The First Real Dogfight
Sometimes it feels like there was never a world without Top Gun.
There was, of course. Aircraft in combat and thrilling dogfights had to originate somewhere.
That place was the sky over Serbia. And the when was August 25, 1914 at the first battle of World War I – the Battle of Cer.
As it happens, the real pilot tough guys looked like this:
The first fighter pilots, with their real origins in World War I, were no slouches to danger. Without armed aircraft and such modern conveniences as radar and altitude gauges, these OG flyboys had to improvise ways to accomplish their missions. In the beginning, this meant carrying sidearms and popping shots off at opposing aircraft midflight, but by the end of the war airplanes were being manufactured with on-board weaponry in mind.
A blog post cannot do the subject of the first dogfight in battle justice – more information on the Battle of Cer and Miodrag Tomić is here: The Balkan Invention of Air to Air Combat
More on World War I:
- August 25, 2020
- History , Interesting