Interview
October 22, 2001

Discussion Of Boom And Zoom Tactics

by Andy Bush

Lesson One (October 22/01):  Defending Against The Boom and Zoom

You are presented with the following situation:  a typical "angles" fighter, such as a Spitfire, is bounced by a typical "energy" fighter, such as the P-38.  The attacker has the altitude advantage and is using a boom and zoom attack on you.  What should you do?

Response by Andy Bush, representing SimHQ.com:

You are presented with the following situation: a typical "angles" fighter, such as a Spitfire, is bounced by a typical "energy" fighter, such as the P-38. The attacker has the altitude advantage and is using a boom and zoom attack on you. What should you do?

1. I see the overall strategy of the defender as one of denying or limiting turning room. He begins by taking away turning room below the plane of his turn...he does this by getting down on the deck.

2. Once on the deck, the defender can see attacker turning room as made up of two parts, as shown in Fig 1...lateral and vertical. The defender's first priority is to minimize lateral turning room. This forces the attacker into a steep dive with no room below the defender to use for a recovery. The result is that it moves the open fire point further away from the defender.

Figure 1 Turning Room Boundaries

3. The defender achieves this by maneuvering towards the nose of the attacker...he keeps the attacker in his own front quarter as much as possible. This has the effect of "stiff-arming" the attacker by forcing him to re-maneuver to get the turning room needed to attack. Depending on speed differences, the attacker may be able to do this (jet situation), but in a WW2 scenario, the defender may be able to do this relatively easily. In RL,I used to think of this concept as "getting under and staying under the bandit". See Fig 2.

Figure 2 Minimize Turning Room

4. At some point the attacker may roll in on the defender. My suggestion is that the defender now minimize vertical turning room by climbing up into the attack...doing this "jams" the attacker. See Fig 3. Such a move does two things...minimizes the room needed by the attacker to reach a firing solution...and allows the defender to pose a threat to the attacker...the shooter now becomes the shootee!

Figure 3 Jamming the Attacker

5. The result often is that the attacker has to reposition. If so, the defender should dive back down to the deck while turning to "stay under the bandit". Once there, the situation may play out again. 

This approach assumes the attacker is a strict BnZ'er...if the attacker elects to slow down and enter the defender's turn circle, then we are into a different situation.

FWIW...this tactic worked well for me when I was flying A-10s in Europe against the Aggressors, F-16s, and F-15s.

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