Section landing?

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
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Danny Deger wrote:

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
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Danny Deger wrote:

snip
I'm not a Naval Aviator but I've done quite a lot of energy
maneuverability research with them flying T38's and have a few hours in
the F14 doing ACM.
Section is the common term used in the Navy for an element pair whether
in fighting wing or double attack spread formation which is the old
loose deuce section. The section in DA can be split between lead and the
wing as to who is engaged at any instant in time.

Is DA line abreast about 6,000 feet apart? We called this "tactical"
formation in the Air Force and we used it 99% of the time when egaging an
enemy. Like you said, number 2 is just as likely as number 1 to become
the primary offensive guy post merge.

Nuke strike was single ship, so we didn't have to worry about all that
formation stuff on that mission.

Danny Deger

P.S. Did you get any stick time doing ACM in the F-14?



Double attack is just another name for loose deuce. Formation changes
between the engaged and free fighter are common and position is usually
held by yo yo'ing high or low on the call into or away from lead. Your AF
counterpart would be fluid two or fluid four.
Never flown the F4, but the lateral separation sounds about right. It's
usually a consideration of turn radius and lead would usually have the
section a little above corner to account for snatch factor in a switch.
Double Attack I think works much better for the wingman than fighting wing
where if lead suddenly pulls max allowable g the trailer can be sucked in
trail. In double attack, the trailer yo yo's and either goes high or low
maintaining position.

Sounds like you were definitely working with 100% air-to-air guys. We were
air-to-ground and got to fly our 6 air-to-air sorties a half and not much
more. We were tail only in a close fight, because the Air Force would not
buy the Navy version of the all aspect AIM-9 with the bottle in the missile
and wouldn't mod our pylons to put the bottle in the pylons. Tail only in a
F-4 really sucks when doing DACM against an all aspect F-14, 15, or 16 :-)
We could throw a couple of AIM-7s in before the merge, but were seriously
outclassed in the close-in turning fight. I developed a tactic custom made
for tail only fighting. It worked well, but I couldn't get other F-4
drivers interested in it. Download a free copy of my book from my web site
and you can read about it in detail. I would like your opinion of it.
www.dannydeger.net

Danny Deger