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The Energy Fight
Or, Moving up the Food Chain
By
--)-Rapier
--, Fighter Ace
Content Manager
Energy fighting is the other major style of air combat that the airfighter can employ to win, the other being Angles Fighting. Where horizontal maneuvering and flat turns characterize angles fighting, energy fighting is characterized by vertical maneuvering and climbing or diving turns. Ideally, energy tacticians will refrain from horizontal turns at all but will do all of their turning in the vertical by rolling to place their lift vector in the proper direction and then pulling back on the stick to that heading. (For a more complete explanation of this technique, read paragraph seven of Rolling Scissors . So keep in mind that energy fighting will involve vertical maneuvering at the critical phases of the fight; indeed, you could say that the whole point of energy maneuvering is to generate vertical separation from the opponent that will result in a snapshot opportunity. In angles fighting, you attempt to get horizontal separation to set up a tracking shot. In general, while angles tactics are fairly intuitive (that is, chase the enemy and shoot them), energy tactics require knowledge and disciplined flying to succeed. Energy flyers MUST know their airplanes thoroughly to the point that they can judge the EXACT minimum speed to pull over in a loop. Practice with your chosen plane until you can do this. An additional useful exercise is to make sure that you can make a climbing turn at maximum climb rate and maintain it for at least three full 360-degree rotations.
| "I expected the enemy pilot to pull the usual and dive down but instead he broke hard right to pull around on my tail. Since the deflection was too great to fire and my speed much too high to turn, I pulled up in an almost vertical climb to cut my speed. Falling off on one wing, as the nose of my P-51 came down I saw that my wingman, 2nd Lieutenant Norman Benoit, had made a pass at the '109. When the enemy broke into him, he too went into a climb. Coming down, I made a pass at the '109 without results, while Benoit, curving down behind me, attempted to get on his tail." |
| - Colonel Hubert Zemke Leader of the 56th FG "The Wolf Pack" 17.75 Victories |
As you probably remember from your high school physics class, energy comes in two flavors: potential and kinetic. In air combat, potential energy is altitude (that is, energy in the bank) and kinetic energy shows itself in the form of speed. Altitude can be converted into speed easily by just pointing the nose of the plane downward. Speed can be converted into altitude by pointing the nose up. The only fly in this virtual ointment is the effect of entropy. You will constantly lose energy from the point that you engage till you disengage. This means that any fight will gradually descend as opponents repeatedly go to the altitude energy bank for more and more energy. The end result is that any fight, if it continues long enough, will eventually end up on the deck. Once you're there, the only tactic left is angles tactics (flat turns, remember). So the name of the game for the energy fighter is to successfully end the game before reaching the deck.
Hmm, that's a pretty neat trick. And the crux of the trick is learning to judge the relative energy states of your plane and your opponents' planes visually. Energy flyers must encourage their opponents to turn tight and hard and thereby deplete their energy. This must be done without providing them with a shot opportunity or depleting your own energy to the point where you can't go vertical (remember that you are shooting for vertical separation that will allow you to get on the enemy's tail). So through all of your maneuvering, you must maintain minimum vertical maneuvering speed (for most Fighter Ace
aircraft, this is about 200 mph).
Who can play the energy game?
Fighters that do well in the energy game come in a couple of different flavors, and your choice of tactics will be based on the relative strengths of your craft against your opponent's. You can, and probably must, play the energy game if your plane cannot turn with or better than the opponent's. Do you have better guns? Then you have to make sure that you maximize every shot opportunity with excellent shooting. The rest of the time you better be moving fast and be out of range whenever you are in front of the opponent. Failure to do so can shorten your ride. Do you have better level speed? Then you will need to extend out flat or in a shallow climb (depending on your speed) to gain separation, then climb to get your vertical separation and then pull over to attack. If you try to reverse too soon, you will find the opponent climbing up your tail and firing. Again keep your speed up. Do you have superior climb performance? This is the deluxe socket set of the energy fighter's toolkit. Superior climb performance allows you to turn with the opponent, get them to slow themselves down (deplete their energy account), and then go to a climb and generate vertical separation (a favorite of the German 109s).
The Moves
In discussing the moves, we will be talking about a hypothetical perfect engagement. Most real-life aerial encounters are less than perfect, so you may need to adjust what you do. Give yourself enough time to learn the ins and outs of energy fighting. The most common failure is to allow your speed to drop too low, so that the enemy catches you in your zoom climb. When that happens, get more speed or more distance before attempting to reverse.
Rope a Dope
Here we never give the sucker an even break. Choose your fight carefully and enter with a healthy energy advantage (usually in the form of a 4000+ ft. altitude advantage but you can also use a 200+ mph speed advantage). Dive onto their tail (this may require that you start a shallow dive to make them think that you are going for a head-on and then level out and split esse onto their tail as you cross over them). Once you are coming down on their tail, they will be forced into a hard, energy-devouring break turn to ruin your guns solution. If you get a temporary guns solution or anything even close, fire at them. There is nothing like the sight of tracers to encourage the enemy to turn fast and hard. For the first pass, you needn't even descend to their level and even a fake pass can work as long as it gets them to turn. Once they are turning, you roll wings level and pull back up, putting your energy back into the altitude bank. Now the situation has them depleting energy in a hard turn while yours is being conserved by re-alting. Use this time to look around and see if other bogeys are closing in on you. Then roll to place your lift vector ahead of them, which puts you in lead pursuit, and extend up to your plane's climb limit (lowest speed it can successfully pull over from -- for Fighter Ace
planes about 150-175 mph), pull over and back down on them. (For a more complete explanation of this technique read paragraph seven of Rolling Scissors. Repeat as necessary until the enemy dies or augers. On each pass the enemy should be depleting their energy account further and further, which enhances your position. Ideally, they will never even get a shot at you if the maneuver is properly done.
Climbing Spiral
This tactic is riskier than the Rope a Dope, but it can be devastating to an opponent that doesn't understand what is being done. It requires you to offer yourself as bait and work very close to the opponent. To pull it off successfully requires that you have a climb performance advantage over your target. The basic idea is to engage the opponent and force them through several turns to lower their energy state. Once you feel you have enough of an energy advantage that you can immediately climb to just beyond max gun range, initiate a gentle climbing turn. The turn should be the hardest you can pull and still maintain your maximum climb rate. The enemy will see you in front of them, just out of range. They will turn and pull hard trying to get sufficient lead to shoot, and they may not notice that their nose is high as well. They will be climbing and turning, which will slow them down. Since you have a climb rate advantage, you will be gradually generating a vertical separation. The key is to turn tight enough that they will be encouraged to keep pulling harder and tighter in their nose-high turn. Eventually they will slow to stall speed and be forced to lower the nose or stall. As soon as you see their range increase, you will know that this has happened. Roll inverted, drop flaps if you need to, and pull over onto their tail. You should get a great shot at them.
[I saw] the leader pull up into a sharp climbing turn to the left. This one can fly, and he obviously has no thought of running. I'm thinking this one could be trouble.
| We turn inside him, my wingman and I, still at long range, and he pulls around harder, passing in front of us right-to-left at an impossible angle. I want to swing in behind him but I'm going too fast, and figure I would only go skidding on past. A Mustang at speed simply can't make a square corner. And in a dogfight you don't want to surrender your airspeed. I decide to overshoot him and climb. |
| He reverses his turn, trying to fall in behind us. My wingman is vulnerable now. I tell Skara, "Break off!" and he peels away. The German goes after him and I go after the German, closing on his tail before he can close on my wingman. He sees me coming and dives away with me after him, then makes a climbing left turn. I go screaming by, pull up, and he's reversing his turn - man, he can fly! - and he comes crawling right up behind me, close enough that I can see him distinctly. He's bringing his nose up for a shot, and I haul back on the stick and climb even harder. I keep going up, because I'm out of alternatives . . . |
| So I'm looking back, almost straight down now, and I can see this 20-millimeter cannon sticking through the middle of the fighter's propeller hub. In the theater of my memory, it is enormous. An elephant gun. And that isn't far wrong. It is a gun designed to bring down a bomber, one that fires shells as long as your hand, shells that explode and tear big holes in metal. It is the single most frightening thing I have seen in my life, then and now. |
| But I'm too busy to be frightened . . . hanging by my propeller, going almost straight up, full emergency power, which a Mustang could do for only so long before losing speed, shuddering, stalling and falling back down; and I am thinking that if the Mustang stalls before the Messerschmitt stalls, I have had it. |
| I look back, and I can see that he's shuddering, on the verge of a stall. He hasn't been able to get his nose up enough, hasn't been able to bring that big gun to bear. Almost, but not quite. I'm a fallen-down-dead man almost, but not quite. His nose begins dropping just as my airplane, too, begins shuddering. He stalls a second or two before I stall, drops away before I do. |
| He is falling away now, and I flop the nose over and go after him hard. |
| - Col. Clarence E. "Bud" Anderson 16.25 Kills |
Rolling Scissors
This tactic has been previously described in the Rolling Scissors article, but the idea here is to use the Rolling Scissors as the goal and end-game of your energy encounter. You engage the enemy by meeting them head on and then watch in your rear view to see which way they turn. Once you know this, you turn to meet them nose-to-nose and set up a series of Flat Scissors turns. The bandit will be watching you in their overhead view and will be encouraged to turn tight and hard to try for a shot. You on the other hand will be turning at the maximum rate that allows you to go vertical. Watch them to see how far their nose comes around. As a rule of thumb, the more they gain, the greater the energy differential between your plane and theirs. If they are gaining a lot, this is a good thing. It means they are pulling hard and depleting energy. If they gain only a little and continue to do so after you reverse your turn at the crossing, then you should think about disengaging. They may be setting you up. Also be careful that they don't get a good shot opportunity. You may need to do a slight out-of-plane jink as your paths cross.
Once they have reached a 60- to 90-degree crossing track, you should have sufficient energy advantage to initiate a wings-level pull up. If they essentially follow a horizontal path, then you can start a rolling scissors to your advantage. If they follow you up, you will use your energy advantage to top out higher (out of range) and then pull down on them as they pull over, or initiate a climbing spiral.
| "Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt . . . Ponder and deliberate before you make a move. He will conquer who has learned the artifice of deviation. Such is the art of maneuvering."
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| - Sun Tzu |
The basic idea of all energy fighting is to engage the enemy and cause them to think that you are going to angles tactics while maintaining your vertical maneuvering capability. Once they have taken the bait and have started pulling on the stick hard, you give them time to really deplete their energy. When you judge that they have reached that point, you go wings-level and pull into a climb, watching them in your rear view. When the range increases, they are dropping and you have them. Pull over and blaze away, Young Skywarrior! The battle is yours!
Anderson, Clarence E. "Bud," with Joseph P. Hamelin. To Fly and to Fight
. New York: Bantam Books, 1991; pp. 6-8
Shaw, Robert. Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering
. Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute Press, 1985; pp. 104-114
Sun Tzu. The Art of War
. James Clavell, ed. New York: Dell Publishing, 1983; p. 32
Zemke, Hubert, with Roger A. Freeman. Zemke's Wolfpack
. New York: Pocket Books, 1988; p. 241
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