Anyone familiar with the "clover leaf" tactic apparently used by P-38 pilots in WWII? I'm interested in finding out more of what it actually involved. All I know is the name.....clover leaf. Not much to go on.



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John Sponauer
Senior Editor
SimHQ.com
jsponauer@SimHQ.com

I'm working on it.

I dont know if its the same thing, but I once saw a Daisy chain demo'ed at an air show with a bunch of AT6s.

Basically it was a strafing attack, where they spaced them selves apart and made a run. By the time the 4th plane or so was about to pull off the strafe the 1st plane was comming in from another direction. meanwhile the other planes were out on the out side of the petals of the 'daisy' turning back in. They said they could spot any intercepters or trouble before they made another run. They said they can put a lot of lead in one area continuously for several minutes. From above the pattern is supposed to look like a flower.

It was mighty impressive as them noisy Texans were coming in from every direction one after another.

No, it's not a multi-plane maneuver. Read Joe Foss's book "Top Guns" and in there is the story about the clover leaf maneuver. It was developed by the Commander of a P-38 squadron in Africa/Europe, and it could be used 1v1.

From descriptions, it could be a high yo-yo. The term high yo-yo was probably not invented yet at that time.

Shok

Now there's a lead. That does sound like it might be what is being talked about. The aerobatic cloverleaf could be imagined as a form of high yo-yo when visualized as being flown against another aircraft.

Andy