In the past couple decades I have interviewed and discussed aircraft, armament, combat and tactics with a few hundred aces form the US, Great Britain, Germany and Russia. What I have come away with is simply that much of what has been written is dogmatically repeated again and again as if by that repetition it should somehow be valid. It's akin to Hitler's big lie: if you repeat it enough people will accept it as truth.

The truth is that much of it is similar to urban legends. People have developed concepts such as the Zero was a poor fighter or that the P-47 was ineffective against the Luftwaffe's bf 109s and FW 190s. They believe big guns and lots of them were the key to air victories instead of marksmanship that speed or maneuverability was singularly decisive in fights. There is still a misguided idea that WWII was rife with dog-fighting fighters instead of one pass altitude advantage attacks.

Even in the Korean and Vietnam era people have been led to believe that MiGs dominated American fighters. Seemingly they have no idea of the exploits of Boots Blesse and his scoring feats or that Duke Cunningham killed 3 MiGs on one mission with the last an epic battle with the top NVA ace.

When 10-victory ace Hal Fischer was asked if the six fifties was adequate armament on his F-86 he replied that four would have been enough.

There exists a distorted idea that somehow ballistics replaced skilled deflection shooting as if a round is fast enough it will seek out its target automatically. There is an endless comparison of machines' performance data with "equally skilled pilots," as if there is some magic neutral ground in air combat akin to a duel with musket pistols. It's not simply knowing combat maneuvers but deciding WHAT to use and WHEN, so the myth of equal pilots dueling it out is pointless.

Somehow people believe that turning and maneuverability is the deciding factor in combat when it makes absolutely no difference unless you are at very close quarters. I have sought to explain how given a 4-500 yards distance is meaningless even when the lead plane pulls a tight turn. By virtue of relative distance the trailing plane needs only make a small control input to keep the lead on target. He doesn't have to out turn his opponent as such.

P-47s and P-38s were superb at rolling. And let's make it clear that roll rate is simply the speed at which a plane can rotate around the horizontal axis using aileron input. A good stunt plane can do that. It doesn't necessarily mean it can complete a barrel roll as fast as the lead plane can turn but Bob Johnson, Gabby Gabreski, Shorty Rankin, Hub Zemke and the rest of the P-47 pilots in the ETO found they could compensate for any tight turns performed by German fighters by barrel rolling. And a tight turn doesn't mean you can't be out turned in effect by a quick barrel rolling trailing opponent. The maneuver slows the trailing plane down and in effect puts it in a proper firing position negating the tight turn of the lead plane.

The maneuver slows the plane down and changes its position laterally as desired by the pilot so it does not overshoot. Johnson spoke of watching for the telltale sign of a tight turn that the FWs would perform by way of cutting the ignition on their planes to counter the engine torque so the turn would be tighter. When he saw the belch of smoke signaling that, he'd open up with his 8 .50s and hammer the sucker while the engine was off. Needless to say the German pilots were made quite busy trying to evade ordnance and re-fire the BMW while pulling Gs and maintaining a turn line. It normally ended their days in a bad way!

I find another concept that gives greater advantage than reality for axis mounting of weapons over wing-mounted ones. While it is true that there is no convergence adjustment required for fuselage-mounted weapons that can point straight to infinity or ballistic drop off, whichever comes first, pilots with guns in the wings compensated for any shortcomings real or perceived as the situations dictated.

Time and again I've heard men tell me how at ranges too close for optimum convergence they simply used rudder to skid and bring one wing's weapons to bear on the enemy. It was effective as they are here to tell the tale. By the reverse token they made kills at half-a-mile ranges well beyond optimum gun harmonization beyond which rounds ultimately crossed and spread out again.

On the receiving end it seems there is a fantasy that 20MMs could punch through Allied armor plate. Unfortunately for this flight of fancy too many guys repeat the tale of 13MM machine gun and 20MM cannon rounds being consistently stopped by the pilot protection armor. Certainly a 20MM explosive round will wreak havoc when it goes off inside the pierced skin but even so many exploded upon contact with the duraluminum covering at an angle causing less that catastrophic damage.

These fairy tale believers also think that fifty caliber API was ineffective. Sure thicker armor plate stopped them as well but much did not. And the solid steel core of the .50 punching through the enemy followed by a fire-starting incendiary round was quite adequate to create plenty of damage. It is almost as if these dreamers discount the thousands of kills made with fifty caliber rounds. How DID all those enemy planes get destroyed then? I know a number of men who made kills with a single .50 in operation. And let's remember that John Browning developed the M-2 as a weapon to combat light armor.

While 20MM rounds are destructive they are not the magic bullet so to speak. You must put rounds on target no matter what weapon you use. The idea that a down-range 20MM round has an advantage is valid IF it hits something. To begin with the .50 and the MG 151 have the same rate of fire but the plane with the 20 has far less magazine capacity meaning far less total firing time. If you miss with your 120 rounds of 20MM you're done for the day. A P-47 still has 305 rounds remaining per weapon. You may require most of those in a given scenario to down an enemy but the fact that you have the rounds to do it says something.

There is a plethora of comparison of hardware details instead of factoring in the skill of the individual pilots. Luftwaffe sorties are dismissed as ineffective simply because they were heavily outnumbered later in the war. It doesn't take into account the skill of experienced pilots pressing attacks against those odds and scoring. Again we must wonder how all those B-24s and B-17s were lost. Flak certainly didn't sweep them all from the skies.

Erich Hartmann's epic score was accomplished with almost no dogfighting. He carefully chose his combats and victims and attacked only when the proper ingredients were present to ensure a favorable outcome. The vast majority of his conquests were achieved by using standard energy fighter tactics diving from above and behind and making one accurate firing pass from 100 meters. He'd split S and gain more speed exiting the immediate area then us his speed to zoom climb back up to his perch to view the consequences. He would then reassess the situation if the target required a second pass. Usually it did not. He was very careful and methodical in his regimen of attack and evaluation of the situation. Due to this carefulness he was able to boast of never losing a wingman.

There exists and endless novice idea that turning fights were the rule—they weren't. I've heard the ridiculous idea that the P-38 could out turn Zekes and Oscars by cutting one engines' throttle and make the big plane "spin around" in a tight turn though I've never had it confirmed by PTO or ETO pilots. Also the dynamics behind more juice on one fan while turning has extremely limited benefits. It may be noticeable in a slower, flat shallow-bank turn. At combat speeds as soon as you're into a steep banking turn you're beginning to use the elevator to turn. If you think you are going to make a tighter right turn, as soon as the higher revving engine port becomes the TOP engine due to the bank, the extra speed of it is going to want to bring the top fuselage down not tighter to starboard. Think about it. Picture it in your mind and you'll realize that once you're up on the elevator at 90 degrees of roll at combat speed this can't work.

We find a fixation on top speed or climb rate that is also misunderstood. A 27 MPH advantage is meaningless unless we're talking an air race. Each aircraft is engineered and tuned to perform at an optimum altitude for the given setup of the engine depending how it is aspirated. While a plane with a 400 MPH top speed at 21,000 feet may best another at that altitude, it doesn't mean the other plane can't outperform it at ITS optimum altitude of 28,000 feet. Even when there is relative speed parity it becomes a contest of experience rather than outrunning an enemy as you slowly pull away with a 25 MPH advantage. Ordnance moves far faster than that and if you attempt to flat outrun another plane you're dead unless you have a very large lead advantage.

Climb rate is seen as a constant and it is not. Where one plane can rocket to 10,000 feet at a steady high rate, an opponent may be just getting into its element by way of different aspiration and he'll close on you and kill you. As your climb rate diminishes his increases at a given altitude. Again, you're dead if you think you can always climb away to safety since bullets climb faster than 3,000 FPM! Angle of attack in climb is critical as well. Where one plane can outclimb another it may need a shallower angle of ascent where another can pull a steeper one. This steeper angle can mean the slower climber will be able to pull lead and have a gun solution when the other plane can't or vice versa depending on the situation.

A plane able to climb steeply can't have lead drawn onto it if its pursuer can't climb as steeply even if it has a higher rate of climb at a given altitude. It might need a shallower angle of attack to produce rapid climb performance. If it is unable to point it nose higher for a prolonged period the opponent with better vertical performance can't be shot even if its FPM is less than the pursuer. To imagine two planes at the same angle of attack in a climb and the trailing plane closing the gap is unrealistic. No one simply pulled up and expected to climb away faster than ordnance can travel.

There exists this ignorance of the deeds performed by all these great pilots because of "what the books say." Pilots often exceeded the manufacturers' published performance criteria in all sorts of ways. They perfected tactics, maneuvers and moves for combat that the test pilots never performed. They combined series of moves that proved successful against their enemies that weren't taught in flight school.

While there are many books with performance statistics and technical details abounding, there also exist first hand accounts of pilots' exploits. That's what these wannabe aircraft aficionados need to obtain. Airplanes are cold dead machines until a skilled, experienced pilot exploits their performance by way of virtuoso manipulation.

As usual the clinical aspect of performance data has people clinging to the incorrect theory that this is what produces kills. Speed disparity, unless very great, is of little consequence in most situations of combat. Speed = energy must be kept to hold any advantage at all. Once a crate begins maneuvering velocity is scrubbed off sometimes rather quickly depending on the plane.

A P-51 or P-47 diving on a 262 can carry enough inertia to make a firing pass and hold that momentum for a given time. But once it is gone the jet will walk away. That said taking prop-driven opponents in a melee will not produce these dramatic results. A high speed diving firing pass and a zoom climb is not equivalent. Maneuvering aircraft will be relatively matched even when one has a 30 MPH top speed level flight advantage.

Is there any pilot's account touting how he simply out-sped his Spitfire opponent and dominated the fight because he had a few minutes of WEP? Much faster, later Spits had an advantage over 109Gs yet in most circumstances there are no RAF accounts of run away speed disparities in a fight.

To those who would like to see it all put into perspective I would highly recommend the History Channel program Dogfights. It puts a small amount of archival footage along with commentary by the participating aces blended with superb computer graphics that fully illustrate the combats to a degree that is unprecedented.

The outcomes of combats are usually due to tactical advantages. A section bouncing some unwary group below or a victim doing a split-S and evading the surprise attack are examples.

Pure level speed and / or the ability to simply climb alone are never decisive factors. The expertise to use your plane's strengths and exploit the enemy's weaknesses is. This means a combination of performance and maneuvering skill, situational awareness with tactical advantages at hand. The aces in nearly every case waded into fights often outnumbered yet unafraid because of their belief in their skills that melded them and their machine into one.

No one performance factor alone was responsible for the outcomes of these combats. It came down to the human element and how they assessed the combat situation. People can tout speed, climb or maneuverability alone as some mythical power but the reality of all the pilot combat dialogues proves otherwise.