was to avoid the left side of the
envelope. Ps wasn't a factor then in ACM theory as you know I'm sure. Boyd
and Christie and Rutowski hadn't figured out the EM concept yet, but you
guys were using it without realizing it "officially" :-)

When I came in Sq (newbe) I was told to"keep my airspeed up". We
didn't have all the fancy acronyms for it, just get going fast and
keep it going fast )

Best tactics were same as Chennault's, Make a sunrise attack with
superior speed and keep speed and exit the 'fur ball'. When you had
altitude on the fight pick your target and reenter or go home and come
back and fight another day..

If you got in a turning contest again keep you airspeed up until you
could break out and regain the dominate position.

Tactics were essentially what is taught today but we had to watch our
EM very close as any G's bled it off rapidly.

Would love to fly a 15-16 where you can pull it in to 9 G's and
accelerate instead of bleeding your energy down to the stall. I don't
think EM is as important in today's birds as it was in the WWII birds?

Actually, Chennault had it right way back in the late thirties if they had
only listened to him. By the time you guys got in the fight, it was pretty
well doctrine that the way to both survive and rack up a score was to keep
the energy up; use one carefully flown pursuit pass, going through the angle
off spectrum from lag to lead when in firing parameters; zeroing the ball
and firing, then diving through a planned overshoot in the plane of the
target's motion.
ACM has come a long way since the early days hasn't it?

Have a nice week end.

BJ