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The Rolling Scissors
Or, How to Play with Sharp Objects
By
--)-Rapier
--, Fighter Ace
Content Manager
You spot the Focke-Wulf about 5K feet above you, definitely moving into attack position. Take a quick look around and make sure there are no other bogies about that can spoil the fun. Do a quick check of status on your Mustang. The Focke-Wulf lowers its nose, picking up speed rapidly. It's diving in on your tail. In a moment, the pilot will open fire. What are you going to do, Ace?
| "I felt the best I could do was present him a difficult shot. As he closed in behind me, I would pull up and then kick the airplane over about the time I thought he was ready to shoot. When I saw the muzzle flashes from his guns I would present him with a 90-degree deflection shot, about the most difficult there is." |
| - Colonel Francis S. Gabreski USAAF, 31 Victories WWII, 6.5 Korea Highest scoring surviving American fighter pilot |
This is one of the toughest places to be in. One thing you have to keep in mind is that there are no magic bullets in air combat, no tactics that will work infallibly 100% of the time. Everything is contextual. You have to be absolutely familiar with your aircraft and know its strengths and the opponent's weaknesses. If you can sense the right move and execute it flawlessly, then with a little bit of luck, you're the victor. In every situation you have several maneuvers you can choose to use. Which one depends on the moment, the planes, and the situation.
A move you should definitely have handy is the Rolling Scissors. The Rolling Scissors works particularly well in the Realistic arenas, but it can be used with success in the Arcade arenas as well. It differs from the Flat Scissors mainly in the opening conditions. The Flat Scissors most often occurs when there has been a low-speed, horizontal overshoot of the target. The Rolling Scissors results from the opposite situation -- a high-speed overshoot with a vertical component. As the defender in the scenario above, you want to force this overshoot. At this point, the attacker holds the high cards; they have speed and energy advantage. The question is, can you change the opening conditions and seize the advantage over the opponent? The Rolling Scissors is an admittedly risky tactic but one that has the potential to change that balance.
In the opening of the Rolling Scissors, you try to make the attacker's firing problem as difficult as possible. You roll away from the attack (break turn) and, once that is established, roll wings level and go vertical. From here forward, the idea is to do most of your turning while vertical, that is, by rolling instead of turning. This is of course where it gets complicated, so let's take a moment to explain this concept.
There are two ways to turn: the hard, energy-intensive way, and the easy, energy-managing way. In the old fashioned hard way, you make the turn horizontally by rolling the plane into a bank and pulling back on the stick to pull the plane around in a circle. The tighter you turn, the more Gs mount (which from the plane's point of view is the same as making it heavier, with a resultant negative effect on performance and energy). The longer an airplane stays in this state, the more that its energy is depleted. Eventually it will lose speed and altitude, ending up on the deck, low, slow, and out of options.
A different way to turn is to use the airplane's roll rate. We'll introduce a very handy term here: lift vector. The aircraft's lift vector can be represented by a line that goes straight up from the base of the pilot's seat and through the canopy at a point directly over the pilot's head. If, when we are going vertically up or down, we roll to put this point on the canopy ahead of the enemy plane, we will be in lead pursuit, even though our plane's nose is not oriented toward the target. This is because when we pull back on the stick to pull over at the top or bottom of our vertical maneuver, the lift vector points in the direction that we will be going.
So now back to our Rolling Scissors. The attacker has dropped in behind you, and you are trying to complicate his firing solution and turn the tables. You go into a break turn just as your opponent comes into range, and then take your fighter vertically up. You could keep pulling toward their plane, but this would not result in any advantage and would just continue the overshoots, with the opponent staying behind you in potential firing position. By going vertical, you are putting your available energy back into the altitude bank by converting it into potential energy. Secondly, you will be turning more efficiently than they are, since you are going to roll while you are vertical rather than rolling and pulling the old-fashioned way. Your plane will only be fighting one G as it flies vertically, instead of the eight or nine Gs that you can get in an Arcade arena turn. Also, by going vertical, you increase their overshoot, as you are no longer traveling forward at all. Then you just roll to place your lift vector ahead of their flight path. As your speed depletes, pull the stick back to pull over and then point your nose at them to maintain pursuit.
| "Instead, that superb pilot presented me with a demonstration of the Zero's best flight characteristic, the one thing a Zero could do that could carry its pilot from the jaws of death just about every time. I had heard of the maneuver I was about to experience from scores of awed F4F and F4U pilots, but I had no conception of how aerodynamically fantastic the Zero fighter really was until that split second. |
| "As soon as my quarry saw my tracer pass in front of his airplane's nose, he simply pulled straight up and literally disappeared from within my reflector sight and, indeed, my entire line of sight. My tracer reached out into empty space. I was so in awe of the maneuver that I was literally shaking with envy. |
| "I had time to inscribe a fleeting image of my surrounding upon my mind's eye -- the sky was filled with weaving airplanes, streamers of smoke and flame, winking guns, and lines of tracer set against that superb blue background, with its distant thunderheads and lacy cumulus clouds. Then I pulled my joystick back into my belly and banked as hard to the left as I dared." |
| - Colonel Bruce R. Porter USMC, 7 victories, WWII |
Your opponent has several choices. They can chop throttle to pull in tighter behind you and go for a shot. If they do and miss this difficult shot, they will have already done a lot to even out the relative energy states in your favor. Or they can pull vertical and try to set up again, in which case you may get a brief shot opportunity. Or they can fly straight ahead and get horizontal separation and then either turn back into you or climb to regain energy. If they are smart, they will be climbing. Again, here you may get a brief shot opportunity. Finally, they may continue to pull toward you by rolling and putting their lift vector on you, attempting to get a shot. The last scenario results in a continuous Rolling Scissors. You would basically repeat the above, attempting to get a shot each time at the bottom of the roll. You want to assess very early whether you can get a shot -- probably at the top of your roll. That way you can dive nearly vertically and roll to put your lift vector on their fighter, maintaining your pursuit and decreasing your movement forward. This increases the attacker's tendency to overshoot you and finally get in front. You pull out at the bottom and attempt a shot. If you overshoot, immediately go wings-level and pull to straight up, again rolling to place your lift vector ahead of their position.
You must be constantly evaluating the fight, judging whether you are reversing the energy advantage or not. As you gain advantage, the enemy will appear to slip further ahead, and your angle crossing their tail will decrease. If it's not, you should consider disengaging, in the hope of setting up a more advantageous merge. If you find yourself in trouble, the best time to disengage is at the top of your roll. Instead of pulling down and rolling to put your lift vector on them, roll inverted and pull into a split esse and then go nose-low and bug out. You can always try a series of Rolling Scissors to deplete the opponent's energy in the hope of a better situation. The main thing to keep in mind is to keep all horizontal turning to a minimum and to do most of your turning by rolling your plane while vertical. In this way, you can cause the opponent to overshoot and turn their energy advantage to a liability. Also, since these are WWII power-limited fighters, the Rolling Scissors will eventually deteriorate to a Flat Scissors if carried on long enough. You should decide well before that whether you will be the winner in that contest, and either make the kill or bug out.
| "When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. This does not mean that the enemy is to be allowed to escape. The object is to make him believe that there is a road to safety, and thus prevent his fighting with the courage of despair." |
| - Sun Tzu The Art of War |
Though a difficult maneuver to pull off, the Rolling Scissors is worth practicing for that surprise you hand your opponent when you suddenly reverse fortunes and end up on their six with guns blazing. Good luck!
Gabreski, Francis, with Carl Molesworth. Gabby, A Fighter Pilot's Life
. New York: Dell Publishing, 1991; p. 140
Porter, Bruce R., with Eric Hammel. ACE! A Marine Night-Fighter Pilot in WWII
. New York. Jove Books; p. 128.
Shaw, Robert. Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering
. Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute Press, 1985; pp. 89-93, 388.
Sun Tzu. The Art of War
. James Clavell, ed. New York: Dell Publishing, 1983; p. 35
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