The art of aerial gunnery
“I’ve worked the angle down to where our paths are crossing at 40 to 60 degrees. What you want, ideally, is zero to 10, with the enemy moving almost directly away or coming almost straight at you. At anything over 30 degrees, it’s almost pointless to shoot with a fixed sight.”
No matter how good you are at flying and manoeuvring your aircraft, all that ‘fancy’ flying will count for nothing if you cannot bring your guns to bear and hit your intended target! It would be fair to say that aerial gunnery is the most difficult aspect of air combat to master. This difficulty stems from the fact that both you and your adversary are constantly moving in a three-dimensional space.
