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Close Air Support in World War II: The Luftwaffe Page 4

Back To Page 3   Soviet Union The Luftwaffe that was flung against the massive Soviet military machine in July 1941 was not, fundamentally, all that different from the one that had been used some successfully against Poland, France, and the Low Countries. More than 2/3 of the entire Luftwaffe was thrown into the battle, […]

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Close Air Support in World War II: The Luftwaffe Page 3

Back To Page 2   Poland The German Army that crossed into Poland on September 1 had with it more than 200 Ju87s for support, and the years between the Spanish Civil War and the Poland invasion provided now-General Richthofen with time to experiment with new techniques for controlling close air support missions. Named the […]

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Close Air Support in World War II: The Luftwaffe Page 2

Back To Page 1 Spanish Civil War The baptism of fire for the Luftwaffe and their new concepts of air / ground cooperation came in Spain. In November 1936, Germany had 40 aircraft and more than 4,000 “voluntary” personnel in the theater, fighting on the Nationalist side as the Legion Condor. This number would eventually […]

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Close Air Support in World War II: The Luftwaffe

by John “Spoons” Sponauer   Introduction This is the second part of a series of SimHQ.com articles on the role of close air support in modern war. For the previous installment, be sure to read Andy Bush’s excellent “Close Air Support in the Vietnam War.” The idea of writing a series of articles on CAS came out of […]

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Air to Ground, Part Three – Rockets and Guns Page 8

Back To Page 7   Conclusion Well, folks…that’s pretty much all I can say about forward firing ordnance. The primary thing to keep in mind is that these are short range weapons. Your primary aid in determining the release point is going to be a sense of proper range based upon experience in your particular sim. Remember […]

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Air to Ground, Part Three – Rockets and Guns Page 5

Back To Page 4   The second consideration has to do with firing the gun while in a yaw (rudder deflected). While tip off is not a significant factor when firing the gun, the application of rudder to correct your aim point is. The gun is a wonderful thing but it is not a laser beam! The gun […]

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Air to Ground, Part Three – Rockets and Guns Page 7

Back To Page 6   As you near the target, bring the reticle up to the target and begin final aiming adjustments. When possible, use reticle matching to estimate proper open fire range. Remember…do not use rudder to correct your pipper position! Use small bank angles to ‘drift’ the pipper right or left. Fig 21 – The “Big […]

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Air to Ground, Part Three – Rockets and Guns Page 6

Back To Page 5   Tips and Techniques For Rocket and Gun Employment Roll in technique We’ll begin with the roll in towards the target. Rocket attacks and strafing are generally low altitude events as we typically fly them in our sims. Dive angles vary from about 5 to 30 degrees, and release altitudes vary from less […]

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Air to Ground, Part Three – Rockets and Guns Page 4

Back To Page 3   Delivery Considerations Unique To Forward Firing Ordnance We often think of these weapons as ‘point and shoot’ types. This ain’t necessarily so, as we will now see!! The first consideration is a phenomenon known as ‘tip off.’ Tip off applies only to rockets and is the result of the misalignment of the […]

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Air to Ground, Part Three – Rockets and Guns Page 3

Back To Page 2   Rocket and Gun Employment These weapons are classed as ‘forward firing ordnance.’ Let’s start by recognizing that we are talking about A2G rockets…not A2G missiles! What’s the difference, you ask? Simple…a missile is guided by some system (IR, laser, radar, etc)…a rocket is unguided. It goes more or less where you point it. It’s the […]

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Air to Ground, Part Three – Rockets and Guns Page 2

Back To Page 1   Understanding the A2G Sight Setting We know, from the last paragraph, that if we aim right at the target and then release our weapon, that weapon will hit the ground short of the target. Therefore, to get the weapon to hit the target, we have to actually aim past it…to the […]

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Air to Ground, Part Three – Rockets and Guns

by Andy Bush Fig 1 – A2G WW2 Style Introduction In the first two parts of this series on the basics of air to ground (A2G) weapons delivery, we concentrated on bombing. Now let’s move on to rocket and gun employment. Many of our newer sims (MiG Alley is a good example) let us get down and dirty […]

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