Poll of the Day > I've got a dumb question for experts on military aircraft / air combat

(+) Yeah! (+)

In A New Hope during the trench run Luke and Vader are like "cover me" and their wingmen fly beside them not doing anything and then get shot down. What exactly are their wingmen doing? Are they literally just standing in the way to block shots? Why is it better if their wingmen get shot rather than having the main characters get shot? Or is there something else they're doing that's not really reflected on screen?

This is something that's been nagging at me since I was a small kawaii child and I still don't really get it.

In the case of star wars the wingmen are legit just there to block shots as well as fire on any threats that are coming from the front (which doesn't happen)

Why it's better they get shot... not all the ships have bombs and/or used their torpedoes on other objectives like towers and turbolasers. The entire Y-wing squadron is destroyed before getting remotely close and they had the vast majority of weapons.

So, when red leader went in it was like in Independence day when they give cover to the ONE GUY with weapons left

...

For for Vader's wingmen, same principal - to protect a higher ranking officer from damage, but moreover they don't shoot cuz of Vader's ego

They were just looking for an opportunity to use the term "cover me"

I think in a real situation (ie: in the open sky) the idea is that they are flying in formation, with one ship as the lead. once they engage a target, they may break formation and fall into one of various maneuvers depending on the situation.

in the movie I think it is using air combat as a rough analogue for space combat (similar to Star Trek which uses naval combat), but IRL space combat will be its own thing with its own peculiarities.

whether you could say the formation in the movie was or wasn't useful I'm not sure.

There really is no modern air combat equivalent to the trench run. The closest thing might be in Vietnam where the F-105 Thunderchief was used for tactical bombing with an F-4 Phantom II escort. But usually the F-4's stayed fairly high while the Thuds flew low. When a MiG took the bait, the Phantoms would bounce them from above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E96CfPLkPU