Dogfights

[Shooter]

There was a guy, who knows damned little about aerial combat, named James Dunnigan, who has a lot of people in the media listening to him. He made a statement in his magazine Strategy & Tactics some thirty years ago that scout-vs-scout combats during the Great War usually evolved into a series of maneuvers in which both a/c gradually lost altitude until one gained an advantage. This meant that the a/c with the best low altitude performance would have a decisive advantage.

Knowing that the Allied dirvers HATED low altitude missions, does this mean that Allied a/c were low performers at low altitude? Does this mean that Dunnigan is full of condensed horse feces?

Whadaya think?


Shooter sends

Allied Drivers hated low altitude missions?

Wouldn't that be more likely due to having more guns arrayed against them? WW1 Aircraft were slow, and it should have been much easier for machine gunners and even riflemen to pick off a pilot. Wasn't there a great degree of speculation early on that an Australian Rifleman killed MvR?

I'm not ecuated on the issue, these are just guesses.

[WFS]

My belief is that altitude was lost durring dogfights as a result of the maneuvering. *Also, as Grey stated they hated low altitude flying because it brought them within range of enemy ground fire. *It also made them vulnerable to attack from above. *

Planes lost performance as they approached their operating ceilings. *They performed better at lower altitudes. However, there were tactical advantages to being higher up. *

The preferred attack method for both sides was to drop on your opponent from higher altitude. *Then, use the speed gained in the dive to zoom up before someone got on your six. *Harold Hartney wrote that after he and Frank Luke had viewed several crashed scouts Luke remarked that most of the pilots appeared to have been shot from behind while trying to dive away from their attacker. *

A friend once told me, *"There's nothing more worthless to a pilot than altitude above you and runway behind you".

Best Regards,
Wayne

Shooter: After reading your post, I couldn't help but think of Lanoe Hawker and MvR. They kept losing altitude, and I think I have read of a number of other scraps like that. Something with Beery Bowman (sp?) seems to ring a bell. In the Hawker case, I think MvR had the craft with the better performance at any altitude. I think he followed Hawker down.
DD

[stephen]

Shooter, the answer is a decided "no." Low altitude performance was certainly not the deciding factor in most dogfights. Well, I should qualify that... this is the impression that I'm left with after years of interviews with WWI pilots.

The idea was not to wait for altitude to favor your aircraft, but to PRESERVE altitude throughout the course of the fight. The aircraft and pilot that could perform the necessary combat maneuvers while losing the least amount of altitude was at a decided advantage. The Fokker DVII was one of the best aircraft on the front... not at GETTING altitude... but at PRESERVING it once the maneuvering of a dogfight started. In contrast, Charles D'Olive told me a few years ago that he couldn't even loop a SPAD without losing 500 feet.

So the trick was not waiting for the fight to reach an altitude that favored your airplane... the trick was to see who could best maintain the altitude he already had.

[PatrickConnell]

Hello folks

Regarding dogfighting in WW-1 type machines, as was stated, ideally an opponent would prefer to be on top and attack an enemy below him. As was also already mentioned the attacker could then use the energy accumulated in the dive to zoom upward to maintain a favorable position above his enemy. If the advantage of altitude was lost however, and the fight developed into a tail chasing furball, you can count on the fight probably going lower and lower. This would occur for several reasons and much would depend on the individual aircraft design, pilots, atmospheric conditions, and most assuredly, the altitude.

At higher altitudes, as was pointed out earlier in this thread, aircraft performance is decreased, so their climb performance and max speed are greatly diminished which leads to tail chasing and or dive and zoom tactics. In the thinner air of higher altitudes, friend and foe alike while trying to out-turn their opponent, often encountered an accelerated stall due to the great increase in load factor or weight from G forces in the steep bank. Example: At 80 degrees of bank angle, the G force increases approximately by 5, and the stall speed increases approximately 40%. This would often cause the machine to enter a spin and lose altitude. I am sure you all have read accounts of this very thing occurring.

In addition, while chasing each others tails around, the relative speeds of the combatants aircraft becomes less of an issue because the faster you go, the greater the radius of turn, unless you increase the rate of turn (real steep bank) to compensate for this. By so doing, you risk the high increase in stall speed and losing altitude. Of course, the tighter turning machine can bring his guns to bear first, so you can see how in the excitement of this scenario a guy might over-zealously turn at too great a bank angle and spin out.

If a man were to discover his opponent to be his master in the tail-chasing dogfight, his only recourse might be to try and either egress through diving, or diving to build speed and energy in an effort to get above his foe and retake the advantage. This however, as pointed out earlier could prove fatal if the dive was prolonged and your enemy pursued, so again, the fight may go back into a tail-chasing dogfight. Also be aware, that often, the penalty for tight turns without stalling would be to sacrifice altitude in the turn. This would also result in the fight going lower and lower. As an aircraft enters a banked condition, the lift component is divided so to speak, a vector to the horizontal and a vector to the vertical. This results in the vertical component of lift not being able to support the total weight of the machine. The fix is to increase angle of attack, or increase speed, which results in adequate amounts of lift generated to support the planes weight. As mentioned, at altitude, speed might not be available so that leaves increasing angle of attack by raising the nose a greater amount above the onrushing wind. In a tight, steep banked turn, the amount of angle required may be dangerously close to the critical angle of attack, or the angle at which the plane will stall.
If the aircrafts airfoil design is such that it has a higher critical angle of attack, it has a decided advantage in the turning fight, as it can turn slower and tighter or smaller radius, without nearing it’s critical angle of attack, or losing altitude. I believe the airfoil on Fokker’s Dr1, D-VII, and D-VIII had an airfoil with a critical angle of attack somewhere around 24 degrees while most airfoil designs of the time came in around 15 to 18 degrees. This made them not only optimal turning tail chasers, and excel at maintaining altitude in turns, but as has been noted in history, the D-VII having the ability to stand on it’s tail, or hang on it’s prop and shoot upward.

Most dogfights recorded in the books and diaries and combat reports usually lasted only a few moments, and then the all too often reported phenomena of the empty sky afterwards. Those fights, which lasted longer periods often, did end up closer to the ground for many of the reasons I have written.

I have trouble believing that Allied machines as a whole were poor performers down low, though I am sure, some may have been. I do not believe this to be a reason for the dislike of low altitude missions though. The better target to small arms fire, and the high likelihood of engine failure and inability to glide home strike me as being better reasons for disliking the lower altitudes.

Safe flying

Patrick

Stephen,

>The idea was not to wait for altitude to favor your
>aircraft, but to PRESERVE altitude throughout the
>course of the fight.

To support that point, George Jones a Camel and Snipe pilot with 4 Sqn AFC wrote the following,
"9. In attacking enemy S.S. Fighters, we found that the circumstances under which engagements commenced were never alike and the method of attack had to be left to the initiative of the pilot. When attacking small formations and possessing the advantage of height, it usually happened that each pilot selected his opponent and tried to keep on his tail until a decision was reached. When dived on by the enemy, pilots usually turned in the direction of attack so as to reduce the time they were under fire, and then, if the enemy attempted to press home the attack, continued turning in the smallest
possible circle while outclimbing him. Such stunts as the ?Loop? ?Roll? and ?Spin? were never used except as a means of escape, and even for this purpose they were found to be of doubtful value."

His comment on ground-fire;

"The Germans seems to be well equipped with machine guns capable of firing at aircraft and the need was felt, for some form of armour. It was found that machine gun fire coming from points unseen and which could not be readily located, was most disconcerting. As some slight protection against this, some pilots placed flattened steel helmets on their seats beneath them."

And on the aftermath of a dogfight;

"This led to their[pilots] being guided instinctively by such rules as:-

(a) When disengaged, close on the nearest friendly aeroplane, preferably one of your own formation.

(b) Try to keep the mean of the altitude of one?s own formation above that of the enemy.

© Endeavour to support friendly aircraft when they are hard pressed.

(d) Do not leave the locality until your flight has reformed.

These rules were, of course, not always observed strictly for to do so would have limited the pilots offensive action. In the engagement referred to such limitation was necessary owing to our distance from friendly country, low altitude and the direction of the wind."



cam

This is from Major W.L.B. Rees in a report in 1917, Rees later won the VC;

"
o As a rule it does not pay to follow a machine below 3000 feet. At that height the machine guns from the ground become dangerous, and if the enemy machine is not disabled before that it will probably not be disabled at all.

o It is dangerous to cross the trenches at heights below 2000 ft.
"

Ree's report stresses several times the importance of disabling the enemy aircraft in the first attack. He has a set of bullet like points, from which the above two are from, the first four bullet points are;

"
o Open fire before the enemy
o Open fire at the shortest possible range
o Open fire under the most favourable conditions
o Try to disable the enemy at once
"

His final bullet point is; " Do not get put out when you find that your pet theory does not work" :)


cam

[EdStevens]

Loss of altitude during combat maneuvering during the Great War was pretty common. As already mentioned, if surprise could be achieved, a common attack was diving on the enemy, firing at the closest possible range and then zooming to regain altitude. If this failed, you would either end up with a disorganized dogfight amoung several fighters, a one-on-one fight between two opponents, or a fighter against two-seater. The dogfight or melee probably gave the more experienced pilot the best chance to maintain altitude, by moving to the outside of the fight and climbing, then returning to the attack. Nevertheless, once in the thick of it, most violent maneuvers would result in an associated loss of altitude, unless you were willing to bleed speed in a climb and present a decidely tempting target!

A one-on-one fight between fighters would almost invariably result in a merry-go-round, with each circling the other to get on the tail. Loss of altitude would result. The MvR vs. Hawker fight is a classic example. In dire circumstances, the split-s (split-arse) was a common escape maneuver. The pursued aircraft would roll inverted and then dive, quickly reversing direction and disappearing under the lower wings of the attacker (essentially a reverse Immelman). This resulted in a considerable loss of altitude, but was highly effective at providing escape. If the pursuer duplicated the maneuver, you could still alter your course during the dive to shake him off.

If a fighter is attacking a slow two-seater, and is spotted, loss of altitude is also almost certain. The one location the two-seater does not want the fighter to get is underneath him, where the rear gunner cannot get a shot. A heavy but unmaneuverable two-seater is almost certain to dive away as quickly as possible.

[Barrett]

Every turning combat became a descending spiral until well into the jet age. Far as I know, the first airplane that could fight with its nose above the horizon was the F8U Crusader though perhaps the MiG-19 deserves the honor. At any rate, it was all about thrust v. weight. Additionally, with all the inherent drag in WW I birds, it was a major feat to maintain one's altitude. McCudden (I think) encouraged his new boys to practice climbing turns.