LUFTWAFEE 1946 (Would Have Happened if ...)

Now...Contrary to all real world empirical evidence...Shooter2018 would have us believe this is how a Spitfire looks compared to an Me-109 when the two planes are equidistant from the viewer.


I'm calling "El Toro Crapo" on him and his formula.

 

That aint no 109! Its probably a Bucon...

 

Yes, it is a Spanish Buchon...However, it is the only photo online that is from the real world, and has the Spit and a 109(or a reasonable facsimile), with the Spitfire being significantly larger.

 

Some historical context: Günther Lützow of JG 3 ordered that several areas on the unit’s aircraft - the entire nose, rudder and wing tips - be painted yellow as a recognition signal in order to avoid confusion with the enemy in aerial combat. That photo shows exactly why he did so.

 

And don't forget the D-day stripes ...or the black and white underneath most hurricanes early on...

 

Pacific-based USAAF and RAAF P-40s and Spitfires eventually had all white tails.

 

Good call mate...





And included the Boomerang and Wirraway too...

 

More specifically, the New Guinea theater.

Also, not just tails, prop hubs And wing leading edges too. But, these are hard to notice from photos posted.

 

Or not. Most WWII single engine fighters didn't vary that much as I've pointed out. Should be possible to crunch the numbers ahead of time and come up with a decent way of doing it. Aspect angle is probably more important approach vectors could be as well.

I'd like to see your evidence for that. i.e. sources please.

Which should be almost irrelevant any time the aircraft is coplanar with the observers vision. Which would be a good part of the time.
As noted many of the planes that were shot down never saw the plane that shot them down. However as mentioned in order to do so the shooter had to be well within reasonable spotting distance. The obvious conclusion is that the pilot was looking elsewhere. Doesn't make a whole lot of difference how big the plane is if you are not looking at it. So even if there was a big difference in "spot ability" it wouldn't give the plane that wasn't as "observable" that much of an edge. The paint schemes posted previously make it clear that it wasn't the biggest concern by any means at the time.

 

I calculated the critical dimensions for the aspects mentioned..

 

Plenty of blind spots in any aircraft...more in some (like the 109) than others...remember the silk scarf to stop chaffing from constant head swivelling...so it’s not always the pilot looking somewhere else...of course we could talk about tunnel vision whilst shooting at an enemy...a good time for another fighter to strike...

 

Another area where the Germans had an advantage while defending the Reich. They would take off on a relatively short flight with a decent idea where the opposition was. That makes spotting them a bit easier. If you are vector to come in out of the sun or use cloud cover so much the better. That might also be why the free ranging "escorts" had such a positive impact for the allies.

 

In the first year of the war, much of the Germans' advantage in spotting their opponents stemmed from the tight formations the British and others flew. Not only was a tight cluster of planes more visible, the pilots spent much of their attention maintaining formation rather than scanning the sky. In time of course the British - and everyone else - adopted the "finger four" which is still a basic fighter tactic today.

 

I've also read that early on rather than having their guns concentrate at a given range the British actually had them dispersing. The idea being that it made a hit more likely (although it minimized the number of hits).

 

The finger four-mation was obsolete 50 years ago, at least for battle. You might see a tightened up finger four at air shows and other public flying displays.

For high speed combat a pair of jets flying line abreast is safer, more flexible, and less a burden on resources. The more planes you put in formation, the more time is needed for station-keeping and there is less time for lookout. And going faster makes it difficult to hold formation.

By 1965 the U.S. Navy’s two-jet loose deuce was the standard formation used by West Germany and Israel. Because of rivalry USAF fighters did not move away from World War II tactics until the 1970s. The fluid four and welded wing principles used by the air force in Vietnam were linked to a higher loss rate and much criticism.

 

With a finger 4 you should at most only have to watch one other plane in your formation to keep formation. Now if you are flying really tight then you might want to keep a closer eye on the others.

 

Distance was important if there was any hope of keeping station at high thrust. Navy policy was that two jet fighters should fly abreast with 4,000-6,000 feet of separation while on lookout. The USAF element leader and wingman were more closely spaced at 2,500-3,000 feet apart, with 6,000-9,000 feet between two pairs.

In a right-handed finger four, the jet furthest to starboard (typically the least experienced pilot) was positioned behind the other three and had little chance of getting assistance in a surprise attack. The No. 4 position in the USAF fluid four suffered the highest losses for that reason.

Another complication was that some USAF flight commanders demanded a single-shooter policy. With a result that three, less experienced pilots focused most of their attention on following the leader. That was a waste of manpower and in any case the leader could not use the full performance of a jet fighter if he expected all four to stay in formation. There was another unwanted side effect of having four pilots trying to lockstep: North Vietnamese MiG pilots learned that one decoy could pull an entire flight of Phantoms off escort, leaving the strikers exposed.

The MiGs operated as singles, pairs or three stacked. Often the leader was the pilot in trail. Regardless of formation, the MiG pilots relied heavily on GCI radar stations to act as lookouts.

 

Thanks for the corrections/clarifications. My understanding was that it was a bit more fluid. Think I was reading on the development of the "Thatch Weave" where the finger 4 was described as a pair of pairs where they really didn't expect to stay in that formation once the shooting started.

 

Excerpted from our "British Fighter Tactics" in the Battle of Britain Database.

The tactical methods used by Fighter Command were embodied in the regulations known as the “Fighting Area Attacks” developed during the 1930s and based upon their experience in attempting to intercept German bombing attacks on London by aircraft and Zeppelins during World War I.[1] These were worked out in conjunction with the development of the new monoplane fighters designed for the RAF, the Hurricane and Spitfire, beginning in 1934. These tactics were predicated on utilizing the eight-gun battery of the new fighters in mass to down enemy bombers (little or no thought was given to enemy escort fighters[2]). But more important, the assumption was made that fighters would have only a marginal edge in speed over attacking bombers, since prewar engine technology seemed to indicate that there was a finite power output from a single engine in a fighter, whereas simply by adding additional engines a bomber could be made faster. That also led to the belief that most combats would consist of just a single pass at any enemy bomber. Considering the relatively low destructiveness of the .303 rifle-caliber ammunition used that in turn led to the belief that the numbers of guns firing at any given bomber needed to be maximized, thus the eight-gun armament, but also the assumption that multiple passes by a succession of fighters or a single pass by a number of fighters flying in tight formation was required. Finally, it was believed that the defensive firepower of bombers meant that fighters would have to “stand off” and deliver their fire at a distance, so standing orders were that their guns be harmonized to converge at 400 yards.[3] The result was that the tactics concentrated on the necessity for getting fighter formations into position where they could be capable of engaging enemy bombers, thus transforming the “tactics” into a question of aerial traffic control and tight formation flying.


The Fighting Area Attacks were based upon the 12-aircraft fighter squadron, divided into two six-aircraft ‘Flights’ and each in turn into two three-aircraft ‘Sections’ (Blue, Red, Green, and Yellow, typically with Blue and Red in A Flight and Green and Yellow in B Flight). When launched for a mission the section would fly in an inverted-Vee formation (known to the British as a “Vic”), with each section usually flying in line ahead, one section after the other, normally at the same altitude.[4] The Squadron Leader (or senior squadron officer if the squadron leader was not flying) would lead the formation at the head of the first V, and Flight and Section Leaders would in turn take the lead V in their respective formations.


Formation flying was strictly observed and “good” pilots were those who were capable of maintaining a tightly closed up Vic.[5] This of course meant that the pilots tended to be very preoccupied with their position in the formation and in maintaining situational awareness with regards to the position of the other friendly fighters in the formation. As a result, the typical squadron formation could only search the small arc of sky to their immediate front, with the result that the smaller, often loosely flying, German two-fighter Rotte and four-fighter Schwarm were difficult to detect.[6]


Upon sighting the enemy it was the responsibility of the senior flying officer commanding to decide upon the method of attack. The order would be issued as one of a series of numbered “plans” that would be executed as attacks from ahead, astern, rear quarters, or beam depending on the geometry of the approach and the relative speeds of the two formations. The plan would further specify if the attack was to be executed serially, by squadron, flight, section or individual. Thus, Fighter Attack 1 to 5 were all formations for attacks against unescorted bombers. A typical attack by a full squadron on a bomber formation would be ordered as “Fighter Attack Number XX – go”, which might then have been from abeam, perhaps in successive order of sections, Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, with each section attacking in section formation – four groups of three aircraft attacking the formation each in its turn. Alternately, each flight might have been ordered to attack in formation (two groups of six aircraft) or each aircraft could attack in succession, and so on.


[1] The “Fighting Area” referred to was in fact that defined in 1924 as the defensive zone that extended from the Bristol Channel south of Bristol, eastwards to Kent and then north to Cambridgeshire. This was the area that it was considered aircraft could patrol and engage an enemy in after ground observers had detected them when they had crossed the English coast.

[2] This statement may sound absurd, but actually reflects the perception of most air forces in the world prewar.

[3] This was also something of a self reinforcing requirement, since standing off at 400 yards meant that more bullets had to be fired for any given chance of a hit, so more machineguns were needed, thus the eight-gun armament, while heavier .50 caliber and 20mm armament were avoided since they would have meant fewer guns and less ammunition to gain a greater range, but a lesser chance of a hit. Experiments were conducted with 20mm cannon-armed fighters, but the guns available suffered from major reliability problems until well into 1941.

[4] Flying in an echelon of sections to port or starboard or in a echelon of sections to port and starboard (a “Vic of Vics”) was also sanctioned but apparently rarely used because of the unwieldiness of the formation.

[5] The Germans also used a tight V-formation for flying known as the Kette, but only for bombers.

[6] It is interesting that a number of the British combat reports for this period often criticize the poor German formation flying, apparently little realizing that the Germans were deliberately not flying in tight formations. It is also interesting to note that the German fighter pilots referred to the British formations as Idiotenreihen; literally “rows of idiots.”

 

Looking at the wiki article on it seems like I not only got bad info but it was more complex than I thought (possibly what I read was someone's interpretation of the following.
From:
Gun harmonisation - Wikipedia