"Air_Force_of_One" attempted to maximize the victories/battles ratio and reach the top, being No.1 in the Leaderboard for that category. The attempt was successful, albeit he dropped to No.5 later on. Exclusively Soviet planes were flown, mostly to exploit the power of the BB-1/Su-2 family of attackers on low level "Ground Strike - light vehicles" maps.
Schwanzus Longus flew three missions in a squad of two (one of these three was lost), all others solo. No crews were aced. No gold was purchased. He flew at about patch 1.48, at BR 1.0-2.3.
"Air Force of One" is mocking the old U.S.Army's slogan "Army of One".
"Air_Force_of_One" won 196 of 207 battles (94.7%).
The conclusion was that this is very close to what an individual can achieve flying solo. Red teams with three good players with 15+ ground kills each could not be overcome without a 2nd good player in the blue team.
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| A BB-1 attacker in action |
The BB-1/Su-2 family combines a good light machinegun armament with quick-reloading light bombs. Six 100 kg bombs was the preferred load because the twelve 50 kg bombs load degrades the flying characteristics of the plane too much. The Su-2 TSS-1 is actually the weakest of the bunch since is has a mere two forward-firing fixed light machineguns and thus takes longer and spends more % of its rounds for an armoured car kill.
The MiG 3-15 was a fantastic high speed fighter at BR 1.7, the 20 mm cannon-armed LaGG 3-11 and Yak-1 were powerful on a domination map. The LaGG series has some irritating handling issue when yanked around with mouse aim, though.
The (gifted) premium plane "Zhukovsky's I-153-M62" is a fantastic dogfighter at low altitude on a domination map. The I-16 type 5 was a disappointment - it seemed to excel at nothing but rolling.
The tactics weren't much different from those described by Schwanzus Longus, but the techniques differed. The better guns allowed for much more effective air combat kills particularly on the Krymsk map, with less effort on guarding the runway. The six 100 kg bombs of a Su-2 or BB-1 allowed for more ground troops kills per minute, and their defensive gunner alerted of trailing red fighters. Dodging the bullets of pursuing red fighters became the standard survival technique, while tight 360° turns or high speed were no promising option for these attackers. The MiG-3-15 and to a lesser degree the LaGG 3-11 and Yak-1 were able to outrun many reds, but the latter ones were used in air combat (on Krymsk) exclusively.
The bomb-throwing technique was simple; mark target to see the range, zoom in, aim at about 20-50 m ahead of the target vehicle in its path. Some light vehicles attempt to dodge attacks, but this hardly ever works against 100 kg bombs. Bombs were almost never expended on artillery or AAA of any kind: Only the slightly tougher armoured cars were bombed. Sometimes one bomb was left and would be dropped at the end of a pass in order to reload six new bombs earlier. The 100 kg bombs were always set for instant detonation on impact.
Overall Air_Force_of_One was a very special pilot who tested the limits of what's possible for a solo player. A new War Thunder player might come to the conclusion that about 25% of the blue teams are too stupid to be saved by a single player, Air_Force_of_One showed that the limiting problem is rather that about 3-5% of the red teams are too stacked with the usually very few good players (three of them, whereas average is less than one) to be defeated by a solo player supported by an average (inept) team only.
Statistics of Air_Force_of_One:
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