RQ: Genesis Truxton stage 1, third midboss attack help

[toaplan_shmupfan]

I am looking for an effective strategy for the Sega Genesis version of Truxton when the stage 1, third midboss attack occurs. In theory, this would also be useful for the arcade version since the Genesis second loop is nearly identical to arcade difficulty (seems to be nearly as fast with even Normal difficulty, but the Genesis version does have the fast autofire to help out).

Anyway, these are three green ships that start out at the top of the screen, and alternately fire lasers. Then they start moving downward or sideways and either fire lasers or a three way shot spread, seems dependent on whether the player ship is directly below an enemy ship vs. off to the side.

Especially during the second loop, I have been just using the bomb button each time I see one of the ships start to fire a laser, but then I have used two or even three bombs for that attack, leaving me none for later attacks (and I seem to need to use at least one for the boss tank at near the end of stage 1).

Is there any effective way to eliminate these ships using less than two bombs, or possibly even using no bombs at all?