28 November Debrief

S!

well we had a good show Sunday night, 5 of us on for a while and I wanted to let you know that as a squadron I feel we did really well.

We came up against some good opponents, in their airspace (above 12k feet) and we managed to get 7 air to air kills between us - more importantly, out of a total of 32 sorties flown we managed 20-odd RTB's.

I know some of you flew long missions without firing a shot, especially Dezey who had something like 3 hours flying with 0 kills, but we dominated the airspace over the target area and forced the Luftwaffe to keep the fight up high and deal with us first.

This allowed the ground pounder guys to get on with their efforts, dropping bombs and paras on the attack objectives.

I saw a post on the forums today about the LW whining that they are not getting fights above 4k - well we proved yesterday that we can fight up in their airspace and we can win.

Any thoughts on what worked or what didn't work please air them here!

I feel we need to be more disciplined on formation, especially on ingress - we need to ensure that Section Leaders are flying on 75% boost to allow wingmen to catch up and form up.

Also remember your responsibility to your Wingman/Leader - a few times one or another of us had wandered far away from the group chasing a 109 - if the guy is heading flat out away from you you have to let him go, or he will drag you in to trouble. Although it doesn't always seem like it, better to RTB with 0 kills than have a KIA with 1 kill - if you have RTB'd and save your wingmans neck for instance, rather than getting a KIA and your wingman also getting KIA...

The difference between the squad and the gaggle is how we look after each other in the fight. call out when you are being attacked, and anyone who is not engaged defensive themselves should see if they can assist - even if you are chasing down a He-111, your responsibility to your squad mate comes first.

As I said, any thoughts on this or anything that happened last night shout up here - the more we discuss the more we learn, and the more we improve next time!

S!

I would just like to point out ,for the record, that I did fire my guns at least once !