Dodging hits in air combat as a fighter

Most players use hardly any effective evasive manoeuvres during air combat. They simply tolerate that they'll be shot down soon.

I knew a clan leader of a really, really good ground attack-focused clan whom I couldn't convince that flying horizontal circles is no good evasive manoeuvre - particularly while I was diving on his pursuer.

So a few days ago it happened that someone was on my tail for six minutes 50 seconds, 4 minutes 40 seconds of which he was within range, shooting - and not killing me. My total damage to his 20 mm gun, two 15 mm guns and two 7.92 mm guns after almost five minutes was one main landing gear leg shot off, the oil cooler hit and light damage on my left wing.

I love it when they accuse you of cheating. Being accused of using a survival bot is a first for me, though!

Initially I tried to defeat him with scissors, but (I'm still not great at it) the near misses became uncomfortable and I decided to build up speed in a dive again. After about two minutes of being shot at I came to the conclusion that he's really bad at aiming, and just kept dodging his shots while flying towards blue fighters. It was really safer than aerobatics would have been. Such poor shots often choose to ram you if you try fancy tricks.

Some general observations on dodging shots from behind, as a fighter:

- the tracers allow you to identify some planes. You can tell whether the guns are wing-mounted (and tracers crossing), for example. You may also notice whether you're in front of or closer than his gun convergence range.

- you can hear whether he's got a big calibre gun (37-45 mm)

- if the tracers miss you left, turn to left. If they miss right, turn to right. Your correction will be the opposite of his correction of aim this way.

- if you want to try fancy aerobatics, do so while he's reloading. You may notice this when the tracers from 20 mm shells stop 

- know the planes. A Spitfire Ia spraying lots of 7.7 mm bullets at 500 m distance is not much of a threat if you have an armoured pilot's seat. In such a case you should probably try to be really fast with little dodging to avoid him closing into effective range.

- fly towards safety if possible (either in front of and below the blue fighter spawn point or at your defended airfield at less than 2,000 m altitude, preferably even lower)

- you may find a mountain to disappear behind, which allows you to do a turn or other manoeuvre of usually high risk while being impossible to hit

- to fly evasive manoeuvres usually means to have mroe drag and thus be slower than your pursuer. That's why you'll have difficulties getting away even from slower fighters when you need to dodge much

- avoid showing a large silhouette, such as a Spitfire's wing

- be unpredictable

- avoid becoming very slow

- pick up speed while he's reloading cannons

- you may attract blue fighter pilot's attention (and thus possibly some help) by shooting with tracers (assuming you got tracer ammo, which you usually should get rid of ASAP if possible except in some American planes)
- the worse their aim is, the greater the risk that you'll evade INTO a shot that would have missed you