When to Fight, When to Run - featuring Robin Olds (Battle for Sinai)
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Battle for Sinai. A nasty dogfight has the ghost of Robin Olds speaking through my headset to guide me as i’m about to die a horrible burning death over the sands of the Sinai. Includes a Tacview after action report and some action against the boys of the 72nd FS.
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So awesome of you to promote the video against me and zeek during one of my worst flights in BFS, I say this in a joking manner. I can say only that it was my fatal errors of leading this flight that had cost us the fight and me my life in this engagement. I somehow totally forget to perform my proper scans in this fight before the committ, if I would have done my job properly I would have known there where 3 jets and not 2. Also during this as i was going gimbals to support my shot i decided to go nose low to build up speed so i could chase my bandit. By doing this Zeek was no longer in a postion to support me. So all in all I sucked ass during our flight and we debriefed it as such after Zeek landed safely. You guys should have been able to kill Zeek if you would have been communicating to each other better, but you know this as well. Good kill, I hope I have a chance to redeem myself again.
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Nice video explaining what’s happening on your side of the fight. I wish I would have turned on my recording so you could have seen and heard our side. Good choice in bugging out, I didn’t see the first hawk site you flew me over, but the second set of ground troops I saw and bugged out.
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Not to sound like a bitter ex girlfriend but since you put up the ACMI in your video, I will share what I thought of the fight. This is just from the time i was killed. We both know I made my mistakes so I was killed immediately. But for everyones and maybe even your benefit I would like to share what I thought after my Death. First your wingman should never had said “Fox 1 inbound” unless he saw it coming at you, He should have said “Defensive” and then just performed the proper defensive procedures. Just like you mentioned, you should never ever require a lead to tell you wether you should defend youself from being shot. Now to the merge with you and zeek. I didn’t get a chance to actually see his speed but from what i saw visually from your jet Zeek’s speed must have been well above 550 knots as his turn radius was very big which instantly gave you the advantage in the fight. You were never defensive as you called out in the whole fight until you bugged out. You had met him with good speed. All you should have done there was maintain good corner speed and you would have been able to kill him. You ended up pulling yourself to about 220 kts and out of position. If you just position yourself in a bit of LAG you would have solved your slow speed, if you had reconized it early enough. Also when you fire your Aim-9P at zeek you thought you had a good angle for the shot but looking at you acmi you will see a little line that comes from the jet forward, this line shows you where you jet is pointing and when you fired you were in lag. You should always pull to at least pure or even sometimes in BMS Lead to fire the missle. All in all if you were just a bit more patient and maintained good BFM with good energy you would have came out with another kill. This is just my perspective as a saw it from your video only. In the 72nd VFW we like to do a proper debriefing when we look at the ACMI. I hope my comments will help you and anyone else in future engaemnets. Until next time.
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Not to sound like a bitter ex girlfriend but since you put up the ACMI in your video, I will share what I thought of the fight. This is just from the time i was killed. We both know I made my mistakes so I was killed immediately. But for everyones and maybe even your benefit I would like to share what I thought after my Death. First your wingman should never had said “Fox 1 inbound” unless he saw it coming at you, He should have said “Defensive” and then just performed the proper defensive procedures. Just like you mentioned, you should never ever require a lead to tell you wether you should defend youself from being shot. Now to the merge with you and zeek. I didn’t get a chance to actually see his speed but from what i saw visually from your jet Zeek’s speed must have been well above 550 knots as his turn radius was very big which instantly gave you the advantage in the fight. You were never defensive as you called out in the whole fight until you bugged out. You had met him with good speed. All you should have done there was maintain good corner speed and you would have been able to kill him. You ended up pulling yourself to about 220 kts and out of position. If you just position yourself in a bit of LAG you would have solved your slow speed, if you had reconized it early enough. Also when you fire your Aim-9P at zeek you thought you had a good angle for the shot but looking at you acmi you will see a little line that comes from the jet forward, this line shows you where you jet is pointing and when you fired you were in lag. You should always pull to at least pure or even sometimes in BMS Lead to fire the missle. All in all if you were just a bit more patient and maintained good BFM with good energy you would have came out with another kill. This is just my perspective as a saw it from your video only. In the 72nd VFW we like to do a proper debriefing when we look at the ACMI. I hope my comments will help you and anyone else in future engaemnets. Until next time.
Appreciate the info and thoughts.
Both of my wingmen are less experienced. #2 (darkfiber) is somewhat experienced in the campaign but is new to fighting humans. #3 is completely new and this was the first time I was flying with him.
Regarding my options, we started the fight and zeek had about 100 knots on me - I took a risk in trying to kill him quickly with a fox-2 because I knew other bandits were inbound, but when that failed I was only a matter of time until zeek killed me due to the energy advantage and good maintenance of corner on his part.
What I could have done after bugging out is come around and fight him again with some renewed energy - in fact, when I make my escape I have about 150 knots on him, and turn around at the end to see if he’s still there. He is (running), but then there’s 3-4 bandits 40 miles away and inbound. Time to run!
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I will share what I thought of the fight. This is just from the time i was killed. We both know I made my mistakes so I was killed immediately. But for everyones and maybe even your benefit I would like to share what I thought after my Death. First your wingman should never had said “Fox 1 inbound” unless he saw it coming at you, He should have said “Defensive” and then just performed the proper defensive procedures.
Wrong already. Judging by the weapon and aircraft systems being simulated the wingman could have made some appropriate manoeuvre and or calls before shots were fired but everyone has missed that.
I wonder how many pages of back and forth opinion the resident experts can generate once they get in on this thread
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Wrong already. Judging by the weapon and aircraft systems being simulated the wingman could have made some appropriate manoeuvre and or calls before shots were fired but everyone has missed that.
I wonder how many pages of back and forth opinion the resident experts can generate once they get in on this thread
Wrong about what that his wingman should not have asked to go defensive. No i am right. Its obvious that he should have made other adjustments before getting himself defensive. I was just saying that you do not need to ask to save yourself. There is no opinion here its just the fact.
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In fairness, I think the wingman mis-understood the ‘Continue’ brevity …. ‘continue your maneuver’, not ‘continue flying directly into the missile’. That’s what lead to his ‘asking’ to go defensive.
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Wrong about what that his wingman should not have asked to go defensive. No i am right. Its obvious that he should have made other adjustments before getting himself defensive. I was just saying that you do not need to ask to save yourself. There is no opinion here its just the fact.
This man is correct. It was a clear mistake on my wingman’s part.
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Another thing I noticed at the open of the fight that I think put your flight at a disadvantage. You called for your flight to go trail and flew in unsupported. In this case, Zeek and Jambo didn’t know you were there and you got the drop on Jambo as he flew in fat and happy. But if either of them had seen you, you would have been 2v1 and likely dispatched quickly.
I’m curious what the thought process was behind your formation call and what your plan of attack was at that point? The only thing I can think of was maybe you were trying to offset your wingmen’s experience by blowing though and hoping to draw one of both jets off onto you so you could trap them in a bracket between your -2 and -3 if you made it past them. I don’t know what kind of training you guys do so I can only see it from my own point of view.
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Another thing I noticed at the open of the fight that I think put your flight at a disadvantage. You called for your flight to go trail and flew in unsupported. In this case, Zeek and Jambo didn’t know you were there and you got the drop on Jambo as he flew in fat and happy. But if either of them had seen you, you would have been 2v1 and likely dispatched quickly.
I’m curious what the thought process was behind your formation call and what your plan of attack was at that point? The only thing I can think of was maybe you were trying to offset your wingmen’s experience by blowing though and hoping to draw one of both jets off onto you so you could trap them in a bracket between your -2 and -3 if you made it past them. I don’t know what kind of training you guys do so I can only see it from my own point of view.
Glad to answer this. There was a method to my madness
First, this was my first time flying with the #3 Boon (not to be confused with old school UOAF member "boon"docksaint), I did not expect him to contribute much/anything. That he was killed by a fox-1 fired at rmax (easily defeatable) confirmed my suspicions.
Second: We did not have AIM-7s (the airbase was out of ammo) - so my strategy was to essentially force them to fire on me and commit on me so my wingmen could engage them as you suggest. If we had AIM-7s i probably would have chosen a different formation.