Start the manoeuvre by entering a gentle dive (30-45 degrees) towards the target, fire, recover on the level and extend for some 10-15 seconds before making a straight vertical reversal. As the name reveals, the manoeuvre describes an 8-formed shape lying down. The Cuban-8 is a typical airshow manoeuvre that comes useful for strafing and for making repeated attacks on very slow and plodding targets.
Be advised that airspeed builds up quickly in the dive and that you must have a certain amount of altitude to play with lest you smack head first into the dirt. Experiment by varying the amplitude of the manoeuvre at various airspeeds, and by executing aileron rolls in the dive to further stymie a pursuer before flattening out on your escape heading. From a level starting position, half-roll and pull back to enter a dive, relax stick pressure to build up speed and then pull some more to exit the manoeuvre in the opposite direction. The Split-S (or Split Arse as it was originally known) is a 180-degree reversal just like the Immelman, but going down instead of up. Think of it as a half-loop with a half-roll on top. It is an easy enough manoeuvre: pull up as in a looping but, instead of completing the circle to your original heading, half-roll to upright at the apex and continue on the level in the opposite direction. The Poles are also claimed to have widely practised fighter tactics while flying as pairs.The German WWI ace Max Immelman patented the vertical renversement since universally recognized simply as the “Immelman”. Chief amongst those claiming to be the true parent of the "Swarm" is the Finnish Air Force which apparently used the pair as the basis of fighter tactics well before the Second World War. Over the years I have received correspondence from numerous sources pointing out that the "pair" was used by various air forces in the 1930s. A NOTE: The above essay was written in the early 1990s. If you look at your hand you will see the tips of your fingers, when outstretched, approximate to the positions of the aircraft in the formation.
The RAF copied the German tactics renaming the Schwarm as the "Finger-four" formation. It was the adoption of these tactics, as much as the excellent flying qualities of the 109, that gave victory to the Germans in their early campaigns. A loose formation is much harder to see against the sky than a tight one, the Schwarm would only close up to keep contact with each other when passing through cloud. A loose formation is only possible when the pilots are freed of flying close enough to see their leader's hand signals. One of the reasons that the time for this sort of formation had come was the availability of air to air radio. The leader's wingman would fly behind and low. The second pair would fly behind the leader of the first pair, stepped up away from the sun. Again the aircraft flew wide apart, the two leaders looking ahead, the two wingmen concentrating on the rear. Molders expanded it into the "Schwarm", two pairs acting together. The pair of aircraft was called a "Rotte" by the Germans. At this time there arrived in Spain Werner Molders, who took the two aircraft formation and extended its use and moulded it into the tactics needed by the new generation of aircraft such as the Bf109.
When the Messerschmitt 109 was committed to the Civil War in Spain, its pilots at first flew in the old "V" formations but a shortage of the new aeroplanes forced them to fly in twos when escorting bombing raids, in order to provide cover on all sides of the bombing formations. The fashion for tight formation flying displays, at the public displays that were popular between the war, accentuated this development. First World War pilots had taken to flying this formation quite far apart to make their aircraft less easily seen and to avoid collisions, but in the "parade ground" atmosphere of peace, airforces tightened up the formations. During the First World War and the inter-war years the basic unit of aircraft was three aircraft flying in "V" formation known as a "Vic" by the RAF and a "Kette" by the Germans. One of the things the Messerschmitt Bf 109 should be remembered for is the central position it took in the formation of fighter tactics for fast metal monoplane aircraft that appeared at the end of the 1930s, the same tactics that are still in use today.
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