Always been a student of the Battle of Britain, from living over there.
The British had a habit of a 4 finger flight of a/c. They would go after a bomber in that formation. German fighters would come up and take them down 1 2 3 4, while they were trying to line up on the Bomber.. It was a dumbass thing to do.
they Poles, much like the Rasta of the Luftwaffe, loose formation of pilot and wingmen in two pairs.
Their training and experience, and their hate for the Nazis, that attacked their nation, they were Highly Motivated.
Just to clarify, IIRC the RAF’s fighter tactics consisted of a squadron of twelve aircraft formed up into four tight “Vic’s” of three aircraft each. See the link for a clear explanation.
https://www.classicwarbirds.co.uk/articles/royal-air-force-tactics-during-the-battle-of-britain.phpThe theory was that three fighters attacking in unison would bring more firepower onto the target in what was expected to be just a two-second window of opportunity per firing pass.
The two second presumption was remarkably prescient and was the basis for the sudden upgrade to eight gun fighters such as the Hurricane and the Spitfire as opposed to the two or four gun designs in previous fighters. They had estimated how many .303 bullets would be needed to be delivered on target to down an enemy aircraft and calculated how many machine guns would be needed to achieve that. Hence the new requirement for eight gun fighters.
The tight three plane vic formations however were a disaster, the two trailer planes giving all their attention to maintaining formation with the leader rather than scanning the skies and when they did get “bounced” the Bf109’s diving from above had three targets to choose from.
During the BoB some RAF flight leaders adopted the highly effective German loose four-plane “finger four” formations but apparently this did not become official dogma as taught in training squadrons until 1942, long after the BoB and even after the RAF fighters consistently got their a$$es kicked by the Luftwaffe during their “rhubarb” fighter sweeps over Northern France in 1941.
