Pairs Tactical Flying

2 vs. 1 Situations:

• Bracket Attack:

1. A head-on situation vs. a single bandit.
2. If there is enough time to get orgenized, spread should not be very large so bandit would point close to a head-on with both planes and keep the symmetry. When in doubt, open the spread immediatly.
3. At about d3.5-4.0 the pair splits and widens the spread up to d1.0-1.2 so bandit would have to make a choise between the two.
4. Defending to one side, bandit turns his 6 to the other.
5. Important: best bandits reaction (by his POV) is to choose side early, going over/under one wingman and turning toward the other. Thus he would turn his side and not his 6 to the other wingman - good but not best. Splitting too late or not wide enough, would not give enough seperation to turn into the bandits 3 and 9.
6. Here is a rough sketch:

• The Weave (aka "Thuch weave") -

1. In this situation, the pair finds a bandit on their tail, too close to "cross-split" toward him.
2. The pair starts to increase the spread so the bandit has to choose a side.
3. When his choise is clear, the attacked wingman preform gun defence, dragging the bandit.
4. Second wingman closing back, attacking bandit's 5/7 direction.
5. Timed right, this might enable the second wingman to take a snapshot at the bandit, as he crosses his flight path. Should the badit try to "saddle up", he'll find hiself sadwitched.
6. The general principle here is good for a lot of situations (example, see below about "dragging") : Got a badits long and closing on your 6? cut infront of your wingman's nose (and let him know what you are doing!).
   
7. On the blackboard you can find drawnings of these moves:

• Dragging A Bandit -

1. In this situation the wingmen are in a furball and no longer in formation.
2. One wingmember is dragging a bandit and turns toward his wingman to help closing the distance.
3. While dragging try to lower the bandit - lower than your wingman.
4. DO NOT go under/above your wingman. Instead, break 90 degrees to one side and drag the bandit ACROSS the wingman's nose. Timing should be so that wingman would be able to catch up with you.
5. Bandit faces 2 options:
   • Continue the chase - thus turning his belly to aiding wingman and loosing sight of him.
   • Head for the wingman - not to expose himself to an attack. In this case providing your E is enough, reverse after him.
6. The drawing is on the blackboard:

2 vs. 2 Situations:

There is much more veriety here but here are 2 basic options:

• Bandits in line astern -

• If the rear bandit is sloppy and laggs far behind, preform a "bracket attack" on the leader. The wingman that the leading bandit turned to (check "bracket attack") continues to the rear bandit.



• If they are close, preform a "bracket attack" on the rear bandit. Leading bandit should be at an angle disadvantage and will take time to turn.



 

• Bandits in line abreast -

• Bandit might fly using the same tactics as we do. In this case due to the symmetry of the problem if they do what we do there should be no advantage/disadvantage from tactical manuvering (there are still E, turn-rate, speed issues of course).
• As a rule, best situation is when we pass "one on one" with their pair. Meaning, each pilot head-ons the bandit on his side (watch out for HO killing dweebs).
• Then each pilot turns to attack the other bandit preforming a "cross split" like geometry.
• If we have the alt and BnZ them we can zoom back up still in formation.
• If the bandits break to the same side, they will form line-astern where leader will be at an angle disadvantage and we attack the helpless rear.
• Bandits breaking "inside" preforming their own cross split, negate this manuver due to symetry.

• Merging wider than bandits -

  • As a rule, it's better to merge when our spread is larger than the bandit pair's.
  • On the merge this forces the bandits to turn "outward" and face each of us HO (otherwise they loose angles), while we are turning "inward".
  • we make the regular cross-split and exchange targets ending up with angle advantage.
  • The bandits have more angles to turn again into the center of the fight and this buys us a few threat free seconds and the first move of the fight.
  • Note: if they open wide, and we open even wider this might lead into a two 1on1 fights and need to be adressed as such.
  • Here's a scetch:

  

The Furball:

Once entangeled in a furball, formations breaks. But that doesn't mean that the pair breaks or stop working together. The wingman and leader should stay within the same furball, watching each other all the time! Do not run-off chasing bandits, always keep a fair distance from your wingman/leader so you can help him / ask for help and give 6 calls.

A good strategy with E fighters, when in an advantage, is to co-ordinate attacks by the pair on the same bandit. Taking them out one-by-one is the best way to go.

For some general guidlines about pairs in a furball check: Guidlines for pair fighting.

• Go back to the main page.
• Formation driving&keeping page.
• Guidlines for pair fighting.
  

give credit where credit is due:
thx to "56th figher group" for giving ideas for the illustrations here, and correct english terms.