Here's How to be a Good Wingman

rule number one of being a good wingman is it's the wingman's job to be there and the definition of there varies by phases of flight and flight lead desires in some cases and we have our trusty training aids you will never lose sight of your flight lead at launch so this can happen at the field if you do a section go where you roll down the runway at the same time in formation or what's called a flight leader sap flight leader separation where flight lead rolls and as soon as he rotates the wingman goes but never loses sight of him during the departure and as you can see sometimes this happens at the ship here's a sequence vf-31 f14s launching cats 2 3 and 1 respectively let's imagine the guy on cat 2 is the flight lead and let's say his wingman is the guy who launches on cat 1. so you can see the guy on cat one never loses sight of him and so that makes the problem a little easier but generally especially the ship you'll lose sight of your lead because in most cases your flight lead will launch a couple of minutes before you so first airplane off complies with case one because we're talking about case one daytime procedures here to keep the discussion focused say launch off cat one boom right hand clearing turn parallel brc drive out to 10 miles climb up to whatever the briefed holding altitude was so let's say in this case we briefed i'll meet you at high holding and let's say that high holding in accordance with our case one cv mobility tac note is twenty thousand feet so the flight lead is up there at 20 000 feet 250 knots as briefed in a gentle left-hand turn arcing above the ship in a five-mile circle meanwhile the wingman's waiting to launch finally gets the cat boom he's off let's say lunch is on cat three for the sake of this discussion left hand clearing turn parallels brc up to ten miles so overhead the ship five mile circle point one is the boat clock code counterclockwise two three four would be the four points of that circle so maybe the lead says i'm approaching point three so then the wingman when he gets up to twenty thousand feet knows where to look 0.3 you're at 0.2 so you're looking over here about nine o'clock now we want to get aboard operative words safely and expeditiously because we have places to be and bandits to kill we don't want to hang out in high holding for an inordinate amount of time waiting for the wingmen to get aboard further we don't want to have a midair because the wingman was overzealous in his rendezvous safe and expeditious so the first key to affecting a safe expeditious rendezvous is getting on the 45 degree bearing line as i've scribed here using my rough interpretation of an f-14 with its wings at 68 degrees fully back as briefed flight lead 20 000 feet 250 knots standard right left-hand turn wingman climbs up gets his tally and figures out what he needs to do to get to that 45 degree bearing line various types of pursuit lead pursuit is where the nose is in front of the flight lead to fly a smaller radius turn in order to affect closure pure pursuit is where i'm pointed at the flight lead and depending on my airspeed that's either a fast way to close to where i need to be or it could be inefficient and then lag pursuit is if my intercept is too hot or i'm ahead of the 45 degree bearing line i need to fly lag pursuit to get to that 45 degree bearing line so at the 45 degree brain line inside of a mile and a half i want to stop pointing at my flight lead and do what's called align the fuselages now i will affect closure by using angle of bank a flight lead does not want to see his wingmen pointing at him at a mile and a half or never mind inside of a mile and a half so now we're aligning the fuselages and i'm going to use angle of bank to close to parade position in the event you are not hacking it you want to under run never overrun no canopy rolls over the top and never go belly up to your lead in an attempt to salvage a bad rendezvous your flight lead does not want to see the belly of your airplane and if he loses sight of your helmet you're probably going to piss him off so in the event it's not working and you have too much closure under runs and then establish on the outside and get aboard that way that's not as good as getting a board safely the right way but if you're if you've gooned it up under run like the other things in naval aviation that we've talked about on other episodes in flight refueling dog fighting landing at the boat practice is the key to getting proficient so when i was a rag instructor in the familiarization phase of the syllabus we had a mission called breakup and rendezvous and the basic conduct of those flights was the wingman would establish a mile and a half behind the flight lead at that point flightly would go into a standard rate turn the wingman and let him drift out to about 10 o'clock or two o'clock depending on what side he was on he'd jump on bearing line and do a safe and expeditious rendezvous using angle of bank to get to parade position once established safely would cross under the other side and then the flight lead would roll out at that point the flightly would break off do a 180 degree turn and then the wingman would follow behind him and again they'd be established in a mile and a half trail and they'd do it all over again either direction so this was a way to get multiple rendezvous done in a short amount of time now once you're aboard you need to stay aboard so the assumption of the flight lead is you're going to join in parade until he puts you somewhere else and a wingman should take pride in flying good parade so in the f-14 i have my other training aid the site picture for parade was put the leading edge of the intake on the rios ejection triangle so this is what you would see here if you're flying good parade and you just maintain that sight picture regardless of what the flight lead does you can imagine this takes a lot of concentration i remember flying with the skipper you put the nuggets through their paces where they'd join up in parade and he'd suddenly just pull into the vertical and see if they hung on maybe do a loop or a barrel roll all he wanted to see was is that wingman gonna hang in there and i'm pleased to say that almost 100 of the time these brand new nugget pilots did hang in there again it's the wingman's responsibility to be there so that's the sight picture so whatever your sight picture is for your airplane establish it and then maintain it so two different types of parade there's vfr parade which we generally use during the daytime around the ship around the field so vfr parade is you keep the flight lead on the horizon when he maneuvers ifr parade is you maintain the plane of the wing line when the flight lead maneuvers so for instance you use ifr parade when you're on the heavy tanker the reason for that is if you're approaching these tankers you can tell how many guys are on the wing easier so that's rfr parade vfr parade sometimes when you're flying parade you might inadvertently fly into the clouds and in some cases those clouds could be really thick a trick that we used in the f-14 community is instead of flying here if you get in the goo you'd slide back and fly formation off of the horizontal stab which gave you some wiggle room and allowed you to tuck in even tighter in the event you completely lose sight of your lead in the goo you need to sing out and both airplanes need to turn away from each other try to find clear air in order to join back up do not attempt to join up ifr do not wildly deviate from your flight path because there could be other airplanes around as well as i said the flight leads expectations the wingmen will join safely expeditiously and get in parade the wingmen should expect to stay in parade until the flight lead puts them somewhere else so the options are if the flight lead gives this that means go ahead and go into loose cruise so loose cruise is not trail but out here at a 45 degree 60 degree cone so if he wants to maneuver you're still kind of have mutual support but your workload isn't as hard as it is when you're in parade the other basic position of a wingman hut gives you one of these that means push it into combat spread so combat spread is your tactical formation where both airplanes can maintain mutual support both sams on the ground and bandits in the air behind is called sucked ahead is called acute you want to be right down the wing line mile and a half maintaining mutual support if he gives you one of these that means come back to parade so drop back to your 45 degree bearing line and then join using angle of bank as we described before all right so those are the basics of how to be a good wingman and if you follow those guidelines you can be my wingman anytime that'll do it for this episode if you're a first-time viewer please ring the bell and become a subscriber so you don't miss anything give me the likes very important in the youtube algorithm comment i love the comments and as you can see i engage as much as i can if you'd like to help us take this channel to the next level please join our patrons at patreon.comwardcarroll check the links below for official merch t-shirts and coffee mugs and also where to get my debut novel punks wore and i look forward to talking to you again soon [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 49,157

Rating: 4.9859514 out of 5

Keywords: Ward Carroll, F-14 Tomcat, DCS, DCS World, aircraft carriers, fighter pilots, RIOs, radar intercept officers, Top Gun, You can be my wingman anytime, Iceman, military, aviation, jet aircraft, fighter squadrons, flight lead, wingman

Id: c8T4JnIP9_E

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021

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[u/outdoorsgeek]

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