Air To Air Gunnery – Theory and Application, Part Three Page 9

By SimHQ on February 11, 2000 in _air9, hide

And now the foot-stomper. This is a one G technique. You want to get the gun line in the target plane of motion and then hold it there. As the target approaches the open fire point, you want to make sure you are at one G. Why? To concentrate your bullet stream. You are literally ‘strafing’ a point in the sky that the target will fly through. The open fire point is a band to account for variances in the rate of target motion across your nose (LOS rate). The outer edge is for a high LOS rate, the inner for slower LOS rates.

So here’s the technique. Pull your nose out in front of the target using canopy references to get into the target’s flight path. Raise or lower your nose to get the gun line on the target flight path. Relax G. Is the gun line still in the target’s flight path? If not, make an adjustment. Relax G again. Hold the gun line in the target flight path, and as the target enters the open fire window, double check you are at one G and then pull the trigger.