Intrepid pilots decided to interfere with enemy reconnaissance by improvised means, including throwing bricks, grenades and sometimes rope, which they hoped would entangle the enemy plane's propeller. Due to weight restrictions, only small weapons could be carried on board. Įnemy pilots at first simply exchanged waves, or shook their fists at each other. The new aeroplane proved their worth by spotting the hidden German advance on Paris in the second month of the war.

Aircraft were initially used as mobile observation vehicles, and early pilots gave little thought to aerial combat. In the upper foreground a biplane of the Royal Flying Corps flies towards a stricken German biplane, which is falling towards the ground leaving a trail of smoke in its wake ( Imperial War Museum).ĭogfighting became widespread in World War I. Main article: Aviation in World War I An Incident on the Western Front, view of a dogfight involving five aircraft. According to his own statements in an interview two decades later, both men had orders to kill, but neither pilot wanted to harm the other, so they exchanged multiple volleys of pistol fire, intentionally missing before exhausting their supply of ammunition. The first supposed instance of plane on plane combat and the first instance of one plane intercepting another during an aerial conflict apparently occurred during the Mexican Revolution on November 30, 1913, between two American mercenaries fighting for opposing sides, Dean Ivan Lamb and Phil Rader. A regular dogfight ensued for half a minute.' History Mexican Revolution Ten of the enemy dived to attack our men.

On March 21, 1918, several British newspapers published an article by Frederic Cutlack, where the word was used in the modern sense: 'A patrol of seven Australian machines on Saturday met about twenty of this circus at 12,000 feet. One of the first written references to the modern-day usage of the word was in an account of the death of Baron von Richthofen in The Graphic in May 1918: 'The Baron joined the mêlée, which, scattering into groups, developed into what our men call a dog fight'. The term gained popularity during World War II, although its origin in air combat can be traced to the latter years of World War I. The term dogfight has been used for centuries to describe a melee: a fierce, fast-paced close quarters battle between two or more opponents. Video of the F-15 Eagle's dogfighting capabilities Etymology Head-up display of an F/A-18 Hornet during dogfight simulations Since then, longer-range weapons such as beyond-visual-range missiles have made dogfighting largely obsolete. It was a component in every major war, though with steadily declining frequency, until the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. ĭogfighting first occurred during the Mexican Revolution in 1913, shortly after the invention of the airplane.

This differs from aerial warfare, which deals with the strategy involved in planning and executing various missions. Modern terminology for air-to-air combat is air combat manoeuvring (ACM), which refers to tactical situations requiring the use of individual basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) to attack or evade one or more opponents. Navy TOPGUN trainingĪ dogfight, or dog fight, is an aerial battle between fighter aircraft conducted at close range. An F-16 Fighting Falcon and an F-14 Tomcat engaged in a mock dogfight as part of U.S. For other uses, see Dogfight (disambiguation). This article is about the aerial combat maneuver.

Air combat maneuvering