Leading the guns in a dog fight.

I was playing WT in VR the other day and have been thinking. In a turning battle when you are leading the guns the nose of your plane tends to completely obscure the target, giving him a chance to change direction. I wonder why didn't they point the guns slightly up so that you wouldn't loose the sight of the enemy in a turning fight. I mean I know It would make attacking ground targets almost impossible, but is should work well on a pure fighter aircraft. What do you guys think?

I was playing WT in VR the other day and have been thinking. In a turning battle when you are leading the guns the nose of your plane tends to completely obscure the target, giving him a chance to change direction. I wonder why didn't they point the guns slightly up so that you wouldn't loose the sight of the enemy in a turning fight. I mean I know It would make attacking ground targets almost impossible, but is should work well on a pure fighter aircraft. What do you guys think?

But when someone is flying straight, you'd have to fly down...

If you loose him under your nose, go closer. But it also depends on the plane, for example, the 109 has a quite good forward visibility in contrast to the spitfire, where you can see only a few degrees downwards. But IMO it's also a good reference for the range. If he disappears under the nose then you aren't close enough (when i'm flying the 109).

And the germans did put the guns in planes pointing up. It's called "schräge musik" and was used against bombers only.

F-15 has it's gun slightly elevated, about 2-3 degrees and yes, it's great for dogfighting but sucks for ground attacks.

You should be able to get enough lead on the target without losing sight of the target within the guns effective range. Forcing the pilot to fly closer is just stupid as it puts you in danger of overshooting and prevent's you from killing the bandit faster. Modern US fighters all seem to have their nose profile designed so that at the maximum effective range on a 0.9M target it's still barely visible from 90 degree aspect.

I was playing WT in VR the other day and have been thinking. In a turning battle when you are leading the guns the nose of your plane tends to completely obscure the target, giving him a chance to change direction. I wonder why didn't they point the guns slightly up so that you wouldn't loose the sight of the enemy in a turning fight.

Now imagine that the target plane changes direction indeed - you have to adjust by rolling a little first, as you always do. In "conventional" plane rolling will not change the relative positions of aiming point (more or less in-line with your fuselage) and your target. In "elevated guns" plane, however, both your aiming and convergence points move along an arc, throwing off the aim left or right with the smallest aileron movement. The higher from the waterline the guns aim, the worse it gets. Good luck with hitting anything like that :D.

Check it out by making a simple flight experiment - try to keep the heavily manoeuvring AI fighter at constant position relative to some chosen point in the upper part of your airplane's windscreen. You'll see it's actually more difficult than keeping them within your normal gunsight.

Damn, even the "Schraege Musik" system Razo+r mentioned wasn't as simple to use against planes flying in the straigh line as it would seem (tried that in modded Il-2, quite challenging stuff, must've been much harder in real life).

Thanks Art-J! That's a very comprehensive answer. :smartass:

Having the aimpoint move in a arc is actually good as you only need a small move with ailerons to move the pipper sideways. Planes are also usually very stable in roll axis but much less stable in yaw axis so you get more precise and quicker aim with less oscillations by having the guns elevated.