Many aerospace fans and avgeeks, including myself, are also gamers; either concretely simulator geeks, such as DCS, or, in a less realistic manner, War Thunder. In said games, all of us become very proud of our skills and, ultimately, of our kills. However, if there is one type of kill/ take-down that we really relish, is not with missiles, cannons, or even bombs… It is the one and only manoeuvre-kill.
But… what is it that makes us so proud about it? Because you take down an enemy aircraft by just flying. Obviously, flying in a way that tricks the enemy player into eating the ground at full speed while you survive, shows higher skill levels than your opponent. So, in order to see how realistic is that, let’s make some kind of tier list of real historical take downs.
Starting from the top 3, we have the well-known Supermarine Spitfire. Overall, an incredible aircraft, capable of mashing the enemy planes into pieces, while also killing his own pilot by the amount of Gs it could sustain in a turn fight, the Supermarine Spitfire is one of the best- if not the best- dogfighter ever (I’m sorry champs, the A6M Zero series were not that good).
The Spitfire was in charge of intercepting the V1 flying bombs over Great Britain, something considered an extremely dangerous task, as many pilots died because of the resultant explosion when shooting at them. This used to be the norm, until someone realized that just a smooth touch would make the V1 bomb change direction and slam the ground instead off some unlucky Londoner street. Maybe it is not as impressive as you would expect in a top 3, but due to its importance and implications it deserves to be mentioned.
Secondly, we have a real air-to-air manoeuvre kill. This happened in 1991 during the Operation “Desert Storm”. It was the early hours of 17th of January and an EF-111 Raven (An electronic-warfare version of the F111-Aardvark with no attack capabilities) was conducting a mission when intercepted by an Iraqi Mirage F1, which just survived an encounter against a mighty F-15C. The Mirage engaged the Raven with IR missiles and failed to hit, as the Raven popped flares and flew defensively. Seeing the Raven as an easy target, the Iraqi fighter throttled up in order to shoot it down with his cannons.
Desperately, as the Raven crew saw how the Mirage was closing in, the pilot decided to pull forward his stick and lick the floor, guiding the plane away from crashing only thanks to its Terrain Following Radar, as there was low visibility at the moment. After a while, and when the Mirage was extremely close to the low flying EF-111, the Raven’s pilot slammed back again his stick, making the Iraqi pilot lose his visual on the plane and, ultimately, his spatial consciousness as he flew straight into the ground…
Finally, for the top 1, we have one off the most stupid air-to-air kills. With not many reports to confirm this event, it is said that during the Vietnam War, a US jet fighter, supposedly an F100- Super Sabre, spotted a reconnaissance Polikarpov Po-2 biplane of the North Vietnamese forces and as the biplane had so little to no heat signature, the American pilot decided to go for a cannon take-down. In a display of tomfoolery, the jet plane pilot tried to keep up with the Po-2 slowness making the jet plane to eventually stall and crash into the jungle with no survivor, making it, at least technically, the first ever (and only) jet taken down by a Po-2 in real life.