[[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=jnfezx3o&trope=WronskiFeint From YKTTW]]

JonnyD: Added a redirect from MissileTag to this page in order to make this perhaps obscurely named trope easier to find.

{{Randallw}}: For the record I'd never heard of it. I assumed it was a play on wrong-ski. ''Harry Potter''? nah, I make a point to know as little as possible. Damn this site for inadvertantly telling me most of the info.

{{Duckluck}}: This is just another of those pages that got its name from the familiar fan pitfall of assuming just because ''you'' know all about something, everyone else does too (see also: {{Otaku}}). It's a fairly dumb and unintuitive name, so I have no problem changing it. Can anyone think of something better?

{{Radioactive Zombie}}: Not to mention the bastard rants about them like it's a cliche.

{{Burai}}: Personally, I'd suggest "Halfcourt Chicken", i.e. it's playing chicken except you're both going the same way. (I'm not sure if maybe "lure their own missiles into them" shouldn't be a different but related trope. But then, I'm a Splitter more often than not.)

--> Named after the Quidditch technique where one team's Seeker will pretend to see the Snitch near the ground and go into a dive to attempt to lure the opposing Seeker into crashing into the ground. Don't worry if you've never heard of the Wronski Feint, it's only featured in an obscure little book called Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; probably not many people have read it.

That last paragraph is definitely passive-aggressive snot, though. Here's a hint: ''Goblet of Fire'' was published in 2000, and has sold 66 million copies worldwide; ''Empire Strikes Back'' (to pick an example from the page) was released in 1980, and at a rough estimate (dividing box by ticket price) was probably seen by ~70 million people, just in the US, just that year. Mind, my point isn't "Star Wars is way more popular than Harry Potter", or even that Harry Potter really is somehow too obscure. It's that this is an ''old'' trope — probably as old as chases in movies — and it seems inappropriate to yank up fan jargon from a 21st century work for it, unless said term was so iconic as to be in popular use ''outside'' the fandom. (More extreme example of the same principle is when someone suggested using "Horcrux" for the SoulJar trope, which is probably OlderThanDirt.)

Rutee: I'm just.. kind of stunned that a series with (almost) no air combat is naming an air combat maneuver. And can we figure out a way to handle that.. heck, forget passive, that's just an aggressive paragraph.

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SilentHunter: ''TheHuntForRedOctober''. In the novel, Ramius rams the "Alfa", not the torpedo- edited to clarify.

Where would "I'll let him get on my tail, then I'll hit the airbrakes and he'll fly right by" *(Maverick, Top Gun) go? This trope?

SilentHunter: Somewhere else, I guess.
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{{Whitewings)) I have to disagree with Burai concerning the name: Unlike the SoulJar, an ancient concept with an established name, this trope didn't even exist until fast, reliable, and highly maneuverable combat aircraft were both in existence and known to the public, and techniques for filming them were known and common - roughly the late 40s to early 50s, I'd guess. Even today, there is no common term for this that I know of, so Wronski Feint seems as good a name as any to me. It's certainly no less obscure that "Half-Court Chicken," which makes me think of basketball.

{{Burai}}:
1) I did note that the Soul Jar example was "more extreme".
2) The "40s to 50s" is still part of TheOldestOnesInTheBook, technically.
3) The trope could easily predate aviation. ''Tremors'', for instance, involves a Wronski Feint (if we must) ''without any vehicles'', even.

Re: "halfcourt chicken", I was just trying to think of a more straightforward way to communicate the concept. If you understand the chicken game, and you understand how half-court basketball works, you can work out the concept here. Unfortunately, seen in an index, I admit people are likely to take it as a rooster playing hoops...

TMatt: I also object to the new name. The whole reason I clicked on this trope was because the name was new and I had absolutely no idea what it was.

{{Tk3997}} I myself would call it "Controlled Flight Into Terrain" which is a technical term for this kind of mistake, but it just has this wonderful deadpan euphemistic ring to it IMO.

{{Grev}}: Well, the problem is, this is three tropes in one and needs to be split. The proper "Wronski feint" is only the dive at the ground version...

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{{Kefkakrazy}}: Removed "They even have their own name for it. They call the irrational fear the Imperial commanders have of the technique "trench run disease", after the run through the original trench run in A New Hope." from the Star Wars example. Trench Run Disease has nothing to do with this trope-it refers to the fact that large capital ships are vulnerable to attack from snubfighters because snubfighter proton torpedoes can hurt a capital ship, but the ship's defensive systems can't target something that small with any sort of reliability.

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From reading the trope text, it looks like there are two separate ideas here.

#1 The first idea is the idea of intentionally getting an enemy's missiles to lock onto you so that you can lead them somewhere, make the missiles break their lock on you, then hit something belonging to the enemy. I'm not sure if this is something that happens in real-world air combat; even the short-range heat-seeking air-to-air missiles typically have top speeds of Mach 3+ by the time the solid rocket booster burns out, and air combat maneuvering is typically done at subsonic to transonic speeds. For reasons having to do with the efficiency of jet engines dropping off due to lack of oxygen at high altitudes, but air friction also being reduced at high altitudes due to lower air pressure, post-1960 military jet aircraft, even the high-speed jet fighters and jet interceptors, are only capable of their advertised Mach 2+ top speeds between 30,000 and 40,000 feet (most of them can just barely break the sound barrier down on the deck, and some can't quite do that), and we're not even getting into the difficulty of first intentionally making a guided missile follow you then break off and attack another target when you have no direct control over it. I am thinking this is something the screenwriters think looks cool and clever, but real life doesn't work that way.

#2 The other idea is that of a pilot in combat performing a maneuver that an enemy pilot chasing him can't quite follow in his own aircraft, resulting in the enemy pilot's spectacular demise in a big fireball of blazing metal confetti. #2 is very real and is as old as World War I.