tom d. friedman wrote:
with guns & armor plate removed for fuel efficiency purposes the staged fight is not really that accurate.
While it's true that weight has a significant impact on aircraft energy during a fight, that's not really a player in this case IMHO. A dogfight between two "empty" fighters would inscribe approximately the same lines across the sky as a dogfight between the same two fighters fully loaded.
The tail-chasing that we see in the movies and airshows is *not* dogfighting. Most of what you see in "historical" air-to-air footage isn't really dogfighting either.
Remember...what you see in gun camera footage are the people who got killed. Those are the people who are executing *bad* maneuvering. The guys who maneuvered *well* didn't end up in the footage that you see.
What is depicted in the movies is terrible, too. I think we've discussed this here on WIX before, but the fact is that dogfighting is very difficult to capture on screen realistically because it's small airplanes turning in (relatively) big circles. I can't say that I've really ever seen a dogfight depicted in the movies or television realistically, either.
Dogfighting hasn't changed substantially since WWI. The basic maneuvers are essentially the same, and the method of besting your opponent still (generally) involves being stabilized behind him with the ability to employ a weapon.
So, a dogfight generally looks like a series of high G, descending circles. Sometimes those circles are in the vertical or oblique plane of motion. Sometimes the opponents are flying the same circle, sometimes they are flying two different circles. Sometimes the circles change every 180 or 360 degrees.
Naturally, also, there are "slash and run" attacks. Or, there are attacks where one guy sneaks up on another and a kill is achieved with very little maneuvering at all. I'd hazard a guess that this probably accounts for most aerial victories, but that's just a guess. In the fog of war, it certainly happens more frequently than anyone would like to admit, even today.
Regardless, what dogfighting does not look like are passes back and forth across a showline with one directly behind another, then followed by 180 degree turns at either end of the airfield. If that were the case, the dogfight would be over rather quickly. The minute one aircraft rolled out, and the other was able to get a gun solution on him, -bam-, you'd have the end of your dogfight.
Here's a YouTube video of a typical short-range BFM engagement in the T-38C:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m56TD6_m5s
Again, the basic mechanics haven't changed since Rickenbacker. Jets are faster, have more thrust, the turns are bigger, the Gs are higher...but the hi yo-yos and low yo-yos and scissors and the like are exactly the same as they've always been.
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