Ex- and current military Dopers, please help a civvie understand the wisdom of flying in tight formations when attacking the enemy. Here’s the breakdown of pros and cons on the issue, as I understand it:
Pros:
Facilitating good coordination and (at least in WWI and WWII) non-radio, non-verbal signalling and keeping tabs on each other’s progress, victories, and damages/casualties sustained.
Some incremental fuel savings from lessened wind resistance for the aircraft in the back.
Psychological intimidation of the enemy [?]. Cons:
Anything from wind shear, pilot inattentiveness or incompetence, mechanical SNAFUS, and dodging flak or birds or whatever can lead to a disastrous mid-air collision, with possible cascading effects involving other units.
Isn’t one big block of enemy planes oncoming a lot easier for AA batteries to aim at than, say, the same number of planes divvied up in smaller groups?
While widely separated pilots may not be able to gesture to or otherwise visually signal to each other, wouldn’t they be better situated to spot oncoming threats, especially from behind (and either from above or below)? If an enemy fighter is sneaking up on you from your blind spot, couldn’t he take an entire squadron by surprise if the squadron was in a tight formation, as opposed to widely dispersed?
Psychological relief to the enemy, when he sees mid-air collisions or figures out that taking out the plane in front can also take out one a bit farther back, etc.
In actual combat fighters definitely don’t fly wingtip to wingtip-that’s pretty much a Hollywood convention. In Top Gun only an idiot would have flown where Maverick did when he was the wingman of Iceman, and not only because that led directly to the flat spin that killed his backseater Goose, and should have gotten his ass court martialed out of the Navy (instead it was about the only thing he did in the movie that the brass didn’t get on him for).
You are instead typically in what is called “combat spread formation”, c. 500-1000 yards apart (with the wingman about 300 yards back), roughly the turning radius of your plane, so that if someone attacks your leader, he’ll break (turn) hard, and you can then lock onto the bandit in turn. Flying wingtip close in actual combat will just mean you get in each other’s way and perhaps collide.
Cargo (well, paratrooper airlift) will also fly in a particular distance and pattern based on winds aloft, and the geometry of the drop zone in order to somewhat pattern the paratroopers’ drops somewhat predictably.
Fighters, what Spezza said.
Helos fly in formations for similar reasons as the old WWII bombers–interlocking firepower. Blackhawks sometimes mount machine guns on the side, and depending on fields of fire and the ranges to targets, they’ll choose a particular formation to orient maximum firepower to one particular direction or another.
Tripler
Heck, I’ve even seen three graders lined up in a staggered pattern to grade a couple of acres at once (think of wheat combines, too!)
The primary(only) motivation for the tight formations(“Combat Box”) used in WWII was to maximize the defensive firepower of the bomber’s machine guns. Generally speaking, the tighter the formation, the better defensive firepower, due to interlocking fields of fire.
This meant that the formations were more vulnerable to flak, so around May 1944, the 8th AF loosened up the formations, because the primary threat became flak rather than fighters about that point.
I suspect modern-day bombers probably don’t use much in the way of formations relative to those of yesteryear.
Modern theory is that seperate ‘packages’ go in to neutralize the SAM threat to the bombers, who then go in and target what they need to.
The bottom line is that airframes can only carry so much on a mission. Your fighters/“Wild Weasels” eliminate the threat to the bombers who now carry GPS guided munitions (the threat can be either airborne or from the surface).
“We” [sub]the USAF[/sub] will sweep the airspace and gain supremacy. Then we’ll send in single ships to do the bombing. There’s a lot of theory here, but we’ve put into good practice post WWII.
Tripler
It’s difficult to hit one bomber versus a formation of 'em. Bombs on target are the key.
Actually helicopter flight patterns depend on the situation.
They could use staggered trail formations that use uneven spacing and altitude variation as to make unguided rocket attacks difficult. As to avoid the idea that at X distance if you fire at the first guy you’ll hit the third.
Or they could use a bounding overwatch like a squad of people moving down a street covering each other. (slow but safe and deadly)
Or just flying just above the highest obsticle as fast as possible.
A helicopter performs a different mission than fixed wing for the most part, so traditional formations aren’t that essential.