Dogfight
A dog fight or dogfight is a common used to describe close-range aerial combat between military aircraft. The term originated during World War I, and probably derives from the preferred fighter tactic of positioning one's aircraft behind the enemy aircraft. From this position, a pilot could fire his guns on the enemy without having to lead the target, and the enemy aircraft could not effectively fire back. When two fighter aircraft circle each other trying to achieve this position, it resembles two dogs chasing each other's tails.
History
World War I
Dog fighting emerged in World War I. Aircraft were initially used as mobile observation vehicles and early pilots gave little thought to aerial combat - enemy pilots at first simply exchanged waves. Intrepid pilots decided to interfere with enemy reconnaissance by improvised means, including throwing bricks, grenades and sometimes rope, which they hoped would tangle the enemy plane's propeller. This progressed to pilots firing handheld guns at enemy planes. Once the guns were mountable to the plane due to the invention of synchronization gear in 1915, the era of air combat began.
During the first part of the war there was no established tactical doctrine for air-to-air combat. Oswald Boelcke was the first to analyze the tactics of aerial warfare, resulting in a set of rules known as the Dicta Boelcke. Like the Dicta Boelcke, many of the maneuvres invented in World War I are still usable today, for instance the Immelmann turn, invented by German flying ace Max Immelmann. Perhaps the best known person contributing to establishing dog fighting guidelines was Manfred von Richthofen, better known as the "Red Baron".
World War II
During the first part of World War II, the basic ideas behind dog fighting changed little. The airplanes however were improved drastically over their World War I counterparts. Aircraft like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Mitsubishi Zero were far superior to their opponents until the Allied Forces developed more powerful aircraft like the Supermarine Spitfire. Due to the high agility of the Zero, the Allied pilots found that the correct combat tactic against Zeros was to remain out of range and fight on the dive and climb. By using speed and resisting the deadly error of trying to out-turn the Zero, eventually cannon could be brought to bear and a single burst of fire was usually enough. Another important maneuver was called the "Thach Weave", named for the man that invented it, then-LtCdr John S. "Jimmy" Thach. It required two planes, a leader and his wingman, to fly about 200 feet apart. When a Zero would latch onto the tail of one of the fighters, the two planes would turn toward each other. If the Zero followed its original target through the turn, it would come into a position to be fired on by his target's wingman. This tactic was used with spectacular results at the Battle of the Coral Sea and at the Battle of Midway, and helped make up for the inferiority of the US planes until new aircraft types were brought into service.
Later in the war, when bombers were equipped with machine guns, the Germans found a way to counter this by arming their Me 262's with R4M air-to-air rockets. While this proved highly effective, the war was already effectively over. Soon after the war, both the United States and Soviet Union began development of air-to-air missiles. This increased the range on which planes could engage eachother from a few hundred meters to 5-10 km. This distance increased as more advanced missiles entered service
Modern air combat
Modern air-to-air combat seldom degenerates into a dog fight. If so, it is because guided missile attacks, often beyond visual range, have failed. A fighter with a large wing can sometimes evade a supersonic missile by turning faster than the missile can follow, if the pilot has excellent situational awareness and is a master of angles and timing. Attempting to run away is the least effective survival choice. Supersonic head-on closure with the enemy while evading further missile flights may eventually achieve a tail-chase visual Gatling gun with firing range of less than one kilometer.
Superiority in a dog fight depends primarily on a pilot's experience and skill, and on the agility of his fighter when flown at minimum air speeds approaching loss of control (causing a danger of stalling); the winner typically plays to the strengths of his own aircraft while forcing his adversary to fly at a design disadvantage. Dog fights are generally contests to determine which pilot can fly the slowest while maintaining violent acrobatic control. A dog fight has nothing to do with supersonic speed, and much to do with the engine power that makes supersonic flight possible. The $280M F-22 Raptor can stand on its steerable nozzles at less than 100K airspeed, yet quickly maneuver to bring its M61 Vulcan cannon to bear on a nearby evasive target.
With modern air-to-air AMRAAM guided missiles greatly extending the general engagement range of jet fighters, some experts hypothesize that dog fighting may be headed toward extinction. Others criticize this view, citing as evidence the United States F-4 Phantom II. All versions but the last (E) of this fighter relied solely on missiles, having no guns nor lead-computing Gyro gunsight, and were therefore very vulnerable in gun-range combat.
The continued importance of dog fighting was demonstrated during the Vietnam War. American pilots flew aircraft equipped with long-range missiles. However, air crews were adamantly denied permission to fire AIM-7 Sparrow missiles at radar targets without having visually identified the target first, thus completely losing this technological advantage. Lightweight, short-endurance, point-defense fighters such as the MiG-17 and MiG-21 are far more agile than heavy, long-range, strike fighters such as the F-105 Thunderchief. Still, using the element of surprise (the target did not see an attack coming), the AIM-9 Sidewinder short range missile, and cannon fire, American pilots gained significant victories in the air over North Vietnam.
Advanced missile technology has not spelled the end of the dog fight. However, the introduction of the rear facing radar and missiles capable of being fired backwards have reduced the vulnerability to tail-chase attacks.[1] Because this feature is only present on the most modern jets, and missiles are a finite resource, the US Navy (TOPGUN) and Air Force (Red Flag) continue to teach postgraduate level classes in air combat maneuvering engagements.
Fictional depictions
In science fiction films, starfighters are typically depicted as dog fighting in the same manner as planes would in a planetary atmosphere. However, more realistic models such as Babylon 5's Starfury have added a new twist to the combat idea. The Starfury, with its ability to pivot quickly to bring weapons to bear against a tailing opponent, revolutionized the concept of the dog fight. The popular saying "In space, Newton rules," sums up the difference between spacefighter and atmospheric dog fights; spacecraft movement is defined by Newton's laws of motion. Spacefighters do not have to move through an atmosphere, so there is no air drag. If the fighter's engines push it "forward," then stop, it will continue to move in the same direction because there is no air or gravity to slow it down. However, using small maneuvering thrusters built along the fuselage, a spacefighter can then spin the orientation of the fighter along its axis, turning its guns to face its "rear" direction. Thus it can make a rapid 180-degree spin along its axis while still gliding forward at full speed. Spacefighters also never have to worry about stalling, because even if the engine is completely turned off, there is no gravity to work against the fighter.
Theoretically, the greatest factor actually limiting the maneuverability of a spacefighter (short of metal fatigue on the hull itself) is the effect of G-forces on the pilot. A rapid or violent change of direction at high speed might be so great that the pilot could not physically survive it without sustaining serious trauma. Several other science fiction series, notably Star Wars, have shown examples of "droid fighters:" robotic unmanned attack fighters (the military's current UCAV program is sometimes cited as the first real-world development of this type of craft). As such craft do not have human pilots, they are depicted as vastly more maneuverable than piloted spacecraft because they can perform high G-force turns that living pilots simply cannot.
The current sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, which began in 2003, also depicts dog fights involving spacefighters. The series began over 5 years after Babylon 5 ended, and thus benefits from much more advanced CGI special effects technology, allowing realistic space combat to be depicted on a level that Babylon 5 was not able to achieve in its heyday. Within the series, it is mentioned directly that human Viper spacefighters aren't as maneuverable as the Raider spacefighters of their robotic Cylon enemies, because Raiders are unpiloted machines and can make turns at G-stresses that would kill a human. Human flight instructors on the series actually train pilots to use Thach Weave-style tactics to overcome this deficiency, just as in real-world engagements between Wildcats and Zeros. Another key feature of space combat used in Battlestar Galactica was seen in a season 2 episode, which involved a massive battle between human and Cylon spacecarriers: lateral strafing runs. When an atmospheric fighter makes a strafing run, it must approach the target from a high angle, fire at the target, then pull away, circle around and start over. Using Newtonian motion in space, a spacefighter can fly level with the target and use maneuvering jets to spin on its axis so that it moves perpendicular to the direction its guns are facing. Thus the spacefighter will move laterally along the length of the enemy ship, while its guns are still pointed "down" at the enemy vessel. It can even make a quick turn to move in the opposite direction and continue strafing. Because an atmospheric fighter has to come in at an angle to strafe, it is exposed to weapons fire from the entire length of an enemy ship. But in this situation, a spacefighter makes a lateral strafing run directly from the stern (in a sense, crossing the t), and thus is only exposed to a small amount of fire on its approach, from the stern of the ship.
If fighter combat and dog fights ever transfer to real-world space combat, these currently fictional tactics might be utilized in future.
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Su-37 Flanker Report from Farnborough '96 (http://www.sci.fi/~fta/Su-27.htm)