Before we can begin your education for gun combat and the differences it presents compared to modern day combat, the basics need to be covered so we have a common frame of reference. Once we have established a firm foundation on which to build I will attempt to expand your horizons for guns combat. This will be a series of articles, approximately 8 chapters in length.

Although there is a wealth of information available for modern or jet combat in today's literature, all that knowledge was established during an era where a target was not a blip on the screen but seen with the eye. While knowledge of weapons and gunnery was important, nothing was more critical than the flying skills of the pilot.

Air combat is diverse and fluid. Combat can be offensive or defensive in nature, thoroughly planned or spontaneous, victorious or unsuccessful. Much of what occurs in the air has to do with training, but just as often, depends upon a pilot's instincts.

To be an outstanding combat pilot, you must have a good understanding of the basics and possess inherent talent. You need to know every trick in the book, and then keep a few extra ones up your sleeve for moments when unconventional tactics could very well save your life.

With slower top speeds and short-range weapons, W.W.II aircraft were not capable of combat beyond visual range. Close-in, guns-only combat is a unique scenario that pushes pilot skills to the limit, beyond anything a modern day jet jock has to face.

Since radar and beyond visual range combat is not in question, the only natural advantage is the element of surprise. Once this is gone, combat becomes a battle of wits and endurance and machine vs. machine. The pilot's individual skills and any inherent strengths of his aircraft are all that stand between him and a silk letdown or even worse.

"Combat is the ultimate flying experience,"
Brig. General (ret.) Chuck Yeager, USAF, 13 Kills

Combat Flight Simulator.

In Search of the Quick Fix

One of the most common questions I get from new pilots is, "What is the secret to the quick kill?" or "How can I fly better (instantly)?" or "Is there a better way of doing things other than these standard tactics?"

There are no quick fixes in air combat, and neither is there anything new. There is, however, lots and lots of training and practice. When you meet some of the better pilots on the Internet they will have invariably put in thousands of hours practicing their trade to the point that they are highly skilled. Reading this text is a start, but only the beginning, since there is no substitute to hands on practice. Every pilot needs to get into the plane of his choice and fly the hell out of it to learn it's limits as well as their own.

Those of you who think you know something about flying might find some of these lessons overly simplified. Read them anyway. You might learn something.

The Basics of Flight

Air combat tactics were not invented in the jet age, when the bandit was a faraway blip on the radar scope. Rather, ACM was invented when pilots had to know how to fly in order to win an engagement. This first article focuses on basic flight, because engagements in prop driven aircraft require excellence in piloting, and not only knowledge of weapons and systems.

AERODYNAMICS

This is the boring physics lecture, don't nod off just yet, though. You really need to know this stuff.

Literally hundreds of green pilots have lost their lives (and thousands of sim lives) because they thought they knew how their plane would react. The only way (let me stress that - the ONLY way) to really be in control of your plane is to understand the forces acting on it and the way the control surfaces manipulate those forces. You don't have to memorize Bernoulli's equation, but you'd better understand what it means for your wings. The pilot who has the aerodynamics ingrained in his head can overcome virtually any enemy, including the "ace-killer", an uncontrolled spin.

Five vs. Four Forces

Many texts will tell you there are four primary forces acting on your plane. They are wrong. There are five forces you need to contend with. With propeller-driven planes torque is the fifth force you need to be aware of. Here are the five forces broken down for you:

Gravity - This one is easy. You deal with it every day. Your plane and everything in it are attracted to the surface of planet earth. The more weight (Mass) in your plane, the greater the attraction. If there were no other forces acting on your plane, gravity would pull your plane to the ground and keep it there.

Drag - If gravity was pulling you down, drag would limit how fast you would fall. In simple terms, drag is the resistance the air offers on anything trying to move through it. A moving plane with no force propelling it would quickly slow down and stop because of the force of drag acting on it.

Thrust - This is what keeps your plane moving through all that resistance. The spinning propeller pushes the air backwards, which brings us to Newton's equal and opposite reaction - a forward motion of the plane. Of course thrust combines with gravity to increase the speed of your dives.

Lift - Is what keeps you in the air. The plane's wings are designed to take advantage of a side effect of the law of conservation of energy. The curvature of the wing means that air must move faster going over the top of the wing then it does passing below it. This produces a side effect where a lower pressure exists above than below (the pressure determined in Bernoulli's equation), and the difference in pressure between bottom and top creates lift. When the lift on both wings is great enough to overcome gravity, the plane is held aloft. With lift and thrust both working to counteract the laws of nature, your plane flies.

iMagic's Dawn of Aces.

Torque - This is the last and often forgotten force for a propeller driven plane and is the twisting effect caused by the engine and propeller. In the WWI aeroplanes the torque you need to worry about is caused primarily by radial engines. These engines rotate in one direction, and that direction coincides with the roll axis of the plane. Some of the torque generated by the engine's rotation is transferred to the body of the plane, which makes the plane try to rotate in the opposite direction as the engine. If the pilot does not compensate for this (using rudder), the torque will cause the plane to roll. This is especially dangerous at low airspeeds and when landing.

I've mentioned Bernoulli's equation several times, in case you were wondering what that equation is, I'll give it to you:

P+1/2pu2+pgy=K

This means that for any particular volume of air, the sum of its pressure (P), kinetic energy (1/2pu2), and potential energy (pgy) stays constant (=K). Meaning, roughly, that the faster a volume of air moves, the lower its pressure.

THE THREE AXES

A plane can move in any number of directions. To simplify this concept we will discuss a reference based on three axes of motion. By design, these axes relate to the three main types of motion you can control in your plane.

Pitch - is the up and down movement of the plane's nose around an axis line drawn from wingtip to wingtip. You apply pitch by pulling back on the stick which angles the plane's elevators up, causing the nose to rise. When you push the stick forward, you angle the elevators down, causing the nose to drop.

Roll - is the tipping of the wings up or down causing a roll. The plane continues to fly in its current direction, but the wings spin around an imaginary line drawn from the nose to the tail. Roll occurs when you push the stick left or right, causing one aileron to angle down and the other to angle up. This is not merely air deflection but actually modifies the characteristics of the wing, increasing lift under one wingtip, while decreasing lift under the other. This differential in lift causes the plane to roll.

Yaw - is the side-to-side motion of the plane's nose around a vertical axis through the center of the plane. It changes the direction of horizontal flight, but does not affect altitude. You use the pedals to angle the plane's rudder left or right, which creates yaw.

BANK

Many beginning pilots confuse bank with roll but they are not the same. You combine pitch and roll movements to make a banking turn. By pitching the nose up and applying right stick, you cause the plane to bank to the right. A left bank is the opposite, you pitch up and roll left (push stick left). A banking turn is changing the angle of the nose and the direction of flight.

A side effect of banking turns is that you will lose lift and speed. If you want to keep your altitude and energy (speed), it's a good idea to apply a bit of extra throttle just before a bank turn. So banking is really another way of saying turning, not rolling.

CONTROL SURFACES

You've heard me talk about elevators, rudders, and ailerons; these are just some of the control surfaces that allow you to control movement of your plane. Your engine provides thrust, so it's another means of controlling movement.

Two of the forces - lift and drag - do not act on all parts of the plane equally. Plane designers have taken advantage of this fact to build features to allow you control of your plane with "control surfaces." These control surfaces are:

Propeller - this is a control surface that many seem to forget. This allows you to manipulate thrust. By varying the throttle setting, you cause the propeller to spin at different speeds. The faster it spins, the more forward thrust you have available.

Elevator - these are vertically-tilting sections of the horizontal part of the tail which effect pitch by influencing drag. You control the elevator with the forward and backward movement of the stick. When the elevators are down (stick forward), the imbalance in drag on the plane makes the nose tilt down. This is called "decreasing the angle of attack" and it causes the plane to dive. Stick back cants the elevator up, causing the nose to tilt upward and the plane climbs.

Wings - Many don't consider these to be control surfaces, but they are. When you change the angle of attack (AoA), by using elevators, the airflow over the wing changes. A greater AoA creates more lift - to a point. If this angle gets too large and the plane's airspeed is not high enough to maintain a smooth flow, turbulence will take away all the lift. Without lift, the plane will stall and drop like a brick. A smaller AoA equates to less lift.

Ailerons - These are the control surfaces you will pay more attention to than any of the others. They are like the elevators only on the wings.

Wounded FW in WW2 Fighters.

When you move your stick to either side each aileron reacts opposite to the other, with one aileron rising and the dropping down. Suddenly, one wing gains some extra lift, and the other one gets stuck with more drag. The former wing rises, while the latter drops, causing a roll. Your aircraft turns (banks) in the direction of the roll - the direction you moved the stick.

Flaps - These are built into the trailing edge of the wings and may be extended or retracted when needed. Flaps are most often used while landing but they can be used for other purposes as well.

Extending flaps, "flaps down", has several simultaneous results. First, lift is increased so the plane rises; next, drag is also increased, so the plane slows down. Overall (and this is the most important), the flaps lower the speed at which the aircraft will stall. This allows you to make a landing with a lower airspeed than you could make without flaps and still not stall.

When you retract flaps, the plane will drop a bit because of a sudden loss of lift. If you use flaps to take off, don't retract them too soon after take-off or you'll find yourself landing suddenly instead of rising! Pilots also use flaps in turns to take advantage of the extra lift in the turn, allowing them to turn in a smaller radius. We'll cover that in greater detail in the following chapters.

Rudder - This is the horizontally pivoting section of the vertical part of the tail. Through drag, it affects the yaw of the plane, pointing the nose left or right. Not using rudder enough will cause a rough ride and a very rough landing. Using a rudder too much or too often can quickly lead to loss of control of your plane.

INERTIA

All good pilots are aware of the effects of inertia on their aircraft and on their bodies. Pilots who do not understand inertia crash a lot. Inertia defined is - The tendency of any object to resist change to its state of motion. What that means is that if your aircraft is moving in a particular direction at a particular speed it tends to stay at that speed and direction and resists change. Likewise, if you or your plane are not moving, there is resistance to motion.

Inertia causes all kinds of trouble for pilots and is a main reason that we need engines. When starting your plane, you'll need much more throttle to accelerate than you will during flight. The engine has to overcome the inertia of the aircraft. Likewise changing direction can be assisted by the application of power.

While in flight, inertia makes maneuvers more difficult at high speeds. The faster your plane is moving, the more inertia it has in a given direction. So the engine and control surfaces have to do more work to get the plane to change direction.

The biggest side effect of inertia is g forces, the force that is felt when mass in motion is disturbed; in this case it is used to denote any inertial change experienced by the plane and the pilot. Whenever you change direction, you are subject to g's.

If you turn to the side (as in yawing or banking), you're putting a centripetal acceleration on the plane and your body. Inertia (often mistakenly called centrifugal force), tries to keep you moving in your original direction, causing "transverse g's" When you turn downward, "negative g's" make you feel lighter, as in a dropping elevator. If you turn upwards, as when pulling out of a dive, "positive g's" push you into your seat. Positive and negative g's have risks - greyouts, blackouts, and redouts.

Wounded FW in WW2 Fighters.

FINAL ADVICE

You can learn more advanced maneuvers in the coming chapters and by watching your fellow pilots. Analyzing the tactics of the enemy or the opponent is another good way to learn.

For those of you who haven't fallen asleep we'll move on to the next chapter, which will cover slightly more advanced flying techniques, the importance of formation flying and how it will increase your skills as a fighter pilot.