“Final” – The Attack Leg
The part of a gunnery or bombing pattern where you maneuver to the release point is called the “final”… when you call “in hot”, you are beginning the final approach to the target. In order to assure accurate positioning of the pipper, the final needs to be relatively stable… but, to avoid getting blown away by the defenses, you need to keep the final relatively short… no more than five seconds from roll in to release. By the way, we call the release point the “pickle point”. Pickling off bombs means releasing them. Just a little lingo for your next LAN meet!
Way back when, I wrote a lengthy article on how to do A2G events. I won’t cover this material again here. If you missed this article and want to know the methodology of A2G weapons delivery, then please give it a look in our Air Combat Corner library.
Your Initial Aiming Point
Here it is plain and simple. Nothing has changed in free-fall weapons delivery in many a year. You must aim your nose past the target with your flight path running through the target (no wind). If there is a wind, you aim into the wind so that your flight path runs through your intended upwind aimpoint. Fortunately for us, the LASTE computer figures out the wind for us, so all we have to do is to get the PBIL to intersect the target.
The place that you aim your nose at is called the Aim Off Point (AOP). In a typical dive delivery, when you roll wings level, you want the AOP at the target’s 12 o’clock and the CCIP at the target’s 6 o’clock… and the PBIL should run from the TVV through the target to the CCIP.
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| It should look something like this. First, the general idea… |
…and now what it looks like in the game. |
At this point, you just continue in the dive and when the CCIP hits the target, you pickle. Easy! Piece of cake!
Errr… not so fast. Maybe it isn’t that easy after all. Maybe a few techniques are in order to help things along. We’ll begin with establishing the AOP.
