Fighter Combat

196 SECTION TACTICS, TWOVERSUS-ONEpilot's full attention be devoted to the opponent he sees, leaving little or noopportunity for him to defend against a second attack.There are no eyes for your backside, no eyes for who is coming frombelow ... if you are single you have too many blind spots.Colonel Erich "Bubi" Hartmann, GAPIn theory, the operation of two fighters together can alleviate thisproblem by allowing each of the two pilots to cover the blind zone of theother before an engagement and by allowing one pilot to prosecute anattack confident in the knowledge that his vulnerable areas are beingprotected by his wingman. A fallout of this strategy is the old militaryprinciple of concentration of forces, as greater firepower can be brought tobear on the adversary.Although this principle of "mutual support" sounds straightforwardenough, it has given rise to a multitude of tactical doctrines designed toexploit its advantages. Most of these doctrines have been successful tosome degree under certain combat conditions. Three of the most commonare discussed here, but it should be recognized that there may be manytactical variations within each broad doctrine, all of which, obviously,cannot be covered in detail.Fighting WingFighting wing tactics, sometimes called "welded wing," designate a leaderand a wingman. The leader's primary responsibilities are navigation, forward-hemispheresearch for the enemy, attack planning, and engagedmaneuvering, and he has a secondary responsibility of rear-hemispherevisual coverage. The wingman flies a rather loose formation on the leader;his primary task is maintaining a rear-hemisphere defensive lookout, andhe has secondary forward-hemisphere duties.The position flown by the wingman is shown by Figure 5-1. In actualitythis is not a rigid position, but rather is a maneuvering area roughlydescribed by a cone-shaped airspace extending aft of about 60° off theleader's tail. Distance from the leader varies with the performance of theaircraft involved. Generally the wingman needs to maintain sufficientseparation to preclude any danger of collision with the leader in the eventof unexpected heavy maneuvering, but he must be close enough to facilitatethe task of remaining behind the leader during maximumperformanceturns. This formation task becomes nearly impossible whenaircraft separations are allowed to approach the equivalent of about oneminimum turn radius for the aircraft involved. Because of the increase inthe speeds of fighters and their turn radii since World War I, maximumseparations in fighting wing have also increased dramatically. Typicalmaximum separations have ballooned from about 200 ft in World War I, to600 ft in World War II, 1,000 ft during the Korean War, and 3,000 ft for theVietnam conflict. Since turn radius increases with altitude, at high levels,separations up to twice these values might be workable. Minimum comfortablemaneuvering distances also have expanded, primarily as a result of