Here follows an excerpt from my latest title, “Fighter Captain – Online Air Combat Leadership”. If you enjoy it and wish for more, head on over here.

What are tactics for anyway?

Tactics is an offspring of procedures of command, control and communication. Without these three fundamental pieces, tactics are impossible. The Blob answers to no command – it moves to where the enemy is, and reacts to whatever sting it receives. No one is in control of the Blob – you cannot order part of the Blob to counter a threat to the left while another part of the Blob acts on an opportunity to the right: such action simply happen, or do not happen, on the spur of a sighting and on the impetus of individual pilots, dragging other pilots along. And the Blob has no way of communicating inter alia – six calls are not given, orders to drag and bag are not understood or followed, etc. It is just one big mess, one that you best avoid.

The tactics that you want to employ are those of MUTUAL OVERWATCH, SEPARATION and SEQUENTIAL ATTACK. And the funny thing is that they require very little preparation and very little coordination to succeed.

We have already hinted at how specific tactics are employed in the capsule briefings of the previous chapter: divide your group into discrete flights, each with a flight leader and each flight comprising one or several pairs of aircraft. Have those flights climb and cruise in line abreast, i.e. separated on parallel tracks at a distance of some 5-600 m between flights. Right there and then you have the fundamentals of air combat tactics working for you, almost without effort.

MUTUAL OVERWATCH
Pilots like to fly behind each other, in line astern. It is an easy and comfortable way of holding formation because all you have to do is follow the guy up ahead. The problem is, no one is watching your six, and an enterprising enemy can easily attack the whole line from tail to tip, or boom in to take out the leader before anyone can say ”wtf!”. In line abreast, you have the entire sky under observation: in front, behind, below and above the group flying at your side, out to maximum visual distance. No one can approach the flight at your side without you noticing it. The guys you are looking at are at the same time looking at you, clearing you visually from attack and enemy approach. And as you surely know, you cannot fight that which you do not see. Lose sight, lose the fight!

SEPARATION
When you are in line abreast, two tight groups with a distance of 5-600 or as much as 1000-1500 m between them, you are effectively separated: you have established separation. This separation is most useful, as no single enemy (or any tight group of enemy) can attack one part of your group without exposing them for a counterattack by the other, free, group.

An example: You spot a bogey creeping up on your other flight’s low six with a bit of closure. Your other flight keeps going (dragging and playing bait) while you turn into the bogey, now identified as hostile, and gun him down before he closes to effective range. The bandit was so focussed on closing on your other flight that he did not even notice you coming in! Piece of cake. If you were in a Blob, that bandit would easily have slugged two or three of your number before anyone could react, sending the rest into hysteria and static antics.

SEQUENTIAL ATTACK
Maintaining separation between flights allows you to attack any target or group of targets sequentially, i.e. with one blow following the other with a slight delay – think of it as a combination punch: one-two, one-two and down.

Example: Your flight of four fighters spots three Bf-109s climbing out on a straight path west from Bertrix. The spotting pair, having first dibs on the quarry, dives down, tears the wing off one 109 and zooms away without stopping to bother with the two remaining. The attacking element keep their smash after the bounce and fly an essentially straight line away, thus retaining energy and situational awareness. The 109s will in all likelihood give chase after a spot of discomfort, giving your second element a free money shot as the pursuing 109s devote all their attention to the supposedly disengaging first element. If the 109s wise up to the threat and break before the shot, keep going and allow the first element to reverse and have another go while the 109s are focussing on you. In this manner the enemy will be subjected to attack after attack until they are destroyed outright or dives out to reduce their threat status to nil.