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The Lead Turn
Or, Getting There Fustest with the Mostest
By
--)-Rapier
--, Fighter Ace
Content Manager
| "The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon that enables it to strike and destroy its victim. Therefore the good fighter will be terrible in his onset, and prompt in his decision. |
| "Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of the trigger." |
| - Sun Tzu The Art of War |
We've all been there. You're tooling along through the beautiful virtual blue sky and you spot an enemy plane at the same time they spot you. You turn toward each other, heading for the classic merge. Now what? Typically both adversaries head straight for each other in a head-on, recklessly exchanging fire and risking collision. The safest place from which to make an attack is the rear, as fighters have no guns there. The question is how do you get to the six position when the enemy continually turns into you?
The answer immediately seized upon by most newbies is to try turning harder. If your chosen mount has greater turn ability than your opponent's, this strategy will succeed. The results are less than satisfactory if you have chosen a plane like the Focke-Wulf, which doesn't out-turn very often. However, even if you have turn parity with your opponent, the results can be different from what you anticipate. Long-term tail-chasing results in two low, slow airplanes that are "meat on the table" for any mutual enemy that may happen to fly by.
So what's the solution? One possible idea is the lead turn, which is a merge technique. It is unlikely to win the fight by itself, but it can give you a tremendous advantage in the initial engagement, which can then be exploited and expanded upon as the fight continues. This is something to keep in mind as you continue to play and grow in Fighter Ace
. Unlike standalone flight sims, where discovering a single technique can make you invulnerable, Fighter Ace
is an ongoing real-time fight against a living, breathing, thinking opponent, who is unlikely to give up the ghost because you pull out your favorite move. An air-to-air fight can be compared to a long equation in which each move you make has a positive or negative value of varying intensity. The pilots who win are those who make fewer mistakes and whose totals come out higher than their adversaries'.
The lead turn takes the newbie's "turn harder" strategy and moves it forward in time. Instead of waiting and firing blindly head on -- hoping for hits -- and then turning after the merge, you throw away this dangerous shot opportunity in the hopes of a better one just a bit later on. As you approach head on, you wait until the opponent is nearly in firing range, start a hard break turn, and then pull slightly out of plane to confuse their aim. If your opponent doesn't recognize what has happened and flies straight for a ways, you will be able to turn onto their six. Naturally, if you have aimed to meet your opponent head on, your lead turn will take you off from your opponent's flight path and you will have to turn to get back to a true six position.
A better variation of the lead turn is to turn slightly off of your opponent's flight path as you are closing head on and then turn back onto their tail. For instance, as you close, you turn slightly to the left to displace your flight path to their right. Then just before being in range, you turn hard right to come around to their tail. Displacing yourself has a couple of benefits. First, it makes you harder to track as a head-on target. Second, you set yourself up to arrive more directly behind your opponent when you make the hard turn.
| "I was circling above the fight, waiting for a chance to break in, when I noticed four aircraft approaching from the south at about 8,000 feet. I turned toward them and identified them as 109's. I attacked from their nine o'clock, they broke into me, and we went round and round in a port-climbing orbit. At about 13,000 feet I started getting deflection, so two broke starboard out of the turn and started for the deck. I picked up my flaps, turned and chased. For a second it looked as if I wasn't closing, so I took two short bursts at about 800 yards just for meanness, when I noticed I was closing rapidly. I chopped everything, let down my flaps (twenty degrees) and closed to about fifty yards on the number two man. Just then he turned starboard as I fired, observing many strikes on the bottom, top and side of the fuselage and wing root. When I closed throttle, I screwed my trim so that I started sliding out to the left. As I slid by, I saw his starboard wing crumble about two feet from the wing root." |
| - Major Howard D. "Deacon" Hively 12.5 victories, USAAF |
A second improvement of this tactic is the lead chandelle. In this version, you turn off to the side in a climb as you approach. Your plane will be gradually slowing and putting altitude back into the bank. When you make your turn, your plane will have slowed, which tightens your turn radius. As you turn onto your opponent's tail, you will get a gravity-assist in accelerating your plane.
If, on your approach, you are traveling slowly (you may have just come off an energy-depleting fight), you can also dive to one side, to accelerate your fighter to its best corner speed. This way the gravity-assist will increase your turn rate. This one takes a finer sense of timing, because if you wait too long you may not be able to close to gun range.
The final and, in many ways, the best variation of the lead turn idea is a lead loop. It has the advantage of putting more energy back into the energy bank. This maneuver makes it possible to keep watch on the enemy as you go vertical (by looking overhead), so that you can see if they make any radical changes in direction. Should the enemy try to counter your move, you can choose to disengage simply by rolling to meet them nearly head on and putting the nose down and accelerating away. By the time they get turned around, you should have an excellent head start. You also get the maximum gravity-assist on your dive back to their six. Like the offset lead turn, you can make the lead loop even more effective if you dive slightly before you merge. This will make you harder to hit in a head-on and reduce the likelihood of a collision, and you will pass under the enemy, making you invisible to them for a short but critical period of time. They may not even recognize that you have looped on them. That is, until it's too late.
| "Strategy is the key to dogfighting. . . . [P]ilots can employ whatever strategy they choose. I always thought it was best to add power while heading toward the other aircraft and then, the moment the planes pass, head straight up. |
| "I also kept an eye on my opponent to see what decision he made. All the while, I attempted to convert airspeed to altitude, and when I finally rolled the plane, the other aircraft was down below me where I could go after him. |
| "The greatest dogfighter I ever saw was Chuck Yeager. . . . Chuck and I battled each other in all kinds of aircraft, after the war. . . . We usually fought to a draw because we knew each other so well that one could never get the best of the other." |
| - R. A. "Bob" Hoover
1 victory WWII
Airshow pilot extraordinaire |
Problems with the lead turn occur if you get too greedy and make your turn or loop too soon. If you are far too early, you will end up turning your tail toward the opponent's guns. If you are only slightly early, you run the risk of tipping your hand and letting them know what you are doing. Ideally, the move comes as a surprise so that they have little or no time to counter it.
The lead turn is the simplest of a series of opening moves that you can use to gain an advantage at the merge. This advantage can be squandered by subsequent maneuvering, so be ready to adjust your plan.
Hoover, R.A. "Bob," with Mark Shaw. Forever Flying
. New York: Pocket Books, 1996; p.56
Ness, William N., and Thomas G. Ivie. P-51 Mustang Aces
. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International Publishers, 1992; pp. 7 and 68
Shaw, Robert. Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering
. Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute Press, 1985; pp. 74-77
Sun Tzu. The Art of War
. James Clavell, ed. New York: Dell Publishing, 1983; p. 22
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