Back To Page 3 OK…so how does the pilot determine the correct distance from the AOP? A little bit of technique and a lot of ‘That looks about right!” When a new fighter pilot first goes to the bombing range, his instructor will have shown him ground references to use for determining this distance. This position prior […]
Back To Page 2 The Final There is a period of time from the pilot’s roll out until his release point. During this time, the pilot will be aimed at his AOP and will be established on his dive angle. This part of the bombing pattern is called the final and the amount of time taken […]
Back To Page 1 The Components of a Typical Dive Bomb Pass There are a number of different dive bomb attack profiles…box pattern, wheel, curvilinear, pop up…it doesn’t matter…regardless of the profile, we begin the maneuver with a turn towards the target. Usually, this is a descending turn, and when this turn is complete, we […]
Back To Page 5 In the #2 a/c, the old head in the back is trying to get a very excited Lieutenant to calm down! The pilot has gotten fixated on his kill and has left the motors in full blower (full afterburner). The clean F-4 rockets ahead. The GIB yanks the throttles back but not before his aircraft […]
Back To Page 4 No such luck. Even though the lead waited the four seconds needed to get a good launch solution, the missiles didn’t hack the close in shot. Both went ballistic as the F-4 and MiG-21s met head on. But Lead hardly knew it. He was already pulling hard into the vertical and then reversing hard […]
Back To Page 3 “Wolf 21 has a contact on the nose for 20, low, 180 out.” At the same time, Red Crown calls out, “Wolf, two Blue bandits at your 12, 20 nauticals.” Wolf leader gets a quick call out, “Wolf 20, contact, Judy; Wolf kick it out. Green ‘em up.” Lead has acknowledged the bandits, reported a […]
Back To Page 2 Wolf lead now looks at his map, notes the position of the MiGs and approximates an intercept heading from his present position. Wolf flight is now at 15,000 feet and doing about 550 KIAS. “Wolf, fence check.” Wolf is telling his flight to make sure that their weapons switches are set up for […]
Back To Page 1 The situation is that a flight of F-105s (Dodge 35) is heading home short of gas. Cherry 08, a KC-135, is leaving his planned orbit (anchor) and is heading into North Vietnam to meet Dodge before the Thuds run out of fuel. Pack Six is the Hanoi area of North Vietnam. Bullseye is […]
Back To Page 7 Error Analysis…What’s Error Analysis? Before we answer this question, let’s have a quick review of what we’ve learned: Weapon frag pattern deconfliction determines minimum release altitude. A free fall weapon always impacts the ground behind the aircraft and along the flight path the aircraft was on at release. The aim […]
Back To Page 6 Weapon Impact Point And The Sight Picture, Part Two Once again let’s refer back to Figure11. Now, we’ll put our interest on the ‘crash point.’..that point on the ground where our flight path is aimed. We now know that point is somewhere at the target’s 12 o’clock. But where, exactly? And how do we […]
Back To Page 5 Weapon Impact Point And The Sight Picture We’ll begin by imagining our aircraft at the correct release point in our dive. Our flight path is correctly aimed to the target’s 12 o’clock. We’ll redraw Figure 11. We’ll let our imagination go a bit further and visualize a gunsight pipper superimposed over the target. We […]
Back To Page 4 What does this mean? It’s simple. For a free fall weapon, if you aim right at the target, you will miss short. The only exception is if you are in a 90 degree dive…and that’s probably not going to be the case! You must aim your aircraft PAST the target…at the target’s 12 o’clock…to […]
