It was an interesting and revealing analysis Colin.
It's definitely something we need to discuss and although you can't have
a fixed SOP due to the variety of possibilities you can stick to some
basic rules such as the pairs leaders make whatever decision they
individually make and the wingman never leaves him so at least the pairs
remain intact. Just what those decisions should be is what we need to
discuss. No-one should throw away altitude unless they are the one
engaged and trying to evade but for everyone else a bounce is not
'engaged', its done and gone. In the bounce in my email that started all
this, where Cina got shot down, I stayed with the bouncer, at least as
far as direction was concerned to keep him in view and retain SA but had
no backup because everyone split to the four winds. Had we stayed
together we would still have been vulnerable due to the bouncers energy
but we may have been able to make group decisions and plan for the next
bounce (at least by then we knew where he was). We shouldn't let a
single bounce destroy the unit cohesion even if we do break enough to
evade the attack, we must be ready to rejoin immediately or at least be
ready to support eachother. We must be constantly aware of our heading
if that is to be the default rejoin but we must also keep note of the
bouncers location post-bounce. We must also be very clear on who is who:
Red 1 Red 2 Blue 3 etc., know the default chain of command (Red, Blue,
Green, Yellow or whatever) and have a default plan for when the leader
gets shot down, e.g. Red 1 cops it so Blue 1 immediately assumes
command. If we don't know how to respond we will be in a mess.
Training is always a nice idea but often comes down to what to practice
before we all get bored with it. This is a situation we could definitely
train on after working out some basic rules. It would be good to have
the Blaggards aggressively carry out the bounces even to the point of
choosing which member of the formation to attack to give us different
situations to react to, it doesn't matter if 'they learn our tactics' we
still have the problem to solve.
One last comment on that Hook turn that led to all this. Somehow our
separation disappeared so that at least four of us were quite close on
the reciprocal heading and presented a nice choice of target for the
attacker although he had obviously decided to go for the formation
leader (he just steamed past me without taking a shot). So if we are
going to use the hook turn we need to scan the sky carefully first and
then practice making those turns (bank angle? rate of turn? clear
eyeball on leader?)
klem
On 20/04/2019 22:36, Colin Pack (Redacted sender bart_56 for DMARC) wrote:
Lol, we’re do you start :).
If a pair being bounced by a single, and the single is a high speed attacker.
If you are bounced rounds flying around you, you as the engaged fighter first priority is to get out of the firing line, by any means possible (bunting downwards, break turn, etc)what ever comes into your head. I would then say “I am being engaged” or words to that effect lol. Also I would say what I am doing, split-s, breaking right or left, etc. This all happens in moments, we don’t use push to talk, which eases things and makes it all concurrent. The important thing is the engaged fighter is hopefully out of the firing line.
Now this is the really important thing the unengaged fighter goes to/towards the engaged fighter for loads of different reasons. He has now got control as he will have the better SA to guide the engaged fighter, from which he can tell the engaged fighter what to do and what the enemy fighter is doing or done, etc. He can latch on to the enemy fighter if he has stuck with the engaged fighter in his manoeuvre, or he forms up with engaged fighter asap, while keeping track of what the enemy has done. From there the pair prepare for the next attack in a more controlled manor, while looking for an option to disengage from the combat zone because of damage, etc. Or an option to attack the enemy fighter, if the situation presents its self.
Mutual support will give you more options and chance of getting out of the bounce together.
Hope I have made sense, but the situation is controlling your actions, the above are only an example of the situations maybe in countered.
Colin
Sent from my iPad
On 20 Apr 2019, at 21:30, Rob (Redacted sender "robinhj" for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
May I ask you Colin what is your immediate response if the unthinkable should happen and you both get caught unawares and have only a second to react but no time to shout out to your wingman? Does the victim just respond as he sees fit and hope the other can make a good decision or do you have a 'semi-official' set of responses that you both just /know/ instinctively?
Roblex
