B-25J Air Fighting Three If a fighter does throw away his "E" advantage at the start of a fight and then gets nervous and tries to extend a bit on each pass you will find it easier to gain position on him. On the other hand a fighter who dives in and then starts turning hard and constantly will give the B-25 many more problems. This kind of fight should descend into nose-to-nose turns and reversals as far as the B-25 is concerned. It needs to get turned back into the fighters nose to prevent a saddle up as much as possible. The turns are made nose-low or as tight slicebacks (a little rudder and maximum speed possible). Pile on the Gs towards 5Gs and drive the nose right at the fighter. Begin a lead turn before he passes and even while the guns are blazing. From the start of the fight look for a preference of the fighter to go left or right. Many fighters will continue each successive turn in the same direction. Lead turn him back into his preferred direction and keep going. In a tight turning fight the B-25 will edge towards the spin limit. This is bad. Turns need to be nose-low to keep the speed up but this means that you will run out of altitude in no time at all. Watch for any move on the fighters part to go up in vertical and use the separation that gives you to go up too. Gain a few hundred feet on each pass if you can. You'll give it away on the next nose-low turn so it's a good idea to aim for a little alt which can be given away. Spins will occur and the B-25 should be confident enough to not only get out of them as soon as possible but also to keep an eye on the fighter. It's not enough to know where he is and how far away he is... you need to know where his nose is pointed. If he just blew past you on the way down with his nose pointing to his right (your left), then the B-25 departs and you spin right, you must be able to figure out that unless he rolls left (and buys you a little time) then he is going to come back right too. Meanwhile you are in a right spin and as you come out of it you need to know whether to continue a turn to the right or roll and try to reverse left. Turning right in this instance will put him right on your six. Turning left, even though you come out of the spin heading right, will bring you back into his nose. Make that pass and then reassess the situation. Take only one second to reassess. He'll be coming back hard again. It all goes wrong for the B-25 because of spins in the B25f.cam. The Hellcat sought to hold an altitude advantage for two passes at the start. Then impatience set in and he went for the B-25 with his hair on fire. Bad gunnery (yet again) on the part of the B-25 gave the Hellcat a lucky break when he pulled an Immelman right in front of the B-25 at 4:24 minutes into the film. The gamble paid off for the Hellcat this time... he took one hit only as he went up. The B-25 finally lost control in an ever-slowing flat scissors. In the B25g.cam the Zeke turns hard and harder with each pass. This gave the B-25 no end of trouble. Yet the Zeke gave away an alt advantage from the start. He attacked the lower B-25 with a Split-S which was about the worst thing he could have done. Not only did he end up going below the B-25, inverted, and with a too many Gs loaded to do anything than strive to go back up in blackout he took a hit on the way down. The fight decayed into a string of tight reversals, missed shots for the B-25, hits for the Zeke, and five spins and recoveries for the B-25 at low alt. Watch carefully at 4:01 minutes into the film. The Zeke turns right and B-25 decides to turn with him for 90 degrees to force the Zeke to continue the turn and hopefully into blackout. Only when the Zeke starts to visibly pull away does the B-25 stop the turn and reverses left. Yet the Zeke comes back around much tighter than the B-25 anticipated. A quick reverse right stopped the Zeke gaining a solution. The Zeke rolls left and then continues the turn left for some reason (possibly blackout). The B-25 had reversed to the right nose-high, now it goes nose-low and deep. Position was sought at this point. The move was continued and pressed well enough that the B-25 came out of the move 400yds on the Zekes six. The Zeke broke left, the B-25 did not lead enough, and the shot missed. This particular Zeke gave the B-25 a good kicking. He got oil, fuel, and flaps. The B-25 was lucky to get back to friendly territory and only when the decision was made to return to base were the bombs jettisoned. The B-25 pilot on a ground attack mission should not jettison the bombs at the first sign of an enemy fighter. Though the 6 x 550lbs bombs are a fair load to carry into the fight a "mission kill" is the reward for the fighter for simply showing up. Keep the bombs unless you are really struggling. A macro to arm them, drop both sticks, and close the doors, all in one key press is real handy.