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Concept
Dogfight
Summary
A dogfight, or dog fight, is an aerial battle between fighter aircraft conducted at close range. 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. This differs from aerial warfare, which deals with the strategy involved in planning and executing various missions.
Dogfighting first occurred during the Mexican Revolution in 1913, shortly after the invention of the airplane. It was a component in every major war, though with steadily declining frequency, until the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Since then, longer-range weapons such as beyond-visual-range missiles have made dogfighting largely obsolete.
The term dogfight has been used for centuries to describe a melee: a fierce, fast-paced close quarters battle between two or more opponents. 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. 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". 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 abot twenty of this circus [von Richthofen's] at 12,000 feet. Ten of the enemy dived to attack our men. A regular dogfight ensued for half a minute."
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. The story comes from Lamb himself.
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