History Series / DogFights

** In a bizarre sense, scenes where the camera is following a Kamikaze can be seen as a case of arrow cam, as Kamikaze attacks blur the line between normal cockpit or over-the-shoulder camera views and arrow cam due to the pilot and his plane being both combatant and projectile.

* MedalsForEveryone: After the B-17 crew featured in "Long Odds" completes a vital mapping mission and survives an attack from twenty Japanese Zeros, everyone receives the Distinguished Service Cross -- except Captain Jay Zeamer and Joseph Sarnoski, who are awarded the Medal of Honor (the latter posthumously).

** "Hunt for the Bismarck" covers pretty much all of ''Bismarck''[='s=] career as a battleship - the Battle of Denmark Strait, in which ''Bismarck'' sunk HMS ''Hood'', HMS ''Victorious'' and HMS ''Ark Royal''[='s=] torpedo attacks on the ''Bismarck'', and the Last Battle of the Bismarck, when ''Bismarck'' is engaged by the British Home Fleet and sunk by the overwhelming firepower of HMS ''Rodney'', HMS ''King George V'', and their escorts.

* AwesomeButImpractical: The Japanese MXY-7 ''Ohka'' manned rocket-powered bomb was a terrifying weapon designed as the the ultimate embodiment of Kamikaze tactics - a nearly unstoppable, incredibly powerful suicide plane that could deliver a 2600lb high explosive payload at over 500 miles per hour, but it was also even within a logical and strategic framework that considers suicide attacks to be "practical", a very impractical weapon, as it had to be transported by slow and vulnerable [=G4M=] [[ReportingNames "Betty"]] bombers due to its short range, and on the rare occasion that ''Ohka'' attacks were successfully launched, their armor-piercing bombs would sometimes over-penetrate lightly-armored American destroyers and detonate relatively harmlessly on the other side of the ship. As a result, ultimately, ''Ohka'' failed to live up to its horrifying potential.

* StoneWall: The [=F4F=] Wildcat repeatedly proves its great durability, but is also slow and unmanueverable for a fighter and only has four machine guns to most other US fighters' six.

* PresentTenseNarration: The battles are narrated in present tense as they play out on-screen.

''Dogfights'' was an American documentary series that aired on the History Channel from 2006-2008 that usually covered {{Ace Pilot}}s from World War I to the present and future. On occasion, however, they would cover other, related topics, namely during several episodes that focused on UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: The episodes "Hunt for the Bismarck", "Death of the Japanese Navy", and "Kamikaze", while definitely featuring aerial battles and the typical SuperDetailedFightNarration of the series, stick out for focusing heavily on naval actions, even as they try to highlight the role of aviation in those battles.

** While the show is generally very accurate, the series oversells how problematic not having a gun was for the F-4 Phantom II in Vietnam and oversells the value of the SUU-16/A gun pod, which was widely regarded as an unreliable, difficult to aim hunk of junk that wasn't worth its weight and veteran pilots like Robin Olds would actually refuse to have any of the pilots under them use it because the temptations it offered inexperienced pilots who knew little or nothing about gunfighting were too dangerous. The show also generally neglects to mention that USAF combat fighter training was inadequate at the time and this was another major cause of the problems they faced using their missiles effectively, while the Navy's TOP GUN program prove very effective and Navy Phantoms would consistently outscore their Air Force counterparts despite Navy Phantoms never using guns due to better training and the superior performance of the navy's AIM-9 Sparrow missile over the air force's AIM-4 Falcon missile. The Air Force would eventually learn its lesson and bolster its dogfighting training and ditch the AIM-4 in favor of the AIM-9 and bring their performance closer to the Navy's levels.

* IGotYouCovered:
** The role of a wingman protecting their lead, while the leader takes an offensive role is often noted.
** Especially in Pacific Theater episodes, a mutual form of this known as the Thach Weave will come into play. The Thach Weave is a defensive maneuver in which two (or four) allied pilots enter a flat scissors with each other, swinging back and forth across each other's flight path, such that any enemy pursuing either will quickly be in the other's sights. It was primarily introduced to overcome the disadvantages of the Wildcat, but other fighters would continue to employ it as an effective defensive maneuver.

* IveGotYourBack:

* FrickinLaserBeams: The episode "Dogfights of the Future" actually gives a rare realistic representation of how actual laser weapons work and how they would realistically implemented in the future.

* AwesomeButImpractical: The Japanese MXY-7 ''Ohka'' manned rocket-powered bomb was terrifying weapon as the the ultimate embodiment of Kamikaze tactics - a nearly unstoppable, incredibly powerful suicide plane that could deliver a 2600lb high explosive payload at over 500 miles per hour, but it was also even within a logical and strategic framework that considers suicide attacks to be "practical", a very impractical weapon, as it had to be transported by slow and vulnerable [=G4M=] [[ReportingNames "Betty"]] bombers due to its short range, and on the rare occasion that ''Ohka'' attacks were successfully launched, their armor-piercing bombs would sometimes over-penetrate lightly-armored American destroyers and detonate relatively harmlessly on the other side of the ship. As a result, ultimately, ''Ohka'' failed to live up to its horrifying potential.

* FacelessGoons: A few episodes focus on how it's easier to be violent against a machine with a pilot you can't see than it is to be violent against a human. The most notable example is Art Fielder in "No Room For Error", who witnessed an enemy pilot's [[CruelAndUnusualDeath gruesome death]] after bailing out at [[InertiaIsAHarshMistress 400 mph]] and was quite shaken up by it, saying that he'd always thought about it as "machine against machine" and seeing an actual human die was a different thing entirely.

* EpicShipOnShipAction: Two episodes focus warships - specifically on the ''Bismarck'' ("Hunt for the Bismarck") and the ''Yamato'' ("Death of the Japanese Navy"), both of which engage in surface action against the Royal Navy and US Navy, respectively.

** "Death of the Japanese Navy" similarly covers the every battle ''Yamato'' was actually involved in. First, the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, where American aircraft attacked the Japense Center Force and sunk her sister ship, ''Musashi'' The second segment, and the one most focused on ship-on-ship action covers the Battle off Samar, where the survivors of the Center Force - ''Yamato'', alongside the battleships ''Nagato'', ''Haruna'', and ''Kongo'', as well as six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eleven destroyers - attempted to carry out their original mission of sinking whatever forces were protecting the American troops landing on Leyte and attacking American amphibious forces, but against all odds were forced to retreat by Task Group 77.4.3, aka "Taffy 3", which consisted of six escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts, including an early departure on ''Yamato''[='s=] part as a result of being bracketed by American torpedoes that forced her to turn away, and noting that ''Yamato'' barely managed to contribute anything to the battle. The final segment covers the Battle of South China Sea/Operation Ten-Go, where American carrier aircraft engaged ''Yamato'' en route to Okinawa, where she was supposed to beach herself and shell Allied forces until the Americans were defeated or her guns were silenced. The explosion of ''Yamato'''[='s=] magazines as she sunk is likened to a funeral pyre for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

* EpicShipOnShipAction: Two episodes focusing on the ''Bismarck'' ("Hunt for the Bismarck") and ''Yamato'' ("Death of the Japanese Navy") have those ships engage in surface action against the Royal Navy and US Navy, both of them not ending well for either of them to different degrees.

* DavidVersusGoliath: The Battle off Samar, featured in the episode "Death of the Japanese Navy", was a massive naval mismatch that was a part of the largest naval battle in history. The battle pitted a handful of destroyers and escort carriers against a massive force of Japanese battleships including the 72,000 ton ''Yamato.'' To emphasize the size of the mismatch, the ''Yamato'' alone weighed more then all of the American ships of Taffy 3 put together. Promotional ads for the episode when the show was airing would bill the fight as ''Yamato'', the largest battleship ever built versus Taffy 3... ''not'' the largest battleship ever built. Ironically, despite the great emphasis placed on '' Yamato''[='s=] presence, it accomplished very little during the battle and Kongo and the heavy cruisers did most of the damage to Taffy 3.

** In a more nautical interpretation of the trope, in the episode "Kamikaze", the captain of the USS ''Laffey'' maneuvers his ship so violently that it's likened to dogfighting the Kamikazes. After a few hits, he's forced to alternate going fast and slow as going fast helps dodge incoming Kamikazes but fans the flames raging on his ship, while going slow lets the firefighter crews put out the fire but leaves the ship a sitting duck for the Kamikazes.

* GuyInBack: Several aircraft featured have different kinds of this crewman, mostly gunners, but also others like radio and radar operators are shown.

** In "Night Fighters", the CGI scenes show the P-61 Black Widow with its propellers counter-rotating like the P-38 Lighting, while the Black Widow did not actually use counter-rotating propellers and instead had both engines rotating the same way, which can be seen some of the in the archival footage segments.

** This was the thinking behind the German Sonderkommando Elbe featured in "Luftwaffe's Deadliest Mission" - they would take their fighters, ram into American bombers, bail out just before impact, get back to their base, hop in another fighter, ''and do the whole thing all over again''. Ultimately, very few planes in Sonderkommando Elbe actually managed to connect a ramming attack, and fewer still survived doing this, though their attacks did tend to work insofar as a successful ramming would take down a bomber. Fortunately for the few pilots who survived performing these attacks, there was never a second Sonderkommando Elbe mission.

* StupidJetpackHitler: The first portion of the episode "Secret Weapons of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII" covered the Me-163 rocket plane, while two other episodes featured the Me-262 jet fighter.

** The final segment of "Death of the Japanese Navy" covers Operation Ten-Go, wherein the battleship ''Yamato'' and a handful of escorts was expected to make a mad dash to Okinawa to support the Japanese defenders on the island or die trying, and die trying she did, with the explosion of her ammunition magazines being likened to the funeral pyre of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

** {{Subverted|Trope}} in one episode where an American P-51D pilot is dogfighting a German Bf-109 and every time he comes out of a dive or climb, the Bf-109 is right on top of him, and after several minutes of thinking he's tangling with some sort of Kraut super soldier who can throw his plane through these incredibly tight maneuvers at high speed and sustain incredible G's, he spots another Bf-109 diving as he's climbing and realizes that he's actually been dogfighting ''two'' German fighters at the same time, and if anything, he was the one flying like crazy.

** {{Subverted|Trope}} in one episode where an American P-51D pilot is dogfighting a German FW 190 and every time he comes out of a dive or climb, the Bf-109 is right on top of him, and after several minutes of thinking he's tangling with some sort of Kraut super soldier who can throw his plane through these incredibly tight maneuvers at high speed and sustain incredible G's, he realizes that he's actually been dogfighting ''two'' German fighters at the same time, and if anything, he was the one flying like crazy.

* InMediaRes: Pretty much every episode starts with the planes flying into battle before providing the historical context of the war being fought, a quick bio of the pilot(s), and the technical details of the planes involved, at which point the battle resumes.

* AwesomeButImpractical: The Japanese MXY-7 ''Ohka'' manned rocket-powered bomb was terrifying weapon as the the ultimate embodiment of Kamikaze tactics - a nearly unstoppable, incredibly powerful suicide plane that could deliver a 2600lb high explosive payload at over 500 miles per hour, but it was also even within a logical and strategic framework that considers suicide attacks to be "practical", a very impractical weapon, as it had to be transported by slow and vulnerable [=G4M=] [[ReportingNames "Betty"]] bombers, and on the rare occasion that ''Ohka'' attacks were successfully launched, their armor-piercing bombs would sometimes over-penetrate lightly-armored American destroyers and detonate relatively harmlessly on the other side of the ship. As a result, ultimately, ''Ohka'' failed to live up to its terrifying potential.