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 Post subject: Curse you, Red Baron!
PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 4:33 pm 
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:rotate:

http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/08/f-35- ... red-baron/

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:09 pm 
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From what I've heard and read, I'm not entirely sure if this is parody!


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PostPosted: Sun May 01, 2016 11:28 am 
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Oh, that is funny....hehehe...:)

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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2016 1:25 pm 
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Now I'd like to see comparisons of F-4 and F/A-18 against those fighters. I believe first F-4s didn't have a gun and were supposed to engage enemy fighters outside of gun range with Sparrow missiles.

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PostPosted: Sat Aug 20, 2016 5:08 pm 
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I wonder if that simulation enabled that Fokker to be tracked by radar by that F-35. Perhaps that Fokker was hiding in clouds and shot at the F-35's missiles to blow them up while they were still on that F-35's wings?

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Any rules ideas that I post for BT aren't official unless an up to date BT rulesbook declares otherwise. You might have to wait at least a fortnight for me to reply because I'm usually very active. I won't discuss real life politics or religion on any of these forum(s), but my favorite color is yellow like my skin color (hint).


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 5:19 am 
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You'd also have to factor tactics into it. Remember, Richtofen was called "The Vulture" by his own men as at the start of any engagement he'd keep his subordinates at medium altitude massed, while he climbed up as high as he could on "overwatch". Once things devolved into a furball he'd come blazing in as fast as possible making sweeping strikes, then trade that speed back into altitude to lather, rinse, repeat.

In fact, Richtofen most likely NEVER ONCE actually got down and dirty in a turning fight with anyone!

Which is pretty much true to REAL air combat and its entire history. Simply put the majority of aircraft ever shot down didn't even know they were under fire until it was too late.

Air combat isn't some noble duel of equals. It's the art of the backstab. You sneak up on the other bastard and snagger them roundly before they even have a chance to react. Things devolve into a knife fight, somebody ****ed up! The traditional dogfight romanticized in the media is the exception, NOT the rule.

As the Baron said, "Find the enemy and shoot him down; anything else is rubbish."

Though I'd say finding him and shooting him BEFORE he even knows you are there? Even better. That's why we have stealth, that's why we have AWACS, that's why we have tactics.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 3:15 pm 
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This might be sidetracking the thread, but to me, the real badass of the German WW1 aces was Werner Voss. He flew the unique Fokker F.1 prototype triplane that led to the famous Fokker DR.1; it was assigned to him as his personal aircraft, and painted a silver gray that blended into the sky. He scored 48 kills, and it took an entire group of multiple British flights, over a dozen aircraft in all mostly flown by aces, to finally corral him and bring him down. He put at least five out of the fight and bullet holes in every one of them before finally being fatally wounded, losing his engine, and going into his death dive. Read more about him here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Voss

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 6:25 am 
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Voss' final battle is still studied to this day for good reason -- he really did have his back to the wall and the characteristics of his plane that had served him so well, are actually what painted him into that corner. This is a scenario US pilots -- ESPECIALLY F-14 drivers -- would and could find themselves in... and something pilots of some aircraft -- like the F-16 and F-15 -- could find themselves facing in an opponent.

The DR.1 and indeed all Fokker tripes had by nature of their triple wing configuration massive lift mated to incredible yaw stability. Even though underpowered by the time of his final battle, Voss could easily outclimb and out-yaw anything else in the sky... In fact the DR.1 (unlike later models which made certain changes) could perform rates of yaw that would throw any other plane of the era into a flat spin. At that same time he was facing aircraft that were not only faster in a straight line than him, they had more raw power to out-accelerate him, and therein lies the problem.

You're outnumbered by faster opponents, where do you run to? UP only goes so far, particularly in the era before pressurization and while he could outclimb them, he couldn't OUTRUN them in the long term as many of the planes he faced even had higher operating altitudes.

The only option left to him was to last as long as he could in a knife fight and go down swinging. In many ways the tactics he used -- using his superior climb to keep the enemy's nose off him and massive yaw to pull off "snap shots" at enemies who thought they were out of the line of fire is what let him just keep on going like the energizer bunny against planes that -- on paper at least -- should have been kicking his ass.

Laughably, it was more a tactical failure on the part of the British that let him go so long -- if a few planes kept him tied down while others withdrew, regrouped, and came in for a massed slashing strafe, they'd easily have defeated him; but such a withdrawal for re-engagement wasn't even a concept the Brits would embrace until the second world war... and said battle was rife with tactics and information the Americans refused to learn despite creating aircraft where both conditions could easily have occurred... the Brewster Buffalo for example shared a lot of performance characteristics in common with the DR.1 if you compared to say... the Zero. The Buffy could actually out-yaw and outclimb the zero but pilots weren't taught the tactics needed to deploy it properly. It wasn't until after midway that American pilots in the Buffalo or Wildcat started developing the tactics needed to take it to the Japanese in a meaningful manner until the technological gap could be narrowed. Buffy had a slow top speed, slow acceleration, but good gravy could it climb and yaw... sounds REALLY familiar.

... and that's why skimping on tactics and training is the worst thing you can do. I don't care what your technological edge is, experience and training can eliminate that edge in a heartbeat. See US inventory in Vietnam which on paper even the F-105 should have pwned the MiG-21, but the training edge just wasn't there and things really didn't improve until experience was gained the hard way.

Or see Gulf 1... Fulcrum should eat early-model Hornets for breakfast mano-a-mano, but that doesn't do you a lick of good when your pilots have a tenth the experience on stick, the head's been chopped off your air defenses and ground based radar, and you're in line for breakfast when the enemy starts bombing your hangers. Even when they manage to stumble their way into a fight, the results weren't pretty. It's very telling that the only US air to air loss in Desert Storm was by a MiG-25 taking down a -18C on day ONE.

Or worse, that trigger happy Patriot shooters caused more damage in the first year of Gulf 2 to our own forces than the Iraqi's did...

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